Quieter fans for 1U Dell PowerEdge server?

[motorola_otaku]

I've got a feeling the answer to this is going to be "the fan size is Dell-proprietary and no one makes them" but I thought I'd go ahead and try.

Dell PowerEdge 1750, dual power supplies (only one will be in use), dual Xeon processors installed.

It has one fan apiece pulling air through the power supplies and five blowing on the two processor heat sinks. It also sounds like a jet engine while in operation. This is going to be a hobby box that will be in operation roughly 5 feet from where I sleep at night and I'd like to quiet it down by replacing the dual-motor fans with single-motor fans in the same form factor. I don't have the exact dimensions handy atm, but they are rectangular in HxW and thicker than anything I've seen on the shelf at the local computer stores. If anyone can suggest a manufacturer or part number I'm all ears.

Option 2 would be to punch holes in the lid and slap on regular ultra-quiet 90mm fans but I'm trying to avoid that as I don't have ready access to the necessary tools.

TIA

[bezking]

I would advise that you not mess with the cooling system... I believe that the fans are specific to dell, but I can't verify ATM.

Whatever you do, please be careful! I am familiar with a setup with small number (<10) of PowerEdge 1 and 2U machines in a nicely-sized room, they throw so much heat there is a ~$25K AC unit that was specially installed just to maintain room temperature and keep it from getting to 100 degrees. (In fact it has, twice, and only after a few hours, when the AC failed.) If you don't replace what you remove with an equivalent, you will end up with a bowl of melted silicon.

Also see this: http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/915265.aspx

[motorola_otaku]

Also see this: http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/915265.aspx

Well, after reading that I think I know now why they're so cheap and plentiful on the used market.

Thanks for pointing me in the direction of a BIOS update.. that never even crossed my mind. And again, this is a cheap hobby box so melted silicon will be no huge loss.

[tvsjr]

Your solution is buy a different machine. I've got about 30 Dell Poweredges in service right now, all rack mount. They sound like jet engines. However, the cooling system is all integrated so to speak... for instance, the Perc RAID controller has inadequate cooling by itself (don't run one in a non-Poweredge without adding additional cooling to the card) - it relies on the fans in the machine for most of the heat removal.

If you have dual power supplies installed, you'll get a constant warning if both don't have power. When they are both connected, they load-balance.

Unless you're way less picky than me, you'll never be happy with that machine so close to your bed. Either find a data center colo to stick it in and play remotely, or go to a different box.

My personal solution, which I'm currently working on, is an Optiplex 960 with a Perc controller in it, Core 2 Quad @ 3.16GHz, 8GB RAM, 4 500GB SATA drives in RAID 5 with a 160GB drive for swap files (no redundancy). It will run ESXi 4, and I'm going to move all of my current boxes to VMs running on it (about 8 right now). I may add a second one at some point, depending on the load averages I see.