Can 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 hard. But you need to be on top of them to hear that.
Ashburn has the infrastructure however. From what I'm reading, other places don't. So they bring in power on-site, and it seems to be much less regulated.
Usually I think they're trying to get the infrastructure, but because we've created a permitting nightmare across the US, they can't get the permits for anything they want, so they're stuck with mobile generation that doesn't require permitting.
Using unpermitted turbine generators[1] is just as illegal as violating the other permits they’d need to obtain for grid access. Doing illegal acts is a choice on their part — no one is forcing them to do that. There is no inherent right to private profit at the expense of the social good.
That article makes assertions that don't have anything backing them.
Neither the EPA nor a judge have made any judgments about Colossus generators being illegal (in fact, it doesn't sound like the EPA has made any enforcement actions at all, to date). The article is about them issuing a new rule (see the link behind "declared" in the article you linked to) closing the "nonroad engine" loophole, which the author of the article asserts makes those turbines illegal. The same new rule created a new subcategory allowing turbines for up to 24 months with streamlined compliance, and left a path open to EPA certification for turbines under Title II.
But the Colossus 1 turbines were already permitted by the time that article was published. At least 2/3 of the Colossus 2 turbines are permitted already too.
In the next month, there'll be a preliminary injunction hearing for the NAACP's lawsuit, but the DOD and DOJ both oppose the suit, so we'll see.
The companies doing this in Texas aren't even using that nonroad engine loophole - they're just getting Texas' minor permits. The EPA said in June that they're not going to create national rules, and instead defer to states.
So frankly, no, none of it is illegal. I think you're right that it should be, but that's a different problem, and not one you can help fix by claiming it is. If you want all this to be cleaner, go fix permitting for fixed clean energy generation, because it's a disaster.
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 triangle which gets most often sacrificed.
Datacenters are fine, its gas turbines making the noise.
Whats crazy tho is people repeating this as if its true of all datacenters.
Whats even crazier is fringe australian politicians WHO LIVE NEAR DATA CENTERS importing this and claiming all datacenters in australia are noisy (because some terminally online seps were complaining about it) without so much as going down to their local and testing the hypothesis.
What I find interesting is that having lived in the southeast US for decades now, there is never any shortage of a story where someone buys a house near a race track. Not long after that, they complain that the race track is loud for several days in the week. Generally what follows is lots of posturing by local politicians and judges. Inevitably the race track shuts down within a year or so, usually because it isn't worth the legal battle.
Yet somehow data centers that apparently make awful noises 24/7, local lawmakers are suspiciously unable to do anything about.
This 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 acousting footprint before it's built
youtube video link from the article behind the "you must agree to cookies to play this youtube video embed that's actually not a youtube video embed" shenanigans
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 allow something this noisy without a significant empty buffer zone to any residences.
Presumably much less- the datacenter was apparently not that disruptive until they tore down the trees between it and the homes. The manufacturing facility may not have been 24/7 either
It likely didn't have the power requirements either. I'm just guessing here, but that sounds a lot like turbine whine. (I've heard them elsewhere, not to mention been around plenty of aircraft) My guess is that they brought one on site like they've done to other facilities to provide on-site power where the local grid isn't sufficient.
The pledge by their CEO to shut down crypto-mining equiptment feels like a deflection to me, because I don't think that's the source of the noise. It's the turbine generator, and switching to AI I don't think will change the power requirements any. We'll see I suppose.
It was likely quieter on average and likely not working during the night.
BTW, I grew up a few blocks away from a steel foundry, and it typically was emitting a low humming noise. It faded into the background and was not a problem. We could hear loud clangs from time to time, but not at night.
what I want to know is why the fuck dont they put these data monstrocities in any number of thousands of empty giant office towers littering city centers everywhere, catch all the heat and sell it to the few buildings with actual tenants, and as soon as the much less flamable sodium batteries come on at scale stack the rest of the empty buildings with those,and then run the whole mess from cheap solar
It's because you have a bunch of different unrelated "theys" in your one "they". There's no one person who can make a decision like that, and the risk and time inherent in trying to negotiate between all those parties is far, far worse than building new.
>why the fuck dont they put these data monstrocities in any number of thousands of empty giant office towers littering city centers everywhere
Big problem is providing enough electricity to an office tower.
A local company built a test T3 datacenter in an office building. Heaps of floorspace. But they cant get enough juice in, they started selling racks with less and less guaranteed supply. IIRC the site is basically forever capped at 2.5MW.
Whats worse is that the inner city location makes it an absolute favorite with telcos, but the telcos cant put their towering monstrous electricity sucking routers in for fear of browning the site (We tried, we were politely asked to leave).
I was walking past the construction of a new site just yesterday and they had the electrical switchboards on the pavement being prepped for being craned in through the open roof. Theres no way you would be able to easily retrofit for that sort of electrical supply.
Can 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 hard. But you need to be on top of them to hear that.
Ashburn has the infrastructure however. From what I'm reading, other places don't. So they bring in power on-site, and it seems to be much less regulated.
Usually I think they're trying to get the infrastructure, but because we've created a permitting nightmare across the US, they can't get the permits for anything they want, so they're stuck with mobile generation that doesn't require permitting.
Using unpermitted turbine generators[1] is just as illegal as violating the other permits they’d need to obtain for grid access. Doing illegal acts is a choice on their part — no one is forcing them to do that. There is no inherent right to private profit at the expense of the social good.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/15/elon-musk...
That article makes assertions that don't have anything backing them.
Neither the EPA nor a judge have made any judgments about Colossus generators being illegal (in fact, it doesn't sound like the EPA has made any enforcement actions at all, to date). The article is about them issuing a new rule (see the link behind "declared" in the article you linked to) closing the "nonroad engine" loophole, which the author of the article asserts makes those turbines illegal. The same new rule created a new subcategory allowing turbines for up to 24 months with streamlined compliance, and left a path open to EPA certification for turbines under Title II.
But the Colossus 1 turbines were already permitted by the time that article was published. At least 2/3 of the Colossus 2 turbines are permitted already too.
In the next month, there'll be a preliminary injunction hearing for the NAACP's lawsuit, but the DOD and DOJ both oppose the suit, so we'll see.
The companies doing this in Texas aren't even using that nonroad engine loophole - they're just getting Texas' minor permits. The EPA said in June that they're not going to create national rules, and instead defer to states.
So frankly, no, none of it is illegal. I think you're right that it should be, but that's a different problem, and not one you can help fix by claiming it is. If you want all this to be cleaner, go fix permitting for fixed clean energy generation, because it's a disaster.
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 triangle which gets most often sacrificed.
Datacenters are fine, its gas turbines making the noise.
Whats crazy tho is people repeating this as if its true of all datacenters.
Whats even crazier is fringe australian politicians WHO LIVE NEAR DATA CENTERS importing this and claiming all datacenters in australia are noisy (because some terminally online seps were complaining about it) without so much as going down to their local and testing the hypothesis.
What I find interesting is that having lived in the southeast US for decades now, there is never any shortage of a story where someone buys a house near a race track. Not long after that, they complain that the race track is loud for several days in the week. Generally what follows is lots of posturing by local politicians and judges. Inevitably the race track shuts down within a year or so, usually because it isn't worth the legal battle.
Yet somehow data centers that apparently make awful noises 24/7, local lawmakers are suspiciously unable to do anything about.
This 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 acousting footprint before it's built
> Also, noise regulations aren't good for this kind of constant tonal sound
Maybe the regulations could be structured around a scaled integral of volume over time
Ah, the ol' "stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself" defense
It's so easy! Just think of every possible scenario and avenue that can be abused, and legislate it, in perpetuity.
Make John Stewart, Chief Marketing Officer of Hyperscale Data, live in one of those houses for a month. See how he likes the sound.
youtube video link from the article behind the "you must agree to cookies to play this youtube video embed that's actually not a youtube video embed" shenanigans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wDr2dec474
another 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 allow something this noisy without a significant empty buffer zone to any residences.
edit: it's here: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Dowagiac,+MI+49047,+USA/@4...
wait, what was the sound from the industrial metalworking factory like?
Presumably much less- the datacenter was apparently not that disruptive until they tore down the trees between it and the homes. The manufacturing facility may not have been 24/7 either
It likely didn't have the power requirements either. I'm just guessing here, but that sounds a lot like turbine whine. (I've heard them elsewhere, not to mention been around plenty of aircraft) My guess is that they brought one on site like they've done to other facilities to provide on-site power where the local grid isn't sufficient.
The pledge by their CEO to shut down crypto-mining equiptment feels like a deflection to me, because I don't think that's the source of the noise. It's the turbine generator, and switching to AI I don't think will change the power requirements any. We'll see I suppose.
It was likely quieter on average and likely not working during the night.
BTW, I grew up a few blocks away from a steel foundry, and it typically was emitting a low humming noise. It faded into the background and was not a problem. We could hear loud clangs from time to time, but not at night.
Every day, the gap between the news and The Onion gets a little smaller.
From 12 years ago
https://theonion.com/fbi-uncovers-al-qaeda-plot-to-just-sit-...
what I want to know is why the fuck dont they put these data monstrocities in any number of thousands of empty giant office towers littering city centers everywhere, catch all the heat and sell it to the few buildings with actual tenants, and as soon as the much less flamable sodium batteries come on at scale stack the rest of the empty buildings with those,and then run the whole mess from cheap solar
It's because you have a bunch of different unrelated "theys" in your one "they". There's no one person who can make a decision like that, and the risk and time inherent in trying to negotiate between all those parties is far, far worse than building new.
>why the fuck dont they put these data monstrocities in any number of thousands of empty giant office towers littering city centers everywhere
Big problem is providing enough electricity to an office tower.
A local company built a test T3 datacenter in an office building. Heaps of floorspace. But they cant get enough juice in, they started selling racks with less and less guaranteed supply. IIRC the site is basically forever capped at 2.5MW.
Whats worse is that the inner city location makes it an absolute favorite with telcos, but the telcos cant put their towering monstrous electricity sucking routers in for fear of browning the site (We tried, we were politely asked to leave).
I was walking past the construction of a new site just yesterday and they had the electrical switchboards on the pavement being prepped for being craned in through the open roof. Theres no way you would be able to easily retrofit for that sort of electrical supply.