Jacob Yocom-Piatt wrote:
- fast disks with hardware raid, i.e. u320 or sas, that are hotswappable; am willing to accept SATAII if other criteria work
Fast disks are usually hot. Usually heat goes up with spindle speed.
- low power draw / heat signature - low noise - 1U or 2U size
The first two are almost mutually exclusive with the third. 1U/2U servers have to move enough air to cool the expected maximum disk/CPU/RAM combination running at 100% 24/7. That means lots of small fans, and small fans are noisy.
If you require 1U and performance isn't a primary requirement, an old HP DL320 G1 may work. They're substantially quieter than a DL360 (or modern 1U boxes) and have a single P3 socket 370. Newer DL1xx servers may be quiet as well, but I don't see many of those.
