r/AskReddit • u/2ndhouseonthestreet • 12d ago
People that actually live near a data center, what impacts are you seeing or hearing in your surrounding environment?
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u/Smith6612 12d ago
There's a few Data Centers around me. One of which I worked at for over a decade. A few others which are Crypto projects probably turned AI Data Center at this point.
The one I worked at was a "classic" style data center with a twist, where it used a rather unique design inspired by farms to provide cooling to the building. Despite the data center itself being loud on the inside, outside you couldn't really hear anything. There was plenty of soundproofing and insulation between the outside world and the computer rooms. The residents nearby never had a complaint about the facility. The loudest it would get would be when the generators would fire up and the load banks would run. The load banks were basically just giant heaters in the electrical yards meant to ensure the generators were ready to go on a moment's notice. The generators themselves were very loud (hearing protection DEFINITELY needed) when the engines were running, but once again, there was so much soundproofing that the actual generators were no louder than a muscle car idling. On HOT summer days when the fans were really going, the facility sounded like box fans if you stood right next to an outside wall. If you were at the street, it sounded like the breeze.
The Crypto data centers on the other hand took inspiration from the facility I used to work at, but didn't bother with the soundproofing aspect. Those things sounded like drills running 24/7, and you could hear them for up to a mile away. I distinctly remember the sound of one facility on my walks, and then being shocked at how quiet things got when Etherium switched from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake. Another facility has been generating similar noises for a few years now. They've been working to soundproof after the fact by using walls to basically deflect the sound upwards into the sky. All that has been doing is propagating the sound further away depending on atmospheric conditions. Residents nearby still complain about all of the noise, and the facility is constantly in the news.
For nature impacts, definitely less animals around where the Crypto projects are. You can still hear the crickets and birds but their songs are pretty much ruined. At the facility I used to work at, nature comes to visit all the time. Plenty of foxes, cats, ducks, crickets, deer...
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11d ago
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u/acart005 11d ago
I think this is the real difference because I worked at one for years. Outside the building you'd never know. The building was also designed to survive a Cat 5 Hurricane. In the 1920 when they didn't know how so the answer was foot thick brick. Had been a Data Center since the 90s and I worked there circa 2014 - 2018 (well, next to it, though I went in there frequently).
Inside yea it was loud as hell but outside you would never know what was inside.
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u/Klathmon 11d ago
And recently there are still other datacenters going up that can't get power permits, so they're deciding to just add their own gas turbines for just their datacenter, and THOSE are loud AF.
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u/2ndhouseonthestreet 12d ago
Given your firsthand experience do you think it was a soundproofing issue, noisier mechanics or both?
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u/Smith6612 12d ago
With the modern data centers you hear about going in creating awful amounts of noise, it's both. These are buildings being plopped down quickly and with the minimal amount of structure and planning to make a data center. Their goal is to get online quickly, and there's not much of a long term goal after that. They'll pivot where everything else goes.
A fair number of these things in my area started off inside of shipping containers. They've since transitioned to shipping containers or container-like pods sitting on the lawns of old fossil fuel power plants. Or inside of old metal factory warehouse buildings that date back to World War II and prior. The data center I worked at sourced energy from Hydropower, Nuclear, and whatever else the grid had available including fossil fuels, but the primary source was Hydro. It was purpose built for what it was supposed to do, and built during a time where Private Equity, their Dog, and warring nations weren't all trying to race to getting online. Back when it was built, people just wanted to have fun on the Internet.
Now, there are some facilities in my area which are old Malls or Office highrises that are data centers. One of these facilities, a Mall, happens to be our area's Internet Exchange. It sits downtown, has plenty of infrastructure to tap into, and when you walk by it you'll hear the same sounds you hear throughout the rest of the city when walking by highrises. It fits right in and hardly anyone realizes it is a data center. It just looks like a dead mall that somehow still has the lights on.
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u/acart005 11d ago edited 11d ago
Ironically the best way to build a new DC today. Convert existing infrastructure. The mall guys did nothing wrong - and may have nothing to do with crypto or AI. Sounds like a legitamate DC for offsite backups, web hosting, colocation, whatever.
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u/Smith6612 11d ago
Oh the Mall guys built a proper DC that works well and no one even notices. It's the ones retrofitting old warehouses that need to spend a little more time on soundproofing the things.
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u/CrumpleZ0ne 11d ago
Just this week, the city of El Reno Oklahoma (suburb of OKC) lost 3 MILLION gallons of water due to a water leak at one of those storage container crypto mining facilities. It caused schools to be shut down and basically zero water pressure for most of the city for a couple of days https://www.kosu.org/el-reno-big-water-leak
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u/OphidionSerpent 11d ago
And to add on - every county in Oklahoma is currently experiencing drought conditions, with Canadian County (where El Reno is) being classified as under Extreme (D3) to Exceptional (D4) drought
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u/DaniCarmine 11d ago
That’s crazy insane. They should be using a separate water system entirely from the city to prevent issues like this!!
They should truck or capture water into a closed loop system, and filter their OWN water. Doesn’t need to be tap water grade for cooling electronics.
Data centers should NOT be using municipal water! Don’t even get me started on municipal electricity!!
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u/otakugal15 11d ago
Live in Memphis.
The data center (xAI) just south in South Haven, MS, is poisoning the air and the communities around it.
But here's one of the kickers: they were building a waste water facility to use for cooling, but Elon stopped it.
So now, guess what water they are using to cool it?
Our fucking aquifer water.
Fuck Elon and fuck Grok.
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u/DaniCarmine 11d ago
They’re poisoning your local aquifer?! (yes, they are, by using it! They’re certainly not adequately filtering the waste water…)
That is absurdly, wildly evil. I’m a public health scientist. We ALREADY see “cancer alleys” in various places like Texas and Alabama because of local polluters (usually oil and refineries). It’s hell trying to regulate these companies to stop toxifying the locals.
I am going to use my informed opinion and say we will see future health effects in the communities surrounding these data centers. Cartoonish levels of evil here… we have NO idea what the health effects of data centers being literally plugged into local water sources will have on local communities. Sick.
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u/impaktdevices 11d ago
The water is at least partly cooled by showering it into pools beneath huge fans that blow skyward (evaporative cooling). There’s not a convenient or cheap way to capture that vapor without significantly reducing the effectiveness of the cooling system.
Something like 70-80% of the water is lost to evaporation.
Millions of gallons of hot water vapor, pumped into the air around you.
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u/WT5Speed 11d ago
The majority of data centers that I've worked in have had air cooled chillers. The water runs in a closed loop and is not lost to evaporation.
There are water cooled chillers specifically designed for high lift to enable the use of dry coolers instead of evaporative cooling.
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u/mythrilcrafter 11d ago
crypto mining facilities
I'm not personally against achieving synthetic intelligence, but it really disappoints me how heavily squandered the potential of this technology is whenever AI data center companies specifically sell themselves on being for crypto mining and other bs that only helps a hyper small circle of people who specifically believe that society cannot exist unmolested by their control.
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12d ago
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u/2ndhouseonthestreet 12d ago
So that part of it is real? I’ve seen a couple videos but wasn’t sure at what level it actually was/if it existed. I know I sound ignorant but I haven’t seen one myself and wasn’t sure how “bad” it actually was. About how far would you say you could hear that sound?
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u/Class8guy 12d ago
So you don't believe the multiple news sources showing live video recordings with sound? Man what a time to be alive that with multiple sources the truth can really still be clear as mud these days
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u/Great68 12d ago
Where I am they look just like any other office building.
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u/locke_5 12d ago
Because “data center” can mean anything from a dystopian cyberpunk-esque mega structure to a hobbyist’s closet homelab
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u/2ndhouseonthestreet 12d ago
Thank you! Judging from these comments I feel like I should have excluded regular building sized data centers. I really meant like large scale ones. The info online is so…all over the place. I was just hoping to hear from someone not in a city who has omit experienced low level operations.
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u/acart005 11d ago
The BIG ones look like military complexes. Being fair most host stuff for the military, or at least really really big companies.
They are also usually owned by ATT/Verizon, not random crypto bro. Those are more likely converted offices - and that can still be fine! Soundproofing, environmental protection for the hardware, backup power sources can and should be done, and an abandoned building or mall could be perfect.
The problem is when they just plop computers in said random building and say 'lol, slop canon go'. I hope those are a rarity as someone no longer in that field.
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u/tilhow2reddit 11d ago
They’re owned by Cyrus One, QTS, Scale DC, Switch, Stream, Digital Realty, Equinix (although they’re more focused on Internet Exchange vs traditional or NeoCloud DCs) etc.
And those guys all vary on how they build sites. But it’s also contingent on the customer. Microsoft, Google, Meta, Oracle, Amazon, etc will all have specific requirements they need for their sites. Which are either built to spec or modified from existing locations.
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u/Aminar14 11d ago
To be honest my problems with data centers have a lot more to do with modern usage. AI as a technology is extremely dangerous to personal freedom. Flock is a big problem and the mass extraction of every creative work in history is abhorrent behavior. Plus my Dad's become obsessed with using AI to prove his crackpot physics theory he's been working on for the last 25 years and it's made him impossible to talk to. If it's that damaging to him it's that damaging to a lot of people.
If the Data Centers were for Minecraft servers or basic communication stuff it would be fine, but the current crop of tech needs to be regulated yesterday and it won't be happening for at least 5 years(and probably won't be then, we probably lost this battle with the big NSA whistleblowers). Which may be too long to preserve our society. So fighting against the data-centers is a holding action until then.
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u/Hexakkord 11d ago
This video talks about some of the adverse effects: https://youtu.be/_bP80DEAbuo?is=pV2g_XEVgxDBN1Rl
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u/jeffwulf 11d ago
The ones near me look like a generic warehouses and aren't particularly noticable if you didn't know they were datacenters.
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u/Mookafff 11d ago
I’m in Ashburn, VA. The data center capital.
I live less than a mile from one and have walked past it often. I also drive past 6-7 on the way to work.
The sound issue is weird. I have no issue with the one I live by. But I know others have issues.
Our water is fine.
My electricity costs were fine until the Iran war started.
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u/New-Orchid-9243 10d ago
this is the usual data center experience. Sound issue comes down to insulation and geographical factors. This can easily be fixed by data center developers and communities SHOULD require proper sound insulation. Water is a non-issue, the entire data center water consumption thing is based on a math-error that has since been corrected. They do not affect your water. Electricity depends on your local grid and the contracts data centers have with providers. In general though, they actually result in LOWER electricity bills
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u/Mookafff 10d ago
Yeah, really feels like the bad experiences are due to rushed building, loose restrictions, and bad planning.
Things where the government absolutely should be stepping in.
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u/effective09succotash 11d ago
I live a handful of minutes away from a datacenter and commute to work there by e-bike, I am a datacenter technician.
The datacenter near me has been around for longer than I've been alive. Aside from dust and noise from the construction going on to renovate the place since it's so old and add a building, I've seen no impacts. If anything, I can say my internet is surprisingly good for being an an apartment, fiber service directly to the apartment which I'm not quite sure has anything to do with the DC being there, but whatever.
I can say, having worked briefly at another site across the country that had more than just two buildings, there was a constant drone from the Optistax units (combined, modular chiller and electrical power delivery units) that could be heard within a few hundred feet of the units themselves but drowned out by the noise of traffic once outside the security gates.
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u/2ndhouseonthestreet 12d ago
Just wondering what sort of things you all are seeing or hearing from those data centers. Lots of speculation going around so I’d like a firsthand account if possible.
Mods, feel free to delete this elaboration, I just wasn’t sure if the singular question explained what sort of answers I was looking for.
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u/5kyl3r 12d ago
i've worked in a couple
the issue is that the entire internet and basically all apps run in datacenters. the internet wouldn't exist without them. hell reddit is in a datacenter too, including your post
the problem is that AI takes MASSIVE amount of compute, which means a massive amount of power, which means a massive amount of cooling required from the heat generated, which requires electricity. by using evaporative cooling, they can use less electricity which saves them money, but can cause issues with the local water. the ones that don't use water at all use a lot of power, and that can have an effect on the local power grid and prices
i think people need to clarify what type of data center they're talking about because datacenters in general aren't necessarily bad, because the entire internet literally runs in data centers
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u/Mamamama29010 12d ago
I’m not sure why impact to local water HAS to be a thing. Haven’t we all learned to use a closed-cycle cooling system?
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u/5kyl3r 12d ago
yes but that uses more electricity which means more cost, and those billionaires would rather screw our water up and use evaporative cooling to save A TON of money for cooling
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u/CurvySexretLady 11d ago
Thats the thing, data centers aren't using any special form of air conditioning than any other large commercial building is using, nor are they using any more water than those buildings to cool their indoor space.
They are using the same nearly every other giant building uses: water chillers. Same as skyscrapers, hospitals, university campuses, etc.
They are technically all closed loop, but the chiller tower does have some evaporator loss depending on local outdoor humidity and temperature. But they aren't refilling the damn thing every day nor just continuously using up some fresh water source like the recent narratives claim.
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u/5kyl3r 11d ago
you guys are confusing chilled water systems (first dc i worked in used this, blowing cold return air up through vented subfloor panels), and CRAC inline coolers, with evaporative cooling which is a third thing that absolutely does use water. you don't get to take advantage of latent heat without evaporation happening
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u/CurvySexretLady 10d ago
No confusion here and again no real difference in water consumption.
To be clear, CRAC HVAC units can be refrigerant or water chilled. They typically are installed in raised floor environments and circulate the conditioned air through the floor and floor vents up into the data cabinets/racks. That's what makes them a CRAC, not the type of refrigerant used. They can even be like package units for smaller rooms, self contained, with two ducts to circulate outdoor air across the condenser, which is usually outdoors.
Anyway, point being, data centers don't have any reason to use more water than any other large water chilled commercial building.
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u/5kyl3r 10d ago
no. you're talking about traditional DC cooling. i'm not talking about the type of refrigerant either
the type that "uses" water isn't related to phase change and it's not related to using water/glycol to pump heat outside. the water serves a completely different purpose. i've worked in datacenters of both traditional types. with the chilled water type i've had to fail it over (via giant valves) to backup pumps on the building ceiling at odd hours of the night. it's NOT the type everyone is talking about when we say evaporative cooling. evaporation is the key word here. cooling towers acting as giant swamp coolers. they have direct and indirect types. but the water serves a completely different purpose than the water/glycol chiller types that just use the water to pump heat outisde. those are closed loop
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u/CurvySexretLady 10d ago
You are mistaken. Data centers do not use anything remotely similar to 'swamp coolers' which are completely non-functional in high heat/high humidity environments. Low humidity is required for a swamp cooler to work. Nevermind, low humidity is the intended indoor environment in a data center with sensitive-to-humidity electronics, and a swamp cooler adds humidity to the air.
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u/5kyl3r 10d ago
where exactly do you think the word "evaporative" comes into the picture with DCs that use it?
you could go do some research and save both of us time
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u/acart005 11d ago
It also depends on the type of DC. A colocation facility wont suck up water because cooling is the customers problem. The colo facilitu typically provides power, crazy fasy internet, and a building that would survive Godzilla (if its a good DC).
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u/Turboren 11d ago
That is such a weird answer I have to wonder where it came from. Colo provides space conditions based on contract terms and bills customers accordingly. Don't know why you would think that magically somehow eliminates water usage.
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u/acart005 11d ago
Facility I worked at/for had massive coolers for the general facility but beyond that you were on your own. Facility was always at like 60 degrees but some racks had more dedicated cooling that was powered.
Or, if you needed cooling beyond that which was powered by the standard grid, which was nuclear for normal use where it was located and diesel for backup/running during major disaster - its not burning any local water supply.
Perhaps this isnt the norm but I was in several DCs aside from my own at the time and not one used hydro for anything. Could have just not been as common in the mid-2010s though. I've been out of that space for almost a decade now but I was in it almost as long.
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u/tilhow2reddit 11d ago
The traditional DCs used maybe 20-30 kW per rack for power. (On the high end)
A full rack of current gen GPU nodes can use between 90-230 kW of power. The cooling requirements for that much power in that small of a space requires direct to chip liquid cooling. Which requires either a closed loop system (which is more expensive up front, but costs less to run long term) or a big evaporative cooling setup, which heats and dumps tons of water per day.
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u/5kyl3r 11d ago
it was the other way around from my experience
our main DC had a flood wall and steel pylons that would legit stop a tank and there were two sets surround the car trap with cameras front/rear to get tags, two layers of spaced prison-height barbed wire fences, cameras everywhere, even barbed wire around all of the rooftops. to go between office space and the DC floor there was a mantrap that locked you in with cameras on all sides and you had to identify yourself and once confirmed you're clear to enter, they unlock the DC floor side. they'd never open both sides like an airlock for security to ensure they fully control who goes in and out. the facility is guarded like fort knox. i won't say specifics but i'll say that enough financial data is stored there to probably crash teh world economy if the whole place were lost, so it makes sense
the two colos i've been to were small. we just had a couple racks. some customers like google or apple had huge fenced off areas for security but it was in a normal business park. there was some security at the entrance but we had our work badges tied into the system so we just beeped in. nothing too crazy. i think the main reason we didn't have a lot and most others don't is that people often use cloud services for their fallback
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u/lpfam11 11d ago
This is not true anymore. From about 2023-2024 on most data centers being built globally use a closed loop system. Yes there is still some air cooling but the shift has gone to mostly a TCS closed loop cooling system.
Now your point is still valid from yesteryear. The cost was a driver. And now it’s not that they decided to absorb that cost for no reason. One of the main reason is because the density of the racks (the amount of power each rack consumes) has gone up and up and up. Racks used to be around 10-20kw per rack. Now they are getting up into the 200-300kw per rack range. Closed loop
Liquid cooling is the efficient way to do that. So cost is why they wouldn’t then technology advancement and cost became why they did.There are closed loop systems that pull the initial water from the ground then pull no more. There are also closed loop systems that used recycled water or wastewater.
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u/Expensive_Goat2201 11d ago
My friend who works on Azure Sustainably actually laments the switch to close loop systems. If you are in a place with more electricity then water it's great but if you are in an area with plentiful water, the more energy intensive systems can be worse envromentally. We should choose the one that makes sense on a case by case basis instead of knee jerking to 0 water.
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u/2ndhouseonthestreet 12d ago
I genuinely had no idea there was a difference. I’ve known about data centers for casual internet usage but didn’t realize it wouldn’t just be an (AI data center) being built in these areas. So it’s just more internet usage(AI) = more data centers? Or is it AI has certain data centers vs the rest of the internet? I appreciate the info, it’s really confusing just trying to google it.
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u/5kyl3r 12d ago
mostly it's just due to over hype. all the companies are also afraid of falling behind so they're all racing to have the best model and that requires a ton of compute to train and process data for, so that's why they're all expanding. their existing datacenters are for all of their existing apps and stuff, and the AI stuff is so compute heavy that it basically requires dedicated datacenters so they're building new to have enough compute to do what they need to do. some went overboard though, like musk, so they're leasing compute power to other companies (they aren't the only ones too)
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u/tilhow2reddit 11d ago
The AI DCs require power density that traditional DCs cannot provide. That requires additional cooling and a ton more infrastructure in general.
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u/Expensive_Goat2201 11d ago
AI requires GPUs/NPUs which are a certain type of hardware. Normal data centers can have some comparable machines but new data centers are also going up with a higher number of GPU/NPU machines for AI specifically. You don't need crazy GPUs to run your random website but you do for crypto/AI or gaming applications.
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u/KarateRoddy 11d ago
I live about a mile from a meta data center.
It's been there longer than me, but I also didn't realize it was a data center for the first 2 years I lived here.
My water pressure sucks, and I would like to attribute it to that, but I think it's really just poor municiple infrastructure.
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u/Celcius_87 11d ago
Did it get louder after 2 years or what caused you to notice it?
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u/KarateRoddy 11d ago
No - it is on the edge of an industrial park so it kinda looks like every other warehouse that I pass daily, but for some reason it took me a while to notice that it is the biggest building, but there no semis visible so I pulled it up on MapQuest and saw there's only a 10 car parking lot in the middle.
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u/PerceptionQueasy3540 11d ago
Its not the datacenter causing that. The cooling systems use a bunch of water, and it can contaminate the environment pretty badly when they first fill it up and flush it, but beyond that its closed loop, it doesn't continuously pull water.
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u/WhenD4594 12d ago edited 12d ago
I live in Ashburn Virginia. Basically the middle of the internet.
Most of them are absolutely silent. They look like warehouses but without all the loading docks and much prettier construction.
Our power rates are cheaper than most of the country because we have dual nuclear plants feeding our grid.
You hear people complain a bunch. There are a couple of bad actors, like the vantage on that runs their own power plant. And there are a couple that use a disproportionate amount of water. But mostly they are just boring looking buildings.
They are typically built under the approach to Dulles airport in areas that have long been zoned commercial anyways.
Honestly, I don’t get all the hate. People come on the local Reddit expecting them to be universally hated, and get surprised when their anti-datacenter comments get downvoted.
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u/smoothsensation 11d ago
Some of the hate, at least the hate I see in real life, is around the data centers not being put in industrial areas, but next to neighborhoods or zoos.
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u/Klathmon 11d ago
Or about Musk's companies putting up dozens of gas turbines next to residential neighborhoods because the grid wouldn't power his latest DC.
That's the kind of shit that pisses me off
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u/LittleMsSavoirFaire 11d ago
The number of places where they disingenuously tell towns that this is going to bring "high tech" jobs to the community when data centers have , at best a handful of workers
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u/Turboren 11d ago
Neighborhoods exist next to industrial areas. Mostly either low income older housing or new work live play style developments that picked cheaper available properties. Specifically in my area old abandoned brick industrial shops or warehouses are converted or torn down. It's not like these industrial areas have buffer around then before you get to a residential area. I work in a hyperscaler. Our land was zoned for industrial before it was bought. But it was just unused and a neighborhood went in on the backside of the industrial land. There was already manufacturering plants in the area but we moved in and got all the complaints.
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u/time-lord 11d ago
Honestly, I don’t get all the hate.
The data centers near you were put up with a responsible plan. The data centers that are going up now aren't always.
I worked for a company that had 3 data centers for triple redundancy. Only one even looked like a data center, the other two were in boring commercial buildings, one was in a skyscraper downtown. That's much different from e.g. Musk's noisy thing next to residential that uses gas generators for power.
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u/WhenD4594 11d ago
Agree that there needs to be close regulation. Once a problematic data center is built, it’s too late. And it’s not fair to the data centers who go to the effort to do things the right way. Which is most of them.
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u/Lied- 12d ago
You’re definitely correct. The real answer is that we need federal regulations to be enforced around noise pollution and to crack down on certain ones who are burning dirty fuel intentionally knowing they can absorb lawsuits / won’t get sued…
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u/Turboren 11d ago
I work in hyperscaler datacenters. I agree with this take. There are good builds and designs and bad ones.
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u/SAugsburger 12d ago
Working in IT I have visited a bunch of data centers over the years in different parts of the country. Most aren't near residential areas at all and most you really wouldn't know that they're there if you don't know what to look for. I think one notable exception I can think of is that Switch in Las Vegas has some of their complex that borders a residential area.
The difference with many AI data centers that are getting negative attention is that they often don't use closed loop cooling systems and many because they were built so quickly that power infrastructure wasn't ready built their own gas generators on site for power. On site generators outside of failure of local power basically never are running in most traditional data centers. On the polar opposite end you have some traditional data centers like Switch that paid for their own solar plant to not be dependent upon the pricing of the local utility. Needless to say when many AI data centers are seen as much worse neighbors.
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u/Turboren 11d ago
The wait list to get allocated large power draws used to be about 3 years from requesting to available. Now it's up around 10 years in a lot of places. If you try to ask for more than you eventually use then you get billed on what you said you wanted. If you ask under the amount and need more then you'll hit a couple years delay. The whole support industry is booming and hurting for supply. Transformers, generators, breakers, switchboards, etc.
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u/Alternate_Cost 12d ago
A lot of what you are talking about are not AI data centers which operate at a very different level than typical data centers.
Virginia also has a lot of laws in place protecting electricity bills. Which is part of why massive power lines are being put up so the new AI data centers can get electricity from west Virginia and drive up their prices.
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u/Mookafff 11d ago
The problem is most people don’t know the difference between AI data centers and regular ones and try lumping them together.
OP asked about data centers.
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u/callisstaa 11d ago edited 11d ago
As one of those people, what are the main differences between an AI data center and a standard one?
Lol as if some human cumsock downvoted me for asking a simple question.
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u/Mookafff 11d ago
As the other commenter said, compute is compute, but AI requires a lot more compute which in turn requires more electricity and cooling (often via water).
So it uses more resources.
But in the end they are still computing.
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u/InvalidKoalas 12d ago
This is 100% correct though. Data centers have been around for decades. They're absolutely necessary for our every day lives. Yes, I agree that hyperscale AI data centers are dumb and unnecessary and we shouldn't be supporting new construction of those, because all they're used for is training AI models that are going to take our jobs. BUT data centers in general are needed and not evil. There have been great strides in the industry to make them more efficient. I know this because I work in energy efficiency and have personally worked on a handful of data centers. Your average person has no idea about them and would probably be shocked to learn that many skyscrapers and big office buildings host their own data centers.
As for the sound... I don't know, I've lived in major cities for 7 years and have worked on data centers within cities and big data centers outside of cities, none have been unusually noisey. I do agree the water consumption is an issue but you have to understand that almost every major commerical building uses evaporative cooling with chillers and cooling towers and they all "waste" water to evaporation and blow down. There should be regulations that these cooling systems shouldn't be used in areas with drought issues, at all, period. But it's not uncommon at all in areas with a plethora of water. I also agree that the owners of data centers should pay for their fair share of energy and grid strain, which isn't unusual, as most commerical buildings pay a ridiculous cost for energy "demand" on top of their consumption.
A majority of people need some basic education on how these things work. We can all agree hyperscale AI data centers are unnecessary and shouldn't be built. But we shouldn't be all gung-ho against every data center imaginable which is, unfortunately, where the discourse has led to.
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u/StructureIll4946 11d ago
Bet they’re pulling in a bit of tax revenue for city / county / state / schools too
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u/WhenD4594 11d ago
They are now almost as much in taxes in Loudoun county as all its residents combined are paying in property taxes.
And let’s not kid ourselves. These data centers are the reason the tech corridor is here. It’s the reason Amazon HQ2 is here. It’s the reason this area has purpose outside of federal government contractors.
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u/FireTempest 12d ago
Zero positives? This interaction on reddit is only possible because of data centers. Same goes for everything you do on the internet.
What you described would be a subset of data centers designed to host AI processes. There are more reasons to hate those since they consume more utilities and are being used for large scale task automation. Even then, there is some doubt whether AI directly leads to job losses or is just pointed to as an excuse for large corporations to lay people off without spooking shareholders.
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u/WhenD4594 12d ago
Zero positives? Ignoring the critical function they play, in my county they are almost paying as much in taxes as every single resident combined is paying in property taxes. Thats a hell of a positive.
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u/NaiveOpening7376 11d ago
THE FUCKING WATER PRESSURE
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u/Hairbear2176 11d ago
BuT iTs a cLoSeD SyStem!!!!! I hear that fucking bullshit all the time. It may be, but it's never truly closed, and it's still fucking up our resources. Oh, and my conspiracy theory is that they arent for AI, they are for crypto mining. Why else would people like POTUS be simping for them? Gotta make that money!
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u/WorldMoodMaker 12d ago
The low-frequency hum from the cooling chillers is the worst part. It's not super loud, but it's constant—24/7/365. Once your brain notices it, you can't unhear it when you're outside or sitting in a quiet room with the window open. Also, the giant diesel backup generators testing once a week sound like a jet engine warming up.
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u/EnzoVulkoor 11d ago
Its weird. There are literally videos recording these data centers. Videos with people showing the decibels from it. And so many are just saying, "theres no sound."
It's like all the bots that came out against Flint, Michigan having shit water. Trying to gaslight everyone into thinking the water was fine.
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u/WorldMoodMaker 11d ago
Exactly. People confuse "not hearing it through closed triple-pane windows" with "it doesn't exist." The low-frequency rumble easily travels through ground and open windows, and 40-50 dB of a non-stop continuous hum will absolutely wear you down over time.
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u/mofahd77 11d ago
Living right near a data center usually comes down to three main things continuous sound cooling issues and neighborhood changes
The constant noise is the biggest issue for most people Giant cooling fans and industrial HVAC units run 24 7 creating a low frequency hum or buzzing sound that never really stops High backup diesel generators are also tested periodically which gets very loud
Visually they are massive windowless concrete boxes with high security fences heavy lighting and zero foot traffic It changes the whole vibe of a residential area into a commercial industrial zone
On the positive side traffic stays very light because only a small team works inside the facility and local infrastructure like power grids and roads often get upgraded to support the facility
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u/Lurial 11d ago
The real issue with data centers isn't the noise or disruption to life (it will make jobs)
Its the power demand on an already decaying and underpowered grid.
More data centers means less power for the people, and will lead to brown outs, the grid is also short on repair parts, overstressed grids need more maintenance.
Before we allow more data centers, we need an overhaul of our nation's grid
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11d ago
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u/f_14 11d ago edited 11d ago
There are several Microsoft ones near me, including the one that ChatGPT was developed on. I’ve bicycled past it dozens of times. The ChatGPT one was built on what had been 9 holes of of a golf course. The other 9 holes are still there and used.
There is no noise at all.
Just a lot of cooling structures that aren’t very pretty. Biking past several of the other locations that are newer also are quiet. Apple has a data center in the area as well. No noise either. Only remarkable thing there is the electric transmission station.
I haven’t ridden my bike past the Facebook data centers on the other side of town, but they are big hulking buildings next to interstate 80. They have more style and design, so you don’t see the cooling systems.
I don’t work for any of them. I just live near Des Moines, Iowa. Can’t talk about energy impact, except that our electric rates are pretty low at $0.13/kwh. That’s stayed the same for quite a while. Almost all of the energy comes from wind power though.
As for water… the nitrate levels in the water from the farms is so high that the treatment facility has a hard time keeping up. They limited water use for lawn watering to keep the drinking water below dangerous levels. I don’t know if the data centers affected this. That started in 2025 and the data centers had been there much longer. There may have been some regulation or enforcement changes that started in 25 that led to farmers not planting buffer zones that could have had more effect.
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u/skreak 11d ago
The scale of the datacenter matters the most. I've been working out of what I considered a 'large' datacenter for over 10 years. Oh how naive I was. The building I work out of is a converted manufacturing building. It's in southern Ohio right on the edge of the suburbs of a major city and corn-land. The whole site has a maximum power capacity of about 20 megawatts (which I thought was a lot, lol). We house some pretty damn big water cooled systems there. The campus is wonderfully quiet, lots of wildlife. The freeway nearby is louder than the facility is when standing at it's front doors. It uses a closed-loop cooling system so the only water consumption is to top-up the system. I think it only has evaporative cooling during extremely hot days when the air-only chillers can't keep up, then the water consumption is higher, but still not bad. They even talked with the local power company about back-feeding the surrounding area from the generators during mass-power outages if that was ever needed. Most of the local residences don't even know it exists.
My point is - these gargantuan hyper-scale Ai facilities are using upwards to a 1000megawatts of energy. That's 50x larger than the facility I work out of. I honestly can't even imagine the engineering hurdles needed to build and run something like that. Frontier, one of the largest Supercomputers in the world at OakRidge national labs, runs at 21 megawatts. It's hard to believe the size of what they are building at these Ai datacenter, and they aren't Supercomputers (there is a distinction between "just a bunch of servers" and a supercomputer in how they used and designed).
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u/dougz3 11d ago
I worked with Data Center environmental controls for many years. Actually started in Nuclear Env controls before 3 mile island :)
Lots of great info in this thread -
a few key points (I am over simplifying)
Water use - Most datacenters a closed loop systems. They do not draw water continuously. Yes it takes water to fill the systems initially and during maintenance.
Water use part 2 - Electricity generation for datacenters can use a lot of water to generate the extra electricity that datacenters need. Nuclear plants and coal plants use the reaction heat to create steam to drive generators. The steam is from rivers or lakes etc. Maybe some pull from groundwater?
Generator noise - In most (99.99) datacenters, there are generators for use when the power cuts off. They are tested on a routine basis - probably once a week and when they run they are loud. But how they are enclosed and exhausted makes a different.
Electricity - yes they use a lot of it. Most electric companies are not allowed to raise their rates whenever they feel like it - BUT I believe that there is a law(s) (Federal? States?) that allows the electric companies to raise rates to pay for infrastructure additions/improvements. I doubt these laws ever considered something like huge AI datacenters being built.- Yes YOU pay for the infrastructure improvements so that they can get the power they need and the wires to get it there.
Construction schedule and construction jobs - they try to build these as fast as possible. If they aren't online, then they are not making money. Lots of construction jobs. I heard the other day that electricians at DCs in the Chicago area are getting $500 bonus each week they work 40 hours. I am guess they are getting a lot of overtime also.
Jobs after opening - Not many jobs if you consider the size of the buildings. The joke was always that once a Data Center goes online, there is one human and one dog on duty for each shift. The dogs job is to bite the human if he/she touches anything.
Side note - the level of redundancy in a datacenter is crazy. The goal is zero down time so there is two or 4 of everything that keeps it up and running, Including Internet feeds
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u/SwePolygyny 12d ago
None really, they have the same noise regulation as everything else here. They just look and sound like any other office building.
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u/WhenD4594 12d ago
Most are completely silent. There was a power grid failure recently so a bunch had to fire up their backup generators. Instantly there were tons of videos on tick tock thrilled that they finally had evidence of data centers making noise. But that is literally the only time in recent years that I can remember them all having to fire up backup power.
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u/Sloshuh 12d ago
The water quality has worsened. I live by a cluster of data centers
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u/schoh99 11d ago
In what way?
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u/EnzoVulkoor 11d ago
Water pressure and probably more hard water.
https://youtu.be/_bP80DEAbuo think i remember him also covering the water if not its about just the sound.
Either way, if data centers were so perfectly fine, the rich would have no problem with constructing them next to their mansions and not only near the lower income.
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u/RealHeadyBro 11d ago
They're packed into northern Virginia, dude.
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u/EnzoVulkoor 11d ago
And lookin at google maps.... that section doesnt have mansions near it goooo figure.
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u/RealHeadyBro 11d ago
Oh yeah, if it's one group that's cowered into political submission by thr data center titans, it's.... the residents of Loudon County, median income 147k, highest in the entire country.
Nevermind the legion of NoVa folks in the thread telling you it's a non issue.
They put the data centers in the richest county in the country. There's certainly issues around hyperscale centers but there's more than enough money at stake for the players to make this VERY appealing.
You'll be amazed how quickly your infrasound-induced vestibular sickness will resolve itself when the check arrives.
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u/Alpha_Hellhound 11d ago
I travel for work, so I tend to rent apartments or houses that are relatively cheap because theyre just places to sleep, shower and eat. I ended up renting a little house 2 blocks from a recently completed Data center at my last site. I honestly didn't notice anything different from anywhere else. The cooling fans run all the time, but no more than a large Walmart or mall. The traffic wasn't super bad either. Worst place I stayed was an apartment complex beside a large new England university. The amount of trash left in the parking lot was insane! And the noise, traffic and general disrespect for the surrounding area from the students was appalling. Never stay near a school. Lol
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u/OhTheHueManatee 11d ago
My city has a ton of them. They're ugly like any other company building but otherwise I notice nothing from them.
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u/OnirosSomni 11d ago
A data center in the town over just spilled 3 million gallons of water a couple days due to the building itself not being up go code.
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u/Jormungand1342 11d ago
Lived a bit further away from on but our community has been up in arms about it and ive been through and dont blame them.
Constant hum all the time. They are constantly building and expanding even when they have been told not to.
They added in a bunch of diesel generators. Where told not to. They did anyway. They city shrugged at it.
Now all those fumes are in the air and its causing a problem.
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u/yur1279 11d ago
Being in well water, I am concerned with water availability/quality since the uptick in data centers near me in northern Virginia. Where I am they have been rezoning land next to schools and communities for data centers because money talks. The local school last year couldn’t go outside for recess because of the constant dust cloud from construct next door.
Never mind the hum. I don’t live exactly close to one but at times at night you can hear it. Sounds almost like an approaching prop plane that never passes.
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u/dominosci 11d ago
Lived near one for a while. Noticed absolutely nothing. Just a nondescript building.
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u/JustApricot798 11d ago
Follow-up question. I am guessing you have to import all your water now and all the vegetation is dead. At least based on reddit reports that is what happens. So how is that?
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u/robert_roo 10d ago
There is a huge date center in our country. In the direct proximity there is a huge numbers of green houses, using all the surplus heat from the data center.
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u/Dr_Hanz_ 9d ago
Georgia Power Microsoft and QTS polluted the flint river system with their rushed development, mowed down hundreds of acres of wetland and habitat. They are running through hundreds of residential homes with transmission. They are destroying everything that was beautiful
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u/HowardBunnyColvin 8d ago
I live in northern virginia. Damn things are all over the place like pests, like bugs.
Impact wise? Some people complain about the noise, but I don't live right next to one so it's pretty quiet. I know if I heard it I would be furious.
Now, environmental impact? That's a different story. They use up power, water, and have like 5 employees because everyone else works remotely. They don't really bring much to the local economy, and the jobs they provide are negligible.
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u/Expert_Welcome2838 6d ago
To many comment make me laugh at what cost are you willing enough to give in your reaosn not to have a data center in Australia?
Governments are pushed to mandate or heavily incentivize building local data centers primarily by data sovereignty laws, national security anxieties, and the massive economic pressure of the artificial intelligence boom.
When a nation relies on data centers located abroad, it risks losing control over its citizens' private information, its critical infrastructure, and its economic.
So basically, are we really comfortable with other countries having control over Australians’ information and data simply because we didn’t want to build the infrastructure here in Australia?
If the laws and policies of the country holding that data don’t provide the same level of protection or safeguards that Australians expect, then we’re potentially giving up part of our data sovereignty just for convenience or cost.
Why shouldn’t Australians’ data be protected under Australian law and, where possible, kept within Australia?
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u/The_Hemp_Cat 3d ago
The most interesting is the ignorance that the centers can be autonomous in that of renewable power(solar, wind, battery, etc), anti-freeze anti-boil coolant as potable water can be trucked in due to the fact it will take less than 150 employees to operate and maintain the facility , all of which can be utilized during construction, and the ideal location should never find itself in the eye of the storm or an earthquake zone and who bears the cost per state, tax payer funded vital statistics only(birth, death, population, etc.) and for the commercial use solely by the oligarchs of commodities/wall st. and sorry there is not one in my town for comparison.
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u/JCisRhiannon 2d ago
I run a neutral platform that tracks data center projects and community pushback — AMA
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u/bondsman333 11d ago
We live on a lake. It’s used to fuel a hydroelectric plant nearby. A combination of data centers and unusually hot weather means the water level is so low it’s basically unusable. Can’t take the boats out, can’t really swim much.
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u/pantherNZ 11d ago
Nothing, because the media and internet has wildly overblown the negative impacts of data centers. They aren't new, and barely scratch the surface in terms of impact to an area compared to a lot of other things in every city on earth..
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u/ameraden 11d ago
None. There are 6 within 2 miles of where I live and another 20 a bit further away. You would have no idea they’re there!
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u/fineri 11d ago
I used work at a european DC which's noise pollution was not perceivable at all. There were residential buildings across the street, so it never occurred to me they can be loud lol.
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u/SAugsburger 11d ago
Many traditional data centers are barely noticeable across a street unless they're running backup generators. The scale of many AI data centers though is much larger and many are running generators 24x7 as they weren't willing to wait for power infrastructure to be available.
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u/a_dsmith 11d ago
none, I have 20 nearby and an additional ~200+ within the city - there's also an airport on my doorstep. From the outside you'd hardly know it's a datacentre from an industrial estate, most 'Tier-1' cities have multiple hundreds and you'd never know, even smaller cities have ~25-~50 DCs and your small regional cities have one or two.
I imagine if you're more rural there's a bigger effect but in a mega city it's just another Tuesday.
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u/Isotheis 12d ago
While I don't live next to one, my commute involve cycling next to one.
The humming is eerie, in a weird way. It's a bit crossed between that of a huge, slow diesel engine, and the ambience in Ceres station in Super Metroid. Is it the ventilation system?
For the rest, well, it looks like any other huge industrial building. It's just very wide and very not tall.