I’ve been a Synology user for years. The RS2418 is a 12 bay unit and when I started with it it was pretty quiet. However as I’ve filled it up (now all 12 drives full) it’s running pretty warm (drives are 40-44 degrees) and the fans now run much higher speed and are audible from outside the closet in our home where I have it installed in a wall mounted rack. not as loud as the 1U 4 drive xeon Synology I have, but still audible.
Given the drives are already running warm I’m leery of trying to noctua the 80mm fans that are in there.
I’m wondering if anyone with the HL15 has any comparison to this unit in terms of sound levels?
I would imagine performance is much better but my needs are very light (some light torrenting, serving media to home for ROON and outside home for family plex, and occasional file serving for home use).
What is the ambient temperature in the closet? Is there cooling?
I replaced 2U 12 bay and 3U 16 bay Supermicro servers with HL15s because among other things the drives were running too hot without ramping up the 80mm fans. My impression is that the caddies really restrict airflow. The push/pull 120mm fans in the HL15 chassis and caddieless design keep my full set of 15 drives around 31°C, except perhaps during scrubs.
The answer for noise depends on whether you purchase the full build, or just the chassis and build your own. The Coolerguys fans with the stock chassis are 3-pin DC fans. The specs aren’t that bad for dB if they are wired to a motherboard with DC fan speed control. However, the motherboard for the HL15 full build only supports PWM fans, so for the full build the base option is that they are wired as 2 pin off the power supply and always run at full RPM. So the full build with stock fans is noisy.
If you get the full build and are concerned about noise, you need to choose the Noctua upgrade in the configurator, or do your own with some PWM fans. If you do your own build, you don’t necessarily need to swap the fans if your motherboard supports 3 pin DC fans. There are a few threads here about fans and fan upgrades.
Using a dB meter app on my phone, which isn’t calibrated, so maybe just compare orders-of-magnitude differences rather than absolutes (I think these numbers are 5dB too high);
the quieter parts of my home; about 32 dB
Outside the server closet with the (hollow core) door closed; about 44 dB
In the server closet with one custom build HL15 running, Coolerguys case fans at about 1800 RPM, RM750e PSU, and an AMD Wraith Prism CPU Cooler, about 4 feet from the rack; about 56 dB.
It’s hard to judge noise levels from Youtube videos, but if the record levels on this one are accurate, the HL15 with a fan speed control mod would seem quieter than the RS2418+ initial boot/no 10G:
Should have mentioned that. Yes the closet has exhaust ventilation I installed a cloud line fan exhausting through a 3d printed port under the door. It generally is about 77-79 degrees
Appreciate the info. Those drive temps are way way better than mine.
I find lack of intel quicksync an issue, but finding quicksync plus ECC ram has been a challenge for builds in the past.
Right now I’m using NUC for plex duty and synology is just a NAS (plus NVR recording/management) but if I went wht the HL15 I’d prefer to have it do everything. But adding in a video card is just more power and heat.
I just bought the Case+PSU and DIY’d the motherboard/CPU. I’ve got AMD Ryzen AM5 CPUs. The full build Xeon 3204 is ok for file serving, but yes it does not have Quicksync. I wanted better VM support. I could have chosen a CPU upgrade to the Xeon 4210, but the LGA3647 socket has been around since 2016 with few recent new CPU releases for it, so I felt like I would be buying into a dying socket that couldn’t match the price/performance and power/performance of more current chips.
If you’re mainly consuming media and aren’t storing irreplaceable personal data, I’m not sure I’d be overly concerned with ECC.
You can use the Intel ARK to find CPUs that support both ECC and Quicksync. Of course you would need to pair it with a motherboard that also supports ECC:
I have a GPU in one of my systems, but I use it for AI, not transcoding. Most of my devices seem to be able to play my media fine at native resolution over my network, so I haven’t found a need to be heavily reliant on Quicksync and transcoding…
Just going to throw this out there even though I do suggest the HL15, Arctic has some really nice 80mm fans that are 38 mm deep in two different top speeds. They work well on a Synology 2U NAS and much quieter as it doesn’t take a lot of rpm to move the same volume of air.
I have a RS-1221+ and have enough room. I believe your model has four of the hot swap style. These should fit in those brackets easily. I can’t remember what company of fans they use but they have always sound like Deltas which get extremely loud. Arctic makes some good stuff. Almost all of my 1U servers have their 40mms and my HL15 has all Arctic 120 Max fans.
Trying to delve into their fan curves etc to compare with what Synology ships OEM. I’m a bit afraid of 10K speeds and noise but that version vs the 7k definitely has more airflow.
Without getting into the weeds of editing Synology config files which I believe are overwritten on firmware updates I’m limited to fan speed curves that they have already set.
Have you used both of these models? Are there big differences in noise? again your time taken to answer these questions is greatly appreciated. There is no substitute for hearing from someone with personal experience!
EDIT: looking more it appears my fans per Synology website are:
System Fan 80 x 80 x 25 mm
So I don’t think the ones you referenced will work.
I have only used the 7K in that size. They do get loud at full tilt because of how much air they are pushing but I have mine set at low speed. At low speed they are as quiet as anything Noctua but with a ton more air. You are right about the fan curves on these machines. I wish they would eventually add custom ones. Anyway, the 10K pushes twice the air (25mmHg to 51mmHg) so I would assume your server might sound like an airport at full tilt.
