[deng]

OK, then you're in luck. I had a bunch of old 1U rack servers and even in the next room it was too annoying to run them (they had a bunch of 40mm fans which always ran at full speed, because in a server room, no one can hear you scream).

[jansommer]

Could it just be really bad cooling? Looking at 9800X3D, it seems like it's running in a similar range wrt TDP unless you really push the 9800X3D. I'm comparing with desktop cpu's because that's what my workload is. cpu governor is set to performance (no schedutil). No audible change in fan speed during heavy compilation or gaming (very silent humming), and i don't have any fans beside cheap intake, cpu and exhaust fans (1 each) + an excessive amount of dust.

[deng]

These servers had no fan control whatsoever, they always ran full blast. That's not untypical for rack servers, because as written: they are designed for server rooms, and you're supposed to wear ear protection there anyway... Yes, I could've modified them, but I ditched them because running them simply made no sense (especially the high idle power consumption was ridiculous).

[jabroni_salad]

Yeah, 1u is gonna do that. Get something that can accommodate a big tower air cooler such as the Hyper 212 and your airflow will be quieter than the disks.

I don't run it anymore but my old server was a dual xeon (with two of those coolers crammed in) and I rarely heard a peep out of it.

[irusensei]

Small fans need to spin faster so these can be very high pitch even if you stuff some Noctua 40mm fans into it.