I've recently aquired a Dell Poweredge 1850 (1U rackmount server). Spec wise, it's great for what I need it for (running VMWare with a few VMs, pfSense firewall etc). The problem is it's not going to sit in a server room / data centre and the fans in it are massively noisy!
I can handle a bit of noise, but this thing is crazy noisy. Is there any way of quietening the thing down? I'm going to update the BIOS later, and I've seen some people talking about replacing the fans. Does anyone have any experience of this? I know Dell use a proprietory connector on their fans, so a little re-wiring may be required.
Any help would be appreciated. I know I'm not going to make it whisper quiet, but shaving a few dB from it would be great!
Thanks
Chris
EDIT: It's worth noting that this is an old (and FREE) server, with no support. It's not running anything of any importance, and I'm using it to play with, but would be nice to make it quieter. I'm not worried about loss of support / drop in performance (within reason) / breakage in 6 months etc. I'm also not worried about whether this should be in a data center or not. I see plenty of rack mounted servers sitting in offices. It works great for what I need it for other than the noise levels.