Dell PowerEdge T110 II Technical Guide 21 Hardware configurations affect system noise levels: Dell‘s thermal control provides for cooling flexible to varying hardware configurations. Acoustical performances associated with two common configurations are listed in Table 7. Quiet office acoustics: Compare the values for LpA in Table 6 and note that they are lower than ambient measurements of typical office environments. The minimal configuration of the T110 II shown in Table 6 (LpA ~27 dBA, which is similar to a quiet bedroom) would be inaudible in most environments. Noise ramp and descent at Boot-up: Fan speeds (hence noise levels) ramp up during the boot process to add a layer of protection for component cooling (in the case that the system does not boot properly). Acoustical Specifications Table 7.
Minimum Configuration @ 23°C Ambient
Operating
Mode
LwA-UL
(bels)
LpA
(dBA)
Prominent
Tones
Processor
Hard
Drives
Power
Supply
PCI
Cards
RAID
Intel®
CoreTM
i3-2100
(65W)
2 x 3.5‖
SATA
(7.2K)
500GB
1 x
305W
None
None
Standby
2.7
16
None
Idle
4.2
27
None
Active hard
drives
4.2
27
None
Stressed
processor
4.2
27
None
Typical Configuration @ 23°C Ambient
Operating
Mode
LwA-UL
(bels)
LpA
(dBA)
Prominent
Tones
Processor
Hard
Drives
Power
Supply
PCI
Cards
RAID
Intel®
Xeon®
E3-1200
product
family
(80W)
4 x 3.5‖
SATA
(7.2K)
1TB
1 x
250W
1 x
dual-
port NIC
PERC
H200
Standby
2.7
16
None
Idle
4.9
34
None
Active hard
drives
4.9
34
None
Stressed
processor
4.9
34
None
Definitions Standby: AC Power is connected to power supplies but the system is not turned on. Idle: Reference ISO7779 (1999) definition 3.1.7; system is running in its OS but no other specific activity. Active Hard Drives: An operating mode per ISO7779 (1999) definition 3.1.6; Section C.9 of ECMA-74 9th ed. (2005) is followed in exercising the hard disk drives. Stressed Processor: An operating mode per ISO7779 (1999) definition 3.1.6; SPECPower set to 50% loading is used. LwA–UL: The upper limit sound power level (LwA) calculated per section 4.4.2 of ISO 9296 (1988) and measured in accordance to ISO 7779 (1999).