Cooling rack NAS in a dusty, hot environment

[ffiren]

Evening all,

 

I have managed to acquire a Synology RS18017XS+ with 12*4TB spindles.

 

It outputs 50dB which has resulted in the wife saying 'get that f*cking thing out of my house'.

I have three options:

1. Change my wife
2. find some way to quieten the beast
3. relocate it

 

I'm fairly high maintenance and honestly believe I will die if left alone. 1. has to be my last option - though wife swap will be entertained on a no takesie-backsie basis.

 

I live in Western Australia. It gets hot. I mean really hot. Relocating outside my air-conditioned home means a) roof space - hotter than an oven and dusty as hell, b) pool shed - at complete mercy of the elements +/- inflatable toys, c) garage - less dusty, less hot, though still potentially 50'c in summer. 

 

I assume acoustic insulation is proportional to thermal insulation so I am trying to balance internal noise reduction against external heat reduction. I am not adverse to putting a hole in the external wall of the linen cupboard, providing of course she isn't looking.... 

 

What is my best option. Try and make it quieter and take advantage of my air-con, or build a enclosure in the garage and try to make it cool. If so, what would you recommend?

 

Portable air-con is cheap but most units start at 3.5kW which will make a significant contribution to our electricity bill. There must be a better way.

 

p.s. don't mention the prospect of the wife swap to my... er.. wife. I may be high maintenance, but she wears the trousers..

 

P.

[leadeater]

30 minutes ago, ffiren said:

Change my wife

This is always the best option .

 

30 minutes ago, ffiren said:

What is my best option. Try and make is quieter and take advantage of my air-con, or build a enclosure in the garage. If so, how?

Being Aus safest long term option is to make it quieter. Depending on fan size you can replace with with better ones like from Noctua or slow them down with a resistor.

 

http://pcbheaven.com/circuitpages/A_Simple_Way_To_Reduce_A_DC_Fan_Speed/

 

Also you can cut the noise down more by building a thick walled wooden box with inlets and outlets pointing at the floor and use thin rags as inlet filters.

 

 

 

 

[ffiren]

I did see a YouTube video of someone who had done something similar. If this is a viable option for my garage then I can run the fans at full speed. The Synology has three modular 80mm fans but most of the whine is coming from the fans inside the modular power supplies (2*500w). Synology have confirmed that if I open the modular PSUs then the warranty is void on the whole unit.... I'm currently operating on what Synology calls 'quiet mode'. That's 45dB. Crank it up to 'cool' and it sounds like an aircraft carrier. 

I have three other synology units running fans with inline resistors which keeps it quiet but I get constant alerts from the management software. 

 

I've attached my current NAS. Synology DS1512+ with two DX513s giving me 15x3TB in RAID 6. The RS18017xs+ has 2*4TB in RAID10 and 8*4TB in RAID6. It gets pretty hot in there....

 

I've only just relocated. Most of my hardware is still in boxes. Apologies for the cable management - I've literally just dumped it in for now.

[Spotty]

Hard to fully understand the situation without some pics. Post some pics of your wife so we know what sort of deal we're looking at.

Swapping out the fans inside the unit would be the first step.
Don't put it in the roof. That's like leaving your dog locked in a car on a hot day.

You may see some slight noise reduction by placing a thick blanket over the top and side of the unit, leaving the front and rear intake/exhaust channels clear.

As for the linen closet idea, don't just smash a hole in the wall to the outside. Better way of doing it would probably be to get some ducting and a duct fan to duct the exhaust air out to the ceiling cavity or up and out to a vent under the overhang. Just make sure the vent to the outside is properly filtered otherwise you may get insects following the warm air who may end up nesting in your gear.

[ffiren]

 

I can duct it to the roof space fairly easily. The YouTube video I liked to showed this was effective, but I honestly don't believe that I will be able to make it much less audible with simple cladding. 50dB is quite loud. I can 'shield' the body and exhaust, but I wonder how much difference it would make with having an open input. If I can confidently make it quiet then venting the hot air is plausible. If I can't make it 'acceptably quiet' then it, and indeed I, will be relegated to the garage. I don't like spiders.

[ffiren]

Here are the current temps at 1930 ~23'C. I understand that Synology specs the max temp at 35'C

[Spotty]

23 minutes ago, ffiren said:

but I honestly don't believe that I will be able to make it much less audible with simple cladding. 50dB is quite loud.

Replace the fans in it. Whatever option you take, replacing the fans should be step 1. As previously mentioned by Leadeater you should be able to get some suitable Noctua fans that will considerably reduce the noise of the system. Depending what you need it should set you back about AUD $25-$40 per fan which is significantly cheaper than a divorce.

Edited May 17, 2018 by Spotty
Clarified prices were AUD

[ffiren]

4 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Replace the fans in it. Whatever option you take, replacing the fans should be step 1. As previously mentioned by Leadeater you should be able to get some suitable Noctua fans that will considerably reduce the noise of the system. Depending what you need it should set you back about AUD $25-$40 per fan which is significantly cheaper than a divorce.

More than happy to replace the three 80mms - I have under-volted Noctua's in my other NAS. The issue I have is the fans in the modular PSU. They're responsible for most of the whine and there is no way to discretely open them and as the rack station costs ~$8K w/o drives, thats a big gamble...

[Spotty]

1 minute ago, ffiren said:

The issue I have is the fans in the modular PSU. They're responsible for most of the whine and there is no way to discretely open them and as the rack station costs ~$8K w/o drives, thats a big gamble...

I see. I wouldn't recommend opening the PSUs. Looks like you're looking at the other options then.
I'd go linen closet with ventilation duct and some noise insulation on the walls around it or garage (if water tight and relatively clean).
 

 

[Jarsky]

I used to live in West Sydney so I know exactly what you meany by "it gets hot" and I know thats nothing compared to parts of WA 

 

Anyway as above, new fans can make a huge difference to older gear. I got a new Cisco switch which was absolutely buzzing from the noise the fans made. The network is on the other side of the house and I could hear them whiring at night. I got some fresh replacements and its practically silent now. It's a pretty standard line that if you open the PSU's they are null and void. Have you checked to see if there's any sort of warrant seal sticker? If not maybe open it anyway and check what brand fans they are. Many 1U PSU's and network gear use SUNON 40mm fans, so theyre super easy to get hold of on eBay if thats the case and....they even have a silent range of fans (which is what I got for my switch). 

 

The best thing you can do with Storage is put them in as ventilated an area as you can, to stop those fans from ramping up. 

Does the place have a garage? Have you considered patching through to there? 

[AbsoluteFool]

23 hours ago, ffiren said:

Evening all,

 

I have managed to acquire a Synology RS18017XS+ with 12*4TB spindles.

 

It outputs 50dB which has resulted in the wife saying 'get that f*cking thing out of my house'.

I have three options:

1. Change my wife
2. find some way to quieten the beast
3. relocate it

 

I'm fairly high maintenance and honestly believe I will die if left alone. 1. has to be my last option - though wife swap will be entertained on a no takesie-backsie basis.

 

I live in Western Australia. It gets hot. I mean really hot. Relocating outside my air-conditioned home means a) roof space - hotter than an oven and dusty as hell, b) pool shed - at complete mercy of the elements +/- inflatable toys, c) garage - less dusty, less hot, though still potentially 50'c in summer. 

 

I assume acoustic insulation is proportional to thermal insulation so I am trying to balance internal noise reduction against external heat reduction. I am not adverse to putting a hole in the external wall of the linen cupboard, providing of course she isn't looking.... 

 

What is my best option. Try and make it quieter and take advantage of my air-con, or build a enclosure in the garage and try to make it cool. If so, what would you recommend?

 

Portable air-con is cheap but most units start at 3.5kW which will make a significant contribution to our electricity bill. There must be a better way.

 

p.s. don't mention the prospect of the wife swap to my... er.. wife. I may be high maintenance, but she wears the trousers..

 

P.

Seems to me you got a dilema going on. Let's look at this from another perspective....

The NAS needs cooling, internet and power. Power puts out heat so a box would have to be ventilated. However changing wife is quite hard. (Just look at dating sites.)

So well there is an option for you. You could ask your wife if you can insulate the room so the noice get better. Or you can switch location to a shed. In which case i would recomend adding some steel plates along the openings to stop dust flow. and probably try to wank in a type of cooling from the house ventilation.

 

Or just do it the simple way.. Switch out to a system that is more quiet.