I bought an AcoustiCase quiet PC case and mounted the 1.8 GHz Athlon in it, along with quiet fans, sound-deadening drive carriers and a quiet CPU cooler. The result is a massive improvement and is close to inaudible with the door shut on the under-stairs cupboard, even though it has 10k SCSI drives inside (which are notoriously noisy).
Now we have moved and it's in the living room, the noise is a bit distracting (though that's mostly the DDS autoloader), so I'll be building a server cupboard somewhere soon.
This computer is Eddie, the mail server. Slartibartfast, the web server, is currently offsite but will, I guess, eventually come back, at which point I'll combine the two roles. I'll certainly be getting some quieter disks, especially for the kids' computers. |