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Absolute Silence - Server Build & Turemetal UP10 Case Review

XeCutor

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Have you tried giving the GPU to the VM as a PCI device? That's what I'm doing for a server running ESXI 6.0. Obviously the GTX 750 in it is not a workstation card and it's not bios modded. I run the server (an old HP ML350 G6) headless even though it's got an onboard gpu as well as this add-in card. In order to to be able to use it as a workstation too (experience isn't ideal because of latency and io performance but it's useable) I have the GPU and an USB3-card shared exclusively to this Windows 10 VM and I can hook up a monitor and USB devices too and use some of the servers plentiful spare capacity (12 physical cores and 48gb memory).
1604387908532.png
 
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digicidal

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That open bench tho!
:p LOL you noticed... Yeah, I ordered that as an impulse buy when ordering a passive PSU for an older Streacom case a year or so ago. I thought it might come in handy every once in awhile... but I've wound up using it almost constantly since then. It seems they're releasing a new version, but I can't pick out exactly what the difference is at a glance... maybe it's just the new color option?

Open Benchtable if anyone is interested... also sold as the Streacom BC1.

@XeCutor - I'll give it a try - that's what I was expecting to do but for whatever reason I wasn't able to get the VM to utilize it. It's also possible that I need to set the hypervisor.CPUID.v0 to false in the guest config as I saw a few posts indicating that. It's also entirely possible that I simply mis-clicked when setting it as passable on the host in the first place. As soon as I encountered a few posts indicating problems with GPUs which weren't Quadros I went back to actual work and kinda shelved the process for now. :facepalm: That's the problem with hobbies... they often get pushed aside for other things and forgotten.
 
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rxp

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Interesting case - wasn't aware anything like that existed.

It seems the older I get the more filters I have to clean. This has massively been exterbated by purchasing air purifiers. My server has a dust filter and sits at my parents house, it's a ThinkServer TS440 that I got for cheap. My dad is always breaking the house and rebuilding it to keep busy, thus it's a construction zone. Since COVID I've not been able to get over to clean the filters - but they got air filters so I'm hoping that'll take care of it.

Might be something to consider if you are finding pets/dust an issue - air filters. Then the air isn't dusty and you mainly only have one filter to replace/clean once in a while.
 
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digicidal

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Interesting case - wasn't aware anything like that existed.

It seems the older I get the more filters I have to clean. This has massively been exterbated by purchasing air purifiers. My server has a dust filter and sits at my parents house, it's a ThinkServer TS440 that I got for cheap. My dad is always breaking the house and rebuilding it to keep busy, thus it's a construction zone. Since COVID I've not been able to get over to clean the filters - but they got air filters so I'm hoping that'll take care of it.

Might be something to consider if you are finding pets/dust an issue - air filters. Then the air isn't dusty and you mainly only have one filter to replace/clean once in a while.
Yes, they do help and I've got a few of them - including one massive one. Unfortunately, they're also pretty loud when they're all running so we wind up turning them on only when we're sleeping or during wind storms. In my next house I'm definitely tearing out all carpets prior to moving in... no matter what you do with carpet, eventually it starts becoming almost as big of a contributor to the problem as the cat. ;)

She's (the cat) quite old - at least 17 but maybe older since she was a shelter rescue - so I just work around her irritating contributions to the environment. If I try to close anything off to keep her out of it... I hear about it two hours or so after I go to sleep. Luckily for her, she's adorable... so I'll just keep trying alternatives as long as she keeps breathing. We don't have children, so the college funds I don't have to worry about get spent on cars, computers, and cat trees. LOL!
 

XeCutor

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@XeCutor - I'll give it a try - that's what I was expecting to do but for whatever reason I wasn't able to get the VM to utilize it. It's also possible that I need to set the hypervisor.CPUID.v0 to false in the guest config as I saw a few posts indicating that. It's also entirely possible that I simply mis-clicked when setting it as passable on the host in the first place. As soon as I encountered a few posts indicating problems with GPUs which weren't Quadros I went back to actual work and kinda shelved the process for now. :facepalm: That's the problem with hobbies... they often get pushed aside for other things and forgotten.

I set this up years ago so I probably forgot about that setting. I googled it and it and cross checked my settings and seems I have that advanced setting active on this particular VM. Hopefully the same thing works for you. Should be easy enough to try and I don't think ESXI minds loosing the only video card, I have a foggy memory of successfully doing the same thing on a different non-server machine where there was just one add-in GPU.
 

rxp

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Yes, they do help and I've got a few of them - including one massive one. Unfortunately, they're also pretty loud when they're all running so we wind up turning them on only when we're sleeping or during wind storms. In my next house I'm definitely tearing out all carpets prior to moving in... no matter what you do with carpet, eventually it starts becoming almost as big of a contributor to the problem as the cat. ;)

She's (the cat) quite old - at least 17 but maybe older since she was a shelter rescue - so I just work around her irritating contributions to the environment. If I try to close anything off to keep her out of it... I hear about it two hours or so after I go to sleep. Luckily for her, she's adorable... so I'll just keep trying alternatives as long as she keeps breathing. We don't have children, so the college funds I don't have to worry about get spent on cars, computers, and cat trees. LOL!

Oh of course - the cat comes first! I grew up with 2 dogs - loved them. I had horrible allergies as a kid - turns out I'm allergic to dogs and never knew until a few years ago! But I'd not give up my dogs for anything!

I guess it depends on where you live - we have traffic noises so the fan isn't a big deal - I got the Philips ones which are "smart" so they kick in high fan mode as needed, otherwise it's whisper quiet (30ish db, I measured).
 

bigjacko

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Some experience from me:
1 There are cases that advertise cool and others advertise quiet, those two have inverse relationship, so can't have quiet plus cool. But cases advertise quietness sometimes have features for it to be quiet, like air flow design or sound damping foam. When minimum fan blowing, they should be a bit quieter than other cases.
2 Although all cases have different cooling and loudness, we can normalize loudness and rank how cool the cases are. One good source of those measurements about coolness, loudness and normalized loudness tests is Gamer's Nexus.
3 Direct CPU and GPU air flow can cool them the best, thus less work for fan. It is easy to achieve for CPU but hard for GPU, not all case got fan mount under GPU.
4 Big wattage power supply sometimes (or always?) don't spin when PC is idling and using low watt, if that is what you want be sure to find that feature.
 

Willem

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Of course a silent PC is pointless if there is too much ambient noise. Where we live, summers are - as yet - not warm enough to require airconditioning, and we have near silent hot water (floor) heating. Our neighbourhood is fairly quiet, and has become rather quieter because the city busses are now electrical. Even so, I am glad we specified muffeld ventilation openings, and sound deadening double glazing with a thicker outer pane and a somewhat wider cavity between the two panes. When we shall have to replace them a decade or so from now, we will certainly insist on a higher specification again (glazing technology is making big strides in thermal and sound isolation). For now, the PC noise in my study is my biggest nuisance, hence my interest.
 

shal

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Hi,

Perhaps the good post to present my own system.

This is a fanless computer based system.

This set-up has 10 years approximately of old . So I have a good experience on this kind of system .

Set-up:
Core i5
With a big ("very big"?) heatsinks
The motherboards is inside a wood furnitued (I guess that it is the right word in english)
A SSD hard drive + a classic hard drive (4To)
A fanless power supply

This is my single computer in the house: for listen music but also as computer for "android" compilation (a lot of cpu/memory computation).

This is a Linux computer.

On top of the image : my power amplifier, and at the right my Sound devices mixpre 10 II

For me you have to choose :
- Fanless => big and open computer
- little => with fan






IMG_20201103_204240.jpg
 

madbrayniak

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I see a Caselabs S3? Nice build, I’m running UnRaid on my server. I haven’t tried anything for just music to be honest. Pandora for all my digital music and vinyl when I want to sit and listen.
 

Sal1950

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The motherboards is inside a wood furnitued (I guess that it is the right word in english)
Close enough. I love the piece of wood furniture you used for the case, very handsome. ;)
 
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digicidal

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I see a Caselabs S3? Nice build, I’m running UnRaid on my server. I haven’t tried anything for just music to be honest. Pandora for all my digital music and vinyl when I want to sit and listen.
Yep. That was what the previous server was built into... hence the ugly dust filter taped to the front of it. ;)
I love(d) Caselabs... have an M8 w/pedestal (the workstation below the test bench), the S3 is sitting on one of my 4 SM8's (yes, I have a problem). I got tired of throwing $100 cases in the garbage so often, but now I'm left with having to fabricate any upgrades I need. Either that or paying a premium for used/surplus models for extra parts (hence the 4 SM8's).

There are some very nice cases being produced now, but they're still only built to last a few years at most IMO... I'm confident that my CL cases will still be nearly perfect for as long as the ATX form factor exists.

I definitely want to try out unraid (or at least KVM/QEMU *nix solutions) as an alternative to vmware. Only problem is, if I really fall in love with it - then I'll want to migrate my work infrastructure to it as well :rolleyes:
 

ad_fletch

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Nice! Was there an original processing power target/goal for the fanless build? I am running a fanless setup with AMD 3600 in a Streacom FC8 which had to be heavily underclocked in multicore loads to avoid throttling, (3.4ghz~ all core) surprisingly it handles single core loads at max boost just fine! I considered passively cooling the GPU (a RTX 2060) as well but the amount of heatsink and costs made it a very easy decision to not to.

So pleased to find this thread on the home page. I used to be a “few quiet fans” person, but fanless is sooo luxurious.

Your post in particular is interesting to me, because I just completed my own Streacom FC8a build, but my version only fits a single slot low profile GPU, so Ryzen 3600 + RTX2060 wasn’t an option. I have a passive GT1030 which nearly fits, but the heatsink is a bit too tall. My next preference was a Ryzen 4650G, but couldn’t find one to buy here in Australia.

Anyway, after examining some thermal tests, I eventually opted for an i5-10500 alone, and I’m quite happy with the way it worked out. It’s for work, so most of the time I don’t miss a dedicated GPU. The i5 is quite a cool runner as it happens, so i can get 4.2GHz on all cores and not exceed 80 degrees, which makes me happy - esp considering the single heatsink design.

It’s coming up to Summer here now and my attic/home office sometimes reaches 35 degrees C, but the PC seems happy. The motherboard and SSD temps have crept over 50, but like the OP I’m not going to worry too much unless they get into the 70s.

To anyone like me who is annoyed by even a single fan (I have a HDPlex picopsu with big HP external power brick by the way), I say go fanless. You’ll never want to go back! Oh and Streacom FC8a is a fraction of the Turemetal’s price and size for those who don’t need the GPU power.

PS how terrible is motherboard audio still? Even without fans I hear a lot of noise. I bought a Meizu Hifi Pro (recommended) and an LG HiFi Plus (not recommended due to driver issues) to feed my amps.

DSC_0770.png

Edit: here it is with Micca MB42x (rebranded), Rega Brio and JDS Atom for scale.
 
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kn0ppers

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I see you have a Caselabs Mercury S3. I also own one in gunmetal grey, love that case.

Edit: I even have the same singularity computers reservoir. And 280mm HWLabs Nemesis GTS/GTX radiators ;)
 

Music1969

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Fractal Design Define cases, good big fans (Nocua

I have an i9-9900K in Fractal Design Defines case + biggest Noctua fan.

So quiet, even running very CPU intensive HQPlayer DSP, pushing 2 cores to their limit.
 

q3cpma

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I have an i9-9900K in Fractal Design Defines case + biggest Noctua fan.

So quiet, even running very CPU intensive HQPlayer DSP, pushing 2 cores to their limit.
Really like Noctua case fans, and for all purposes, their A12x25 is the state of the art for 120 mm fans, but for heatsinks, I'll always be a Thermalright (or Scythe) user. Their Grand Macho and Silver Arrow are especially beastly.
 

NTomokawa

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I had 7 Noctua fans in my previous tower PC, three of them 140mm in calibre. I still have those fans somewhere. Bloody impressive stuff.

Also, no more Akiyama Yukari?
 

q3cpma

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I had 7 Noctua fans in my previous tower PC, three of them 140mm in calibre. I still have those fans somewhere. Bloody impressive stuff.

Also, no more Akiyama Yukari?
It felt a bit misleading, as I don't like GuP that much. Oldies like Slayers, FMP, Lucky Star, City Hunter, Outlaw Star, Di Gi Charat, etc... and older OAVs are my real drug.
 

sharpty

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It’s coming up to Summer here now and my attic/home office sometimes reaches 35 degrees C, but the PC seems happy. The motherboard and SSD temps have crept over 50, but like the OP I’m not going to worry too much unless they get into the 70s.

Nice setup! One thing to know about NAND flash is that it actually wears less at medium-high temps. Above 60c you will lower the data retention life, but If I recall correctly, 50c is about optimal for read and write endurance, but anything above 30c is good. Below that, you wear the drive more quickly, but retain data longer (not sure if this even matters). Heat spreaders are good for NVME drives since it will evenly warm the flash with the heat from the controller, but if you are going to use a heatsink on an NVME drive, in most cases (probably not yours) it's better to only apply the thermal pad between the controller and heatsink (usually if you use a full length pad, it will only touch the flash because it's taller). Or just don't use a heatsink, but then most drives will throttle under sustained heavy read/write. It may be possible to overheat the flash if you cool only the controller, but I haven't heard of this happening.
Thanks everyone for coming to my presentation ;)
 

ad_fletch

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Nice setup! One thing to know about NAND flash is that it actually wears less at medium-high temps.....
Thanks everyone for coming to my presentation ;)

Interesting thanks. My Asrock motherboard has a heatsink for the 2 M.2 slots, but due to the ITX smallness, it’s shared with the H470 chipset. I guess the chipset and drive are keeping each other comfortably warm ;)
 
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