Is your typical noise floor even under 20 dB? HDDs are also a lot louder than 5-10 dB, and manufacturers usually list dBA in their spec sheets, not dB.
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sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 month agoI’m thinking 25DB is the cap, ideally under 20DB.
I think HDDs are typically around 5-10DB, and they should spin down at night. Quieter is better, but I don’t need to go completely fanless. So basically, those tiny pizza box server fans are completely off the table, but larger, slower fans should be fine.
narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee 1 month ago
kitnaht@lemmy.world 1 month ago
A typical refrigerator is like 40dbA – 25dbA is ABSURDLY quiet. You’re not gonna hit that without a completely fanless system. If 25dbA is his hard cap, he can’t even be breathing in the same area as the computer, because that’s something like 28dbA…
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
I’m honestly not sure, I’m just pulling stuff from various online sources to get an estimate. This YouTube video measures noise from a single 7200 RPM WD Red drive, and I have 2x 5400 WD Red drives, so I’m guessing mine will be similar, if not a little quieter. I’d measure it myself, but it’s next to 2 other PCs.
Basically, I want it to work under my bed. It’s a large, thick bed (king size purple mattress), so I can stick it pretty far in, so I can have some flexibility on what “quiet” means. We also aren’t particularly light sleepers, so our threshold is probably a little higher than others.
That said, I’m using the stock fan for my Ryzen 1700 (Wraith Spire I think?), and that’s way too loud for a bedroom (40dba-ish?), and I can’t really hear my drives over the fan unless I get really close. The spec says something like 20-30dba for my drives, and I think that’s quiet enough for my room, especially if I can dampen vibration a bit. But since the drives will probably spin down, I’m looking for fan noise around that level or lower.
JASN_DE@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Um no. More like 20-25db at idle, up to 30 during heavy seek activity, depending on model.
I run 3x 5400rpm drives in my NAS, and the drives are definitely the loudest parts in the whole build, and are definitely noticeable in the office room.
aodhsishaj@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Can confirm I am running what I am often is told is overkill here.
7200rpm hitachi 12TB drives
Just measured at 19DB at a meter away running a zpool scrub.
So it definitely depends on which HDD you have.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Really? I currently sit like 3’ from my current PC NAS, and while I can hear it, the fan noise seems louder (stock AMD heatsink and fan). This YouTube looks at very similar drives to what I have (my drives are WD 8TB NAS Plus 5400RPM, video is 8TB NAS Pro 7200), and the measurement is something like 10-15DB per drive. Mine should be quieter than the video, so I think it’ll be fine.
I’ll probably need to replace my drives soon since I got them 5 years ago (though they were off 80% of the time), so I may consider SSDs if the pricing looks reasonable (I’m only using 2-4TB right now, but I expect that to double or triple in the next couple years).
Anyway, this is a somewhat temporary situation. Quiet gives me options. If it’s too loud, I can keep it on my desktop. I’m more looking for lower power and smaller form factor (current one is a massive ATX tower).
vividspecter@lemm.ee 1 month ago
It seems to be a relative measurement, and so the values look to be 10-15dB above ambient, not the absolute dB of the drives. You can see he subtracts the background dB from the spl meter early in the video.