I'm know I am not the only one here with a significant home network and several servers. My servers consist of an Dell PII333 Redhat Linux running my DNS, mail, news etc and a Dell PowerEdge 2300 (which I picked up nice and cheap on ebay) Win2k server which hosts my web server and database.

The problem is that they are too damn loud and hot. They currently live in my office with me, so there are three PCs and two monitors (I have a KVM switch to eliminate one monitor) in an 18x12 room.

I have the PowerEdge running it's fans on "quiet" as there are only two drives in the RAID cage. However "quiet" is definitely a relative term and I will soon have to switch to "loud" as I am going to be filling the RAID cage.

So it is very noisy in my office. It also gets very hot in the summer, the room temperature easily reaches 40°C in the summer, even today with the temperature outside just above freezing it is 26°C in here.

I was going to put the servers up in my attic, but I monitored the temperature there for a couple of weeks last summer and even with no servers there it exceeded 45°C. Obviously not a good place to put them.

So I am wondering if my garage might be a better place to put them. I haven't monitored the temp in there yet, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't freeze in there (there is a tap with a bucket to catch drips and the water has never frozen). It is always cool in there in the summer.

I am located in South East England (Surrey) so the temperature doesn't really reach extremes outside (roughly min -8°C in winter, max 35°C in the summer). My feeling is that PCs are happy with cold, as long as the temperature doesn't change rapidly.

What do people think, is a garage a sensible place for a PC ?