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> I worked in a medium data center and there was no noise outside AI datacenters have much larger cooling needs and often use generators
> generators Ahem. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memph...
Article makes a huge deal about humming/buzzing but there’s no way that’s a real thing right? What would be the reason it would go beyond like any HVAC-ish thing on a large building? Lost me at the first sentence :(
Due to rising power densities, and constrained power and costs of that power, modern data centers tend to use free air cooling vs the older always compressor cooling. When the temperatures are right they basically just use fans to bring outside air in, which is much much louder because you have to move a lot of it. It goes way beyond normal building HVAC levels, AI has pushed many DC's from 8 kW to 17 kW a rack in ju…
17 kW per rack for AI/ML HPC was workable >5 years ago. If you're not budgeting for double or triple that number nowadays you're not capacity planning properly.
Relevant Wikipedia entry-point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAE-East
“Although it initially had no single central nexus, one eventually formed in the underground parking garage of an office building in Vienna, VA.[3]”
I love how this sentence is written like some sci-fi premise. The source is much more clinical about it: https://web.archive.org/web/20050214071013/http://www.wolfso...
“The décor of the machine room is unmarred by ornament. The room was created by walling off an area of the underground parking garage of a suburban Virginia office tower. The ceiling is low; harsh light pours out of fluorescent tubes; the air is filled with the white noise of a hundred computer cooling fans and a hint of battery fumes. Standing in this crowded space, surrounded by hard-working and very slightly grungy machinery, gives an interesting perspective and sense of scale, which is exactly what I was looking for in coming here. The room is no bigger than a two-car garage, and yet by some estimates more than half the traffic on the Internet passes through here.”
god forbid someone builds something. it is very fitting that a british newspaper would be so repulsed by the prospect of industry.
Ashburn/Loudoun resident here, lived right next to us-east-1 for 10+ years. No, the noise is not impactful. The data centers are very quiet on the outside. More noise comes from Dulles Airport nearby. Main problem is 1. visuals. They are horrendous blobs to look at. 2. land/electricity values. Gone up a lot in the past few years. Happy to answer any questions.
Your noise statement is one datapoint, there are others in the article. Who's right regarding the noise?
https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B059'57.6%22N+77%C2%...
god forbid someone builds something. it is very fitting that a british newspaper would be so repulsed by the prospect of industry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
It just seems to me that in Virginia in the United States, the externalities of building a massive data centre in an existing residential zone are either not being considered or not being acted upon.
I'd hate it if a company built a massive data centre right next to where I sleep. Low noise pollution is vitally important to quality of life.
I'd like to live in a society that treated me fairly, and at least purchased my property off me before building the data centre.
By all means, build the infrastructure. But please look after your people. It's not that arduous to purchase a few properties in exchange for a massive amount of profit.
It's sad seeing people impacted by these data centers considering how little voice they have. I don't think anyone wants to live near a data center unless they actually worked there.
I think this is dangerously close to NIMBY territory. People who bought homes in the cheapest land possible in areas with ample available farmland are upset that someone else bought some other land.
It’s quite easy to avoid that if you aren’t just buying on pure dollars per square foot like so many suburban buyers seem to be doing.
When it comes to vibrant urban core you actually benefit by having a lot of different things nearby “in my backyard.” As an added bonus, businesses looking for cheap land for factories and data centers tend to stay away.
But if we live in the city we’ll be “on top of each other” and I won’t have a walk-in closet to store all my clothes I don’t wear, and I won’t have a garage to store the car that I’m required to own to get around because nothing is nearby me, and I need a shed for my lawn mower because I can’t just share with my neighbors and I need my own yard because the public park is too far away, etc etc.
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And very few people work there relative to the impact. Sure nobody liked living near factories in ye olden days, but they did like the employment opportunities. You can see how few work there when you compare the size of the data centre and the size of the car park.
But there is an upside to this - you get the benefits of being a city with big business (tax revenue, donations to the local schools, investments in infrastructure), but don't have increased commuter traffic.
Whatever benefits there are have to be weighted against the very real costs. Residential power bills spiking is a hugely regressive burden for many struggling households.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your noise statement is one datapoint, there are others in the article. Who's right regarding the noise?
Well noise drops off following an inverse square law, so possibly everyone. Moving down just a couple houses can significantly cut down on noise pollution.
It's sad seeing people impacted by these data centers considering how little voice they have. I don't think anyone wants to live near a data center unless they actually worked there.
And very few people work there relative to the impact. Sure nobody liked living near factories in ye olden days, but they did like the employment opportunities. You can see how few work there when you compare the size of the data centre and the size of the car park.
I'm not saying that anyone should want data centers to take over their city/county, but there isn't a strong economic argument against them in Louden County. The people there are the richest in the US and they're getting great economic benefits from it. The question isn't economic. The question is whether that's the community they want to live in: rich and making lots of money off data centers or an area where they don't have as much money and don't have to look at the data centers.