Hello there!
First forum post is an off-the-wall one. I run a small public access TV station and we do not have money for a server room. We recently acquired a Telvue Princeton video playout server, pictured on the bottom of the stack in the attached image. It is critically important to our operations as a station going into the future and we have been beyond excited to have it.
We have two racks in the back of our office but no way to contain them: they are open air, not air conditioned, and eject all of their noise into the office. The Princeton is the first 'real' server we have in that rack...and it HOWLS. The stock fans are so loud and whiny that my boss, who's desk in the open office is closest to the rack, winced...she'd be fine with it, since it's going to be the most important piece of equipment installed in our rack, but it'd be wonderful if I could find a way to quiet it somehow.
It uses plastic brackets for its fans which appear to be SanAce 80 80mmx35mm fans. The brackets have a channel to route the PWM cable and slot in nicely together. It has five of these in the whole system, and what looks like an Intel stock cooler with a Foxconn sticker on it. The only other hardware is the RAID array in front, the RAID card, and two video I/O cards in back.
If I was to replace the 'case' fans with something like the Noctua NF-R8 redux PWM fans, with their significantly lower RPM and airflow, do you think that'd be enough airflow for the server to stay stable 24/7 while preserving our ears? Or should I hack it up and DIY a way to fit a few larger PC case fans in there to get the higher airflow needed and lower noise desired?
Thanks in advance for any help with this. It's an odd problem to have and if anyone has been in a similar situation, I'll be amazed and pleased.