So i ran my homelab, with refurbished desktop, NUC, Raspberry and a few other consumer stuff before.

Going to do a TL;DR at the end if you're lazy.

I just acquired a rack, and thought i would go for a 10Gbps Switch. Since i was on budget and wanted to avoid the SFP adapters for now, i want for a "Arista DCS-7050TX-64-R", which has 48xRJ45 10Gbps ports and was very affordable.

Naively, i thought i would not be bothered by the noise. I went to datacenters before, i worked with servers, and by all means, i have never heard anything THIS LOUD ! The noise is seriously insane, the switch is locked in a small room one floor above, and i still hear it through 2 closed doors.

Noise :

So basically i checked everything and it's coming from the fans, i did not manage to find the exact specifications, but it's very close to this : 4x1 San Ace 40 from Sanyo Denki in the switch - San Ace 40 - 9WL0412P3J001 2x1 FB0412UHN-BC2E - [PDF] Delta - FFB0412UHN-SP4Z.pdf It's around ~54dB (San Ace) & ~64 dB (Delta Electronics), i measured it at 64-65 dB.

Aristal Switch 4x1 San Ace fans

For the San Ace 40, i found a command in the arista switch to override to 30% speed, and it is bearable. Warning : Arista states this should not be done without guidance from one of their technician, and you will void warranty, etc. For those looking :

environment fan-speed override 30 

PSU Fans

The Delta Electronics fan embedded in the PSU are the noisiest, and seem to run 24/7 at full speed. Even though my wattmeter indicates i consume around 100W through 2 PSU, confirmed by arista EOS.

I find this mostly ridiculous because from the specs, this arista switch consumes a maximum of 380W, at 50% switching capacity : 300W. Each PSU is 500W. When plugging the 2 PSU, with my current configuration i have 60% of the ports disabled. 1 PSU draw 60W, and i will really use 20% of the switch capacity at peak traffic right now.

So fans are running 100%, all the time, 64dB, while power consumption is less than 30% of 1 PSU capacity and less than 15% global capacity. Temperature is around 35C°.

I found a few threads suggesting replacing fans of Switch, PSU or both : - Terrible idea ? Noctua fan mod for Arista 7050t64

- Semi-quiet 52-port 10G switch (Arista DCS-7050S-52)

Fan replacement & Specs

So i am digging to replace the PSU embedded Fan, but i looked into specifications and these fan (PSU) move a shit ton of air with big pressure, up to : - Airflow : 26.55 CFM - Static pressure : 3.15inH2O / 80mmH2O / 784 Pa

While reading specs of some candidates to replace the fan, i am absolutely not confident regarding their speed, static pressure and airflow. In the above threads, there have been attempts to use : - Noctua nf-a4x20-pwm - Arctic S4028-15K Both are orders of magnitude quieter (Noctua ~15dB ; Arctic ~35dB from googling). But they also have like 20% of the airflow, static power or both. I am afraid the PSU would get HOT and eventually fry. I am considering a Delta electronics TFA0412BN-CN as replacement candidate, which would have around 50% of the initial delta fan regarding static power, while being 55dB instead of 64dB. This would be much closer to the original compared to the Noctua and Arctic mentionned in the posts, but still only half of the original.

I am completely lost since this is the first time i am doing something like this. It also feels very wrong, and unsafe, to change a PSU fan. Any comment and suggestion is welcome. I probably should put some accoustic isolation around the rack, but this won't be enough with 64dB...

TL;DR , bought a big Arista 7050 for homelab , incredibly noisy due to PSU fans, wondering if it's acceptable to replace PSU fans for quieter alternative. Worried about PSU grilling even though it would be used at max 30% capacity. Wife is not happy. Please Help.