Quoting Craig Sanders (cas@taz.net.au):
FYI, i saw this while reading the FAQ on http://quietpc.com.au/ - sound dampening server racks. probably horribly/scarily expensive. http://www.acoustiproducts.com/en/quiet_rack_cabinets.asp
Novel concept. The people I know who routinely work in colos seem to all have permanent hearing damage. (I took warning from that and always use ear protection in data centres.)
(alternatively, some of the fans in the servers **may** be replaceable with quiet fans - many available from Quiet PC)
One of my disappointments while working for (the late) VA Linux Systems, Inc. was discovering that _they too_ used terrible, horribly noisy, failure-prone case fans in order to save tiny amounts of money. The noise and tendency towards early fan death (which in turn can cause runaway heat buildup, and thus death of much more expensive things) owed primarily to cheap fans' reliance on sleeve bearings rather than good ball bearing sets. When I learned that, I immediately replaced the three 80mm case fans on my VA Linux Systems model 2230 2U rackmount unit at home with much better ones from Antec -- and it immediately became very significantly quieter and almost certainly ran cooler and lasted longer. It suddenly ran quietly enough that I'd probably have been fine with it running inside my house, though fortunately I had utility space for it (and for its successor). FWIW, the last of my stockpile of the circa-2001 Intel L440GX+ 'Lancewood' PIII-based server motherboards died in that chassis a couple of months ago. I've kept the dead unit's 2U chassis around, though, because I am scheming to bring it back to life with a modern ATX server motherboard, partly for sentiment's sake. But I still say, if you really want a quiet server, the only really effective way to do so is choose motherboard, SoC, chassis, and mass storage that has a low enough heat load that either passive cooling only or minimal fan ventilation suffices. And, for fan cooling, don't forget that larger fans tend to be much quieter than small ones (as they move more air at lower RPMs). Another antique I keep is a VA Research StartX MP (VA Research Corporation being VA Linux Systems's name until 2000). It has a PII-based (Intel N440BX 'Nightshade') motherboard and a 200mm case fan, which I long ago upgraded with a quality replacement. With the aftermarket fan, it's ultra-cool and almost completely silent, and some day I hope to make it a 'stealth' modern workstation with a 2010s motherboard, too. As the PSU fan's noise is also a significant factor (and the Dear Old Firm's parts selection there probably also sucked), I'll probably put an Antec or Cooler Master replacement PSU there.