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by deng7 hours ago |
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upvoteby toast07 hours ago|
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2620v4 is not a power slurping beast. Depending on the server board, it might not be either. Servers are often loud, but it depends.

There's a lot of budget hosting built around chips like these, and they're suprisingly power efficient.

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upvoteby jansommer7 hours ago|
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It should be closer to 85W on load. And it's incredibly silent on even a low end cooler. I rarely get above 50° Celcius.
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upvoteby deng7 hours ago|
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OK, then you're in luck. I had a bunch of old 1U rack servers and even in the next room it was too annoying to run them (they had a bunch of 40mm fans which always ran at full speed, because in a server room, no one can hear you scream).
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upvoteby jabroni_salad1 hours ago|
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Yeah, 1u is gonna do that. Get something that can accommodate a big tower air cooler such as the Hyper 212 and your airflow will be quieter than the disks.

I don't run it anymore but my old server was a dual xeon (with two of those coolers crammed in) and I rarely heard a peep out of it.

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upvoteby irusensei36 minutes ago|
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Small fans need to spin faster so these can be very high pitch even if you stuff some Noctua 40mm fans into it.
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upvoteby jansommer6 hours ago|
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Could it just be really bad cooling? Looking at 9800X3D, it seems like it's running in a similar range wrt TDP unless you really push the 9800X3D. I'm comparing with desktop cpu's because that's what my workload is. cpu governor is set to performance (no schedutil). No audible change in fan speed during heavy compilation or gaming (very silent humming), and i don't have any fans beside cheap intake, cpu and exhaust fans (1 each) + an excessive amount of dust.
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upvoteby deng6 hours ago|
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These servers had no fan control whatsoever, they always ran full blast. That's not untypical for rack servers, because as written: they are designed for server rooms, and you're supposed to wear ear protection there anyway... Yes, I could've modified them, but I ditched them because running them simply made no sense (especially the high idle power consumption was ridiculous).
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upvoteby ciupicri5 hours ago|
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85W for the whole system?! The specifications for the CPU mention a TDP of 85W [1].

[1] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/92986/i...

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upvoteby actionfromafar4 hours ago|
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But for LLM work the CPU is mostly idle, waiting for new data - so the CPU itself might not pull much power at all.
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upvoteby consp7 hours ago|
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Only when you remove it from the original server or enable low fan mode (if available). Most 1U/2U cases will happily blow at full speed well over 90db.

You likely need to replace the flow-through server chassis system with an active "normal" cooler to achieve a bit of silence.

85W might be about right. My old server CPU is in the same ballpark and compiling kernels it reached about 90w in power usage. If you want to keep it running: idle is not very low power unless you have one of the "low power" L versions, keep that in mind.

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upvoteby tjoff6 hours ago|
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Get a 4U case, many options if you want to combine it with a NAS. Not hard to cool and keep somewhat quiet. If you can store it in a closet or something that helps too.

Well, you can use it for lots of other things as well.

Compared to the cloud you can probably save up to buy a new server every month. And don't underestimate the gains of having something to experiment on and play with.

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upvoteby naasking5 hours ago|
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These servers are loud if you're trying to fit them into a 1U or 2U, which requires high speed fans to generate the necessary static pressure to push air through the case. I run a similar setup in a 4U case with slow 120mm fans and it's fine.
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