I’m currently facing a dilemma. Right now, I have a synology NAS that I use to host my homelab containers (*arr, pi-hole, vaultwarden, Plex, etc).
I am planning to offload as much of that as possible to a dedicated machine, which hopefully will allow me to continue self-hosting even more demanding services (Immich, etc).
I was lucky enough to get a proper server - Supermicro, for free, with 64GB Ram DDR4 and 1TB. However, I plugged it in and that thing is NOISY.
My rack will be in the home office, where I will spend at least 8 hours a day, so I can’t afford that level of noise.
What should I do? Should I try to sell the supermicro and buy something else with that money? Should I keep the RAM and SSD (and CPUs?) and build something else with them? Are there any quiet servers I could look into (I am guessing better performance but more expensive), or Should I go the MiniPC route instead (cheaper and smaller, but more limited specs)?
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I switched to a M4 Mac Mini as my home server and it is amazing. Virtually silent, incredibly powerful, yet insanely power efficient.
If it’s a 1U they can sound like a jet engine. The Noctua 40MM fans can be swapped in and cut the noise a good bit.
You can also build a shroud to place over the case, the idea is to allow the air to flow but use something like deep pile carpet to line the inside and absorb the sound created.
It will never be silent but you can get the sound to the point where it won’t rot your brain.
I had to get a NAS with moderate horsepower (a mobile i5 chipset). It’s not worth on power consumption or noise. Usually there’s not a lot you can do about noise. But free is free.
Just control the fans. Either through the IPMI or associated software. Plenty of directions and tools for this available via your favorite search engine.
Just pay attention to temperatures. Rack hardware usually expects constant airflow.
What is the form factor? See if you can just get a new case for it. You can always under clock a system to make it use less power, workstation cases are quieter than servers.
Noise is almost always the fans. Servers are supposed to take a little space as possible and depend on super high airflow from a cold room.
With the cost of components you are going to have a hard time selling a system to buy a different one. 64gb of ram is pretty sweet for a home server. You can do all sorts of silly stuff and still have a responsive system.
Ah the age old dilemma. This is why my old server never got used. It was loudddddd.
It is completely up to your local market and needs, ie for how much you can sell it, what you can buy etc…
The only tips I can give you:
- Do you REALLY need all of the compute power? Most people don’t and you would wast a ton on electricity. This point on it’s own is enough to push most to a mini pc. (Immich can run on basically any mini pc)
- is there absolutely no other place for the server where the noise wouldn’t be an issue?
- look into sound proofing, you could house it in a box lined with acoustic foam with a the airway taking multiple 90° turns to keep airflow while reducing noise.
P.S:
I personally went on an in-between, I have a large tower pc, basically a server but with hardware meant for mostly silent work, so it rarely get’s noisier than background.
Same, once I got PWM set up right on my fans, my desktop former gaming PC server has been 90% silent. Even when under load, it only kicks up a notch or two. I’m under the roof, so my summer temps will be the real test.
I ended up at the same. Desktop PC with a lotta hard drives in it and big fans that don’t have to spin fast and make a lot of noise.
Bonus points that it’s consumer desktop hardware and not server grade shit so if something needs replacing there’s usually a cheap replacement available.
Desktop PC with a lotta hard drives in it and big fans that don’t have to spin fast and make a lot of noise.
I use a USB DAS JBOD enclosure with fans, which is also an option if you have a mini-PC and just want a bunch of drive space.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCDDGHMJ
This particular enclosure has physical buttons that lock in place so that the power state is restored on power loss, something that (to my surprise) a number of USB DAS enclosures apparently don’t do.
- Is it not possible to put it in another room?
- Those servers are designed to go into a dedicated server room without regard to noise. Could you relocate it to a new enclosure?
As others have said, unless you’re going to be using those CPUs a lot, you probably don’t need the capability.
I run an old (2019) Dell OptiPlex SFF desktop as my server (I also have an ancient NAS). It runs ESXi just fine, with 2 Linux VM’s and 4 Windows VM’s, with 48GB of RAM.
At idle it consumes just under 20 watts. Peak is 80 watts (limited by the power supply).
Those VM’s all run fine - one is for file services and Jellyfin, one is for dedicated DVD ripping and video conversion.
Even when that VM is converting videos, everything else is responsive. Never get a lag on Jellyfin.
Now imagine how much more performance your server is capable of. Many simultaneous VM’s.
Oh, and it’s a really quiet machine.
I’d sooner have this or multiple mini pc’s than any kind of commercial server hardware. Completely different design approaches - servers are designed for running 24/7 with maximum cooling capability along with max performance. Power and noise aren’t really a consideration.
Servers are terrible for homelab use. They’re unwieldy, consume way too much power and as you’ve found they’re very noisy. My vote goes to selling the thing and getting a mini PC, an (old) laptop or building something quiet and frugal yourself. In the last case you might be able to reuse some parts you already have. But if cost is important almost nothing beats second hand mini PC’s in value for money.
You honestly could get a Lenovo tiny PC with 2 bay so-dimm RAM. I’ve got a i5-10500T and 32GB DDR 4 RAM with 2TB NVMe and 2x 2TB SSDs for various stuff. You can loaf A LOT on those since it’s not Windows. Maybe lol into Yunohost for apps, or ZimaOS.
You can buy a rack that’s sound insulated and uses a really large exhaust fan. It’s still going to be loud unless you keep the room cool.
Best bet is to flip it. The components might be ok to reuse, the mainboard probably is not atx.
But you can probably find a compatible mainboard for cheap.
I faced pretty much the exact same choice, except I was given four of them, each with 8 GB of RAM.
Unfortunately they were two different hardware revisions, so the most I could achieve was two servers with 16 GB each.
They sound like a Jet taking off when powered up and the BIOS doesn’t support lower fan speeds.
Instead after months of deliberation I decided to go with a SFF Lenovo, 32 GB, 2 x 1 TB NVME, Ryzen 7, and bought this:
It’s whisper quiet and running Proxmox.
To get VM video passthrough to work I installed an extra video card, though, you could install a desktop on the host OS instead if you prefer.
The video card I used to fit inside is this:
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters ESXi VMWare virtual machine hypervisor NAS Network-Attached Storage NVMe Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage
[Thread #281 for this comm, first seen 9th May 2026, 22:10] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
The decision is yours to make. You didn’t say if power consumption is important - if you keep the server on 24/7 it could be relevant. It’s hard to say if you can modify the server, to make it quieter. Or if you can salvage parts. Or if you need all the CPU performance of a server CPU.
If you want to keep it or salvage parts: In my experience the fans are the noisy part of a server. I don’t know the form factor of the main board or the case. I really can’t say which parts you can keep and which need replacing.
120mm fans with pwm are better than 40mm fans at full speed. Bigger heat sinks, too.
If not: You can always try to sell the server and get a low power single board computer with enough (32GB+) RAM instead (hardkernel h4 or a cheap chinese alternative). IMO a celeron N is fast enough to run multiple VMs (or better: containers). The limiting parts are RAM and storage. Things like transcoding videos will take more time than on a server CPU… But immich and an *arr stack will work flawlessly for a one or two user instance.
