this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2026
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Not all data centers are for AI. Practically anything you do on the internet lives or transits through a data center. A very serious answer to your question is simply "the internet". AI data centers are just bigger and more dense than the ones that have been around for a long time.
yeah I'm pretty sure the long game is only half AI. AI is the sales pitch. Taking over the internet and home computing is the long game.
Regular non-ai datacenters don’t have all this noise
This isn’t an “AI” data center specifically.
(At least according to this comment) this is a normal data center.
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/26779485
Are you sure about that? I haven't been near one but have a single dell poweredge in my basement and it's fucking loud without diy noise insulation around it. I can only imagine the noise a full building of these things is making.
Since I'm getting downvoted and I'm genouinly curious, could someone explain how AI data centers are worse on a noise level than data centers for other purposes?
I'm not saying they are quiet, I just don't see which hardware for AI is so different from non-ai that it makes a big difference in noise production.
There are a few examples where they run turbine gas generators for power. In those cases the noise (and pollution) are in an entirely new class of problem. They just do so much compute.
Turbine generators onsite to manage power spikes and reduce the company's cost of buying power, in musk's megadatacenter case, the cunt didnt even get permission, he just ordered it done, and the community suffers.
Traditional datacenters usually came in one of two general forms, Colocation datacenters where anyone can rent rack space in the building, and your hyperscaler datacenters like AWS and Azure.
Colocation Datacenters are usually only partially full of servers at any given time, and are often rented by private enterprises running small time web applications or even just internal tools.
The hyperscalers are worse, but the business model is overbuilding capacity but not all the compute is actually being used at any given time. Workloads are variable usually.
It’s not that these datacenters can’t be loud, but rather that due to their lower power usage (compared to AI or Crypto before that) they don’t usually have to be.
The problem with AI datacenters is that they are designed to maximize their capacity and run full throttle 24/7 365. These facilities are bigger, are completely full to the brim with servers, and those servers are all working very hard nonstop. The thing about computers is, the stronger they are and the harder you push them, the more power they require to run. When electronic devices of any kind use more power, they generate more heat. Too much heat will also kill these electronic devices, so they need more cooling. Cooling apparatus makes noise, and the more you have of it, the louder it gets.
The TL;DR of it all is that AI datacenters are designed to maximize their compute capacity, which maximizes their power consumption, which maximizes the heat they generate, so you maximize the cooling, which maximizes the noise.
There’s a separate issue back the the “Consumes more power” step where some datacenters can’t be sated by the local power infrastructure so they have to find ways to supplement the power they get from the grid with additional noisy things like gas generators and such.
I do not like the recent use of the word "compute" as a noun, it's such incredibly obnoxious boardroom bullshit speak. Compute is a verb. Otherwise great comment that explains the situation pretty well.
Ok.
Which noun would you prefer for the overarching generalized concept of computation sold as a product?
Over the internet? Cloud computing, like it always has, or just use the word computing, or processing power, or any of a dozen different phrases we already use for it. Every time someone uses the word compute as a noun a techbro jacks off onto their earnings report.
You can’t use the word “computing”, it’s a gerund that represents an ongoing activity, it can’t be unitized into finite units. “Processing power” is not a noun, it’s a phrase.
Compute is not a boardroom term, it’s an engineering term. It’s used by professionals because it’s efficient, practical, and makes the most sense linguistically in the context it’s used. It may be inelegant, but it’s a function term for an ugly, unnatural thing, it’s not supposed to sound pretty.
Measure it in energy use like we already did. It's a dumb term techbros use to get investor dicks hard.
Energy use is the not the thing being sold, and never was.
It’s an engineering term that engineers use to easily and efficiently describe the thing being built and sold. It’s not for the benefit of investors, it’s for the benefit of other engineers so they can easily describe the thing being talked about.
So it's made up bullshit.
All words are made up.
It’s an accurate and useful word for describing something that previously did not have a word. Pretty simple stuff.
It did previously have words, but an adjective was shorthanded into a word and it's stupid.
No, it didn’t, that’s why compute is used now. Compute is a mass noun, shortened from Computation, also a mass noun and it’s a perfectly reasonable and accurate word. Also compute is not an adjective in any context, you’re thinking of a verb.
Ok so you apparently never took grammar so arguing with you is like playing chess with a pigeon. You're just kinda strutting around the board, knocking over the pieces and shitting all over the place thinking you're winning.
You’re projecting. In this conversation you have so far:
I don’t think you have even a conceptual understand of Grammar, and I suspect you only know English as a second language
Gerund fuck yourself, compute is a douchebag word used by douchebags. Lick my gerundle.
It's also not in the dictionary so it's still bullshit, obnoxious, and honestly just sounds stupid.
It’s absolutely in the dictionary, it’s perfectly plain and inoffensive, and it sounds perfectly descriptive of what it is.
I tolerated the use of literally literally meaning figuratively but I draw the line at compute as a noun.
I would love to hear a better noun representing comodified computer processing as differentiated from storage, or network bandwidth/throughput.
Commodified computer processing sounds fine. Measure it in kw/h or other unit of energy use. Like we already did before techbros started using it at investors.
Sounds like a personal problem
Yeah, I opened the dialog with my personal feelings on the matter.
Yes I’m sure. I’ve worked in a number of standard compute and colo datacenters for years and I haven’t experienced anything like that even in the parking lot of said datacenters. I’ve taken breaks to quietly read in the lobbies of said buildings.
But the reason most new datacenters are build is AI. AI is the cause that the number of datacenters are spiking, not any other poor excuse.
Currently, AI accounts for 20% of data center power usage. By 2030 it's projected to be 50%.
Yes, but until AI, there weren't nearly as many data centers and they were much smaller. Now massive data centers are going up all over the country, and no, hosting the internet is not their primary purpose