This reminds of a video[1] from More Perfect Union about another (the same?) crypto mining facility in Texas.
Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"
31–40 of 72 posts
Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"
#32Can someone explain why the new crop of datacenters are considered to be noisy?. I've been around the Wall Street datacenters in Jersey and they are basically the same as nondescript office buildings surrounded by a fence. The ones running on generators 24/7 are a problem but what is making the rest such an issue?
I wrote this in another reply here, but from this article and others I've read on Space X's/Tesla's datacenters, it's the use of turbine generators that cause that enormous whine sound. (Note how similar it is to a jet engine.) I live in Ashburn, where we have datacenters all over the place. But none of them sound like this. At worst, we get a dull hum, much lower in volume, if the air handlers are working especially…
There are no turbine generators at the DC in the video and that's not what gas turbine power plants sound like. they're much higher pitched.
But yeah, the ones with the turbine generators are even louder and more shrill. The xAI DC in Memphis last year had thirty five portable gas turbine generators.
Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"
#33Can someone explain why the new crop of datacenters are considered to be noisy?. I've been around the Wall Street datacenters in Jersey and they are basically the same as nondescript office buildings surrounded by a fence. The ones running on generators 24/7 are a problem but what is making the rest such an issue?
Edit: the noise at many of these DCs are also "portable" natural gas turbines, intended for use as emergency power or temporary power at large events. But companies like xAI are using them to back-door build large power plants. xAI's memphis DC has 30+ turbines running non-stop and xAI never filed any paperwork or received any permits related to them. AI DCs use enormous amounts of power (and thus generate enormous a…
Yeah but with 10GW we can generate more AI videos of politicians to trick boomers. It's worth destroying everything for that.
Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"
#34Can someone explain why the new crop of datacenters are considered to be noisy?. I've been around the Wall Street datacenters in Jersey and they are basically the same as nondescript office buildings surrounded by a fence. The ones running on generators 24/7 are a problem but what is making the rest such an issue?
Edit: the noise at many of these DCs are also "portable" natural gas turbines, intended for use as emergency power or temporary power at large events. But companies like xAI are using them to back-door build large power plants. xAI's memphis DC has 30+ turbines running non-stop and xAI never filed any paperwork or received any permits related to them. AI DCs use enormous amounts of power (and thus generate enormous a…
In this case it has nothing to do with AI
> these are largely crypto mining rigs making this noise
Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wrote this in another reply here, but from this article and others I've read on Space X's/Tesla's datacenters, it's the use of turbine generators that cause that enormous whine sound. (Note how similar it is to a jet engine.) I live in Ashburn, where we have datacenters all over the place. But none of them sound like this. At worst, we get a dull hum, much lower in volume, if the air handlers are working especially…
Perhaps an un-fun fun fact if you're living near one of these, but Boom aerospace has pivoted to start selling turbines for data centers in addition to its normal business.
Not sure they got to having a normal business yet. Hopefully they don't just pivot entirely to energy.
Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"
#36These houses are directly across the street. It looks like the data center owner should have allotted some buffer land between the facility and the property line.
Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"
#37This feels less like a data center problem and more like a basic failure to price and regulate industrial externalities...are crypto mining or ai compute socially useful? Up for debate, but what isn't is that neither should make a surrounding neighborhood unlivable. Also, noise regulations aren't good for this kind of constant tonal sound. Any facility like this should have to prove it can operate within a certain ac…
If it's generating revenue from an international clientele, and paying local taxes, it's almost guaranteed to be socially useful, at least from the domestic standpoint.
Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"
#38another link: https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/data-center-noi... This particular datacenter was retrofitted into an existing industrial building, there was some sort of industrial metalworking factory there previously. Structure dates to 1972. The houses are basically right across the street from it. The noise does sound annoying as hell. This seems like a basic failure in local permitting/zoning to allo…
If you watch the video, there used to be a line of trees that helped block the sound. Then those trees were ripped out to build a loading dock, and the building was converted to crypto miners.
I don't even know what to say to this because they never decided to replant the tress or create some other kind of buffer in its place. Just yanked the trees out and moved on. I'm not even an environmentalist, but this sort of nonsense really pisses me off.
Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"
#39Sweet foods turn into poison after a limit of intake. Science and technology products turn against humanity when they are produced in excess of the need. The blind belief that technological advances are desirable without limits - should stop.
Re: Destroying a Community with a Gigantic "Clogged Vacuum Cleaner"
#40Can someone explain why the new crop of datacenters are considered to be noisy?. I've been around the Wall Street datacenters in Jersey and they are basically the same as nondescript office buildings surrounded by a fence. The ones running on generators 24/7 are a problem but what is making the rest such an issue?
Over time, improvements have been made in compute density, because more compute density means more money. Higher compute density means higher thermal density, which means more powerful cooling is needed. Server cooling solutions follow a management triple constraint: cheap, effective, quiet, pick up to 2. Because loudness does not incur additional costs (due to negative externalities), "quiet" is the point of the tri…
Blockchain has higher compute density. Nobody was bitching when the miners built out their datacenters.