Hi, wondering if we can know what would be the included fans in the unit. The goal is to have a quiet server, since it’s in the house 
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Hi @pducharme We’re going to be including the COOLERGUYS 120X120X25MM 3 PIN FAN MEDIUM. Quantity: 6.
These fans will have a noise level of 32.5 dBA.
Hope this helps.
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Hi Ashley, thanks! Yes, that helps. so it’s 3 fan in front and 3 other behind the disks? the air flow of air is what? is the hot air going out the front or the back? Thanks!
Hot air goes out the back, with three intake fans in front, 3 behind the drives, and then I’d presume there is a CPU cooler as well? Or just a good sized heat sink. There’s also probably a 120mm fan on the PSU, but those are generally quiet (thinking of Corsair).
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In your opinion, is this quiet enough for a house?
I haven’t had a chance to test a running system (especially not in a quiet environment… the lab at 45Drives is a bit noisy with all the Storinators they have running ). I know the noise target was something like 35 dB, and if they can hit that (really anything under 40 dB), it would probably be fine to be in the same room as me. That’s about the level of noise at idle I get out of my PC build, which is quiet enough for my liking.
With larger fans, as long as you don’t clog up the thing with dust, it should be pretty quiet and the noise you do hear shouldn’t be too unpleasant.
Again, no first-hand experience yet!
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That’s good. It will probably be quieter than my modified Supermicro CSE-836 (3U) 16 bays I switch all fans to noctua + added front fan shroud (3d printed) for 3 x 120mm fans. I suppose the 6 fans in the HL15 are not driven by a sensor PWM that adjust depending on the temp? that would be really cool.
It sounds like they’re using 3-wire fans, which don’t have PWM control, so they’d just run always at their rated speed and noise level.
I’m guessing if you wanted, you could put in Noctua fans and get them PWM controlled in two sets, though you’d have to tune them a bit since you don’t want to let your HDDs get too hot, and AFAICT there’s no temperature sensor in that area of the case.
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I’ve bought a few of the Q30’s and AV15’s. The Q30’s came with Noctua’s installed and were pretty quiet. They were no louder than any other desktop in the office. With these coolerguys fans, things should be fine, worse case you can always swap out like you did with the super micro.
That said, one of the best investments I’ve made is an Xrack Half rack on wheels. I have three Storinators in there with two batteries and the associated 100gb switch. They’re awesome! Though I get they’re out of the reach of most homelabs due to pricing.
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Shouldn’t be miserable to get a sensor or two in there. Or use the HDD drive temps to run your fan curve. Which presents the ability to really lower the fans if you aren’t populating the whole backplane or have some drives spun down!
The newer Corsair Link fans (QXl120/40) have a temp sensor in each fan! Now, they are at a bit of a premium and seem reliant on Corsair’s iCue software. But, it may be something that catches on in the market.
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I think I want to put some Noctua fans in mine. Anyone have any good ideas as to what fans would be a good fit? I don’t care about how loud they are. some iPPC industrials would be sick!
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why put quieter fans in there? i demand my servers to sound like a jet taking off
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I have been working on a fan replacement/upgrade breakdown list on the forum.
Are the fans variable speed? e.g. they spin faster when the heat on the CPU/HDD increases? Or can you set a low, medium, high?
Lurking here… worried about noise level too…
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They’re 3-pin fans, so they’re not PWM. I don’t believe the system can control them dynamically. (Someone else please verify this.)
You still might be able to set a constant speed in the BIOS/IPMI
If you are going with the full system build or have an X11SPH series motherboard, here is the info from the manual:
Fan Headers
There are eight 4-pin fan headers (FAN1~FAN5, FANA~FANC) on the motherboard. All
these 4-pin fan headers are backwards compatible with the traditional 3-pin fans. However,
fan speed control is available for 4-pin fans only by Thermal Management via the IPMI 2.0
interface.
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