Ubiquiti Edge Switch - Noise Level Question

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Askeptic

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Jul 31, 2011
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To those who have an UBNT Edge Switch (24 port - 250w in particular)

How do you find the noise levels with the latest firmware? I am wanting to purchase this unit and stick it in a room with in a house, not a data-center. Am I going to hear these fans from a neighboring room?

Thanks.
 
Interesting you should ask this, just got mine yesterday.

powered up with original firmware it was OK, but after it finished booting it stepped up a notch or two and was terrible.

Updated the firmware and now it starts quiet, goes berserk for a fraction of a second and then settles to a slightly more acceptable level.

From another room? possibly, mine is in the attic space and from the landing below, I can hear it, but only because I know it's there, no-one else has mentioned it.

I am planning to swap the fans out (all 4 of them) for some quieter ones, I only have 6x POE devices and 5 of those are 24v so it`s unlikely to be overloaded any time soon.

Nice switch though, other than the noise.
 
BigBadAl said:
Interesting you should ask this, just got mine yesterday.

powered up with original firmware it was OK, but after it finished booting it stepped up a notch or two and was terrible.

Updated the firmware and now it starts quiet, goes berserk for a fraction of a second and then settles to a slightly more acceptable level.

From another room? possibly, mine is in the attic space and from the landing below, I can hear it, but only because I know it's there, no-one else has mentioned it.

I am planning to swap the fans out (all 4 of them) for some quieter ones, I only have 6x POE devices and 5 of those are 24v so it`s unlikely to be overloaded any time soon.

Nice switch though, other than the noise.
Click to expand...

Wow, thanks for the detailed response! Glad you like the switch, looking forward to getting mine. Good to know the sound is acceptable after the FW update, and I like your idea of swapping fans out for quieter ones.

Thanks again for sharing your experience. It helped a lot.
 
Just a little update to this...

The fans in the switch as is are: Foxconn PIA040H12M

Can't seem to find much detailed info on them online other than this:

http://www.szhotway.com/a/dianzixilie/20150312/91.html

It seems that they are rated at 14.44 CFM, they certainly do seem to push some air going by the hand-in-front-of-the-fan test.

Now I got hold of some Noctua NF-A4x10 FLX which seemingly only move 4.8CFM as shown here:

http://www.quietpc.com/nf-a4x10

Which is nowhere near enough and with the switch showing fan speed level: 0 I have a temp of 38*C with current ambient in that area of 20*C.

All my kit is in the attic space which is fine now, but in the height of summer (as high as the great British summer gets) it gets seriously uncomfortable up there, don`t currently have a figure for it but suffice it to say that as soon as you pop your head up there, you start to sweat.

Anyway, the point is, to get some decent CFM's the fans will make some noise, yes, you can get quieter fans but they move less air... in the case of the Noctua's a lot less air.

According to some stuff I read on the UBNT forums there is a revision 2 of the switch rolling off the line/s soon with a serial port and quieter fans, whether the quieter fans translate into less CFM's remains to be seen but that's down to the Hardware guys at UBNT to determine how slow the fans can go and how little CFM's the hardware can tolerate and what impact that has on the overall MTBF of the switch.

Question is though whether you can live with that risk, I'm gonna see how loud these fans get in the summer and address it then I think, but for now, I'm just gonna live with it.

Just thought I'd share.
 
40mm fans are loud if they are going to move enough air to be effective.
With 40s quiet is relative but they will never be truly quiet unless they are ineffective at moving air.
4.8CFM is a joke........
 
yea, they design them that way for a reason... if you were going to put one directly in front of an ac duct or something, i could see maybe modifying...

putting one in an attic? might not even work with fans at full...
 
Well it is in the attic currently, it has replaced a v1 HP 1810G-24 (fanless and no POE) and a Toughswitch 8.

Currently the sun is on the rear elevation of the roof and the ambient temp in the attic is 26*C (taken from the inlet sensor on my Gen8 Microserver) and the switch is still on fan speed level 0 and is at 45*C Max temp since boot is only 46*C.

There is a vent at the apex of the attic space I may open to allow some more circulation but for the time being all 'seems' well.
 
Just an FYI, I have some Unifi Switches here (basically same thing as ES but with Unifi controller), and it's rather loud if you're close to it. While I was configuring it and setting things up I had it sit next to me, and it's definitely something I'd want in another room completely.
 
**Minor Update**

Just had a peek in remotely and I'm at 47*C and fan speed level 1, I'm not there so can't comment on what it sounds like yet.

That is all.
 
Just another little update..

Quite overcast at the moment, ambient temp of 25*C in the attic space and switch is still at 45*C and fan speed 0
 
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