Making SC846 quiet?

[ponky]

My home rack is already pretty quiet. Most of the noice come from SC846 and its fans. I already have SQ PSUs, but I'd like to replace the three fans behind the backplane. I'm using the chassis as JBOD, so I can safely remove the back fans I think.

I noticed that the back fans can be replaced easily. They're attached to cages with standard screws, however, middle fans don't have screws.

Has anyone replaced the middle fans using original Supermicro fan cages or do I have to do some modding to the chassis itself?

 

[Diavuno]

If it's Jbod can you turn down the controller?

how many disks do you have? I had removed half of the drives in mine and just ran the rear fans, keeping the airflow directed through the drives is critical _make sure you have fillers ETC

I also taped off the side vents to force more through the drives.

 

[ponky]

If it's Jbod can you turn down the controller?

how many disks do you have? I had removed half of the drives in mine and just ran the rear fans, keeping the airflow directed through the drives is critical _make sure you have fillers ETC

I also taped off the side vents to force more through the drives.

What do you mean by controller? I have fans connected to a CSE-PTJBOD-CB3 power board with IPMI. Currently I have 12 disks.

 

[Diavuno]

some non nsupermicro controllers have fan speed controllers.

have you tried plugging your fans into the backplane?

 

[ponky]

some non nsupermicro controllers have fan speed controllers.

have you tried plugging your fans into the backplane?

No I haven't. I don't think the stock fans can get any quieter than they are now.

 

[Diavuno]

they do have an aggressive pitch, but its needed if you fill up all the bays.

 

[T_Minus]

Again, as was suggested on the "other forum" you asked on... #3 controller and turn down fans.

 

[halfelite]

I swapped out the stock fans for noctua fans. Now they dont pull as much air as the stock fans but with running 16 drives the drive temps went up 1-3C over the stock fans. But its now very quiet. If I fill all the drive bays I think I will have to go to a fan that pulls a bit more then the noctua do. I did have to modify the fan bracket. I removed stock "fan rails" pulled out the fan bracket and had to drill holes to mount the noctua fans. In terms of going back to stock nothing was ruined so going back is not an issue.

 

[HomeLabber]

I have the same chassis completely filled with drives (granted, 5400 rpm SATA drives).
After switching out the CB2 board that came with it for a CB3 board, the noise is not bad at all - definitely quieter than my rack mount servers and I used to hear the this beast up a floor through my soundproofed rack/enclosure.
Login to the IPMI web interface and verify it is correctly pulling temperature data off the backplane (via the i2c connector) and that your fans are reporting their speeds. I have the original fans in the chassis that used to spin at 10,000 rpm which run at 3100 rpm. System temp is currently 30 degrees C and drives are still at 3100 rpm under heavy load. I would recommend swapping in the CB3 board over using quiet fans with the stock board, the fans that come with the chassis are high static pressure fans, so they can still ramp up to cool your stuff off even under worse case scenarios, including fan failure.
The only downsides to the CB3 upgrade are:
1) Cost - This board is expensive
2) Mounting - The existing standoffs do not work for the new board dimensions of the CB3
3) IPMI cable routing - There is nowhere to practically run the ethernet cord for IPMI out the back of the chassis. I ran mine through the front of the chassis (there is small piece that pops off to the left of the power button where you can route the cord).

 

[fmatthew5876]

So has anyone successfully made this chassis quiet enough to be in your living room or even bedroom?

I know they have made strides over the year with the power supply and PWM fans. For example this one:
SC846BE1C-R1K28B | 4U | Chassis | Products | Super Micro Computer, Inc.

Is it really possible to get it down as quiet as the SC743 chassis or a standard desktop workstation?

 

[CyberSkulls]

So has anyone successfully made this chassis quiet enough to be in your living room or even bedroom?

I know they have made strides over the year with the power supply and PWM fans. For example this one:
SC846BE1C-R1K28B | 4U | Chassis | Products | Super Micro Computer, Inc.

Is it really possible to get it down as quiet as the SC743 chassis or a standard desktop workstation?

I use mine purely for storage so CPU horsepower was never on my top 10 list. Therefore I put in a AM1 chip/mobo, passive CPU cooler and only 4GB ram. I run my mid plane fans off the CPU PWM fan header and power the fans via SATA power connector. I keep my drives spun down when not in use. When a drive is in use it stays below 30C. I use 920SQ power supplies and the noise level is comparable to my Fractal Define R4.

Take away from this.. these chassis don't have to be loud and you don't need to go gutting them and hacking a craptastic setup together with fan replacements or Norco fan walls that look horrible and a ATX power supply held in with Velcro.

Now if your running a dual CPU set up that's getting completely hammered 90% of the time, that's a whole different story. But since they are storage chassis, I use them as such and get quiet results. Just my $0.02

Edit: Spelling

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[HomeLabber]

My sc846 with the B3 jbod controller is inaudible under load. I have the entire front of the chassis filled with 5400 rpm drives with mostly 7200 rpm drives in the rear.

 

[fmatthew5876]

@HomeLabber

Is that with stock fans? This must be one of the newest models with the new quiet PSU no?

I've got a single Xeon Skylake cpu, standard supermicro motherboard, GTX 1070, 10g nic, and SAS HBA inside. Also my drives are 7200RPM. So I think my cooling requirements are a bit more than both of you guys.

 

[CyberSkulls]

I should also add I'm running 5,400 RPM drives as well, not 7,200.

My original plan was to go with the CB3 board (I had the older CB2 boards at the time) but they were around $130 at the time and I was able to purchase a AM1 board, CPU, ram, and the 4 pin fan splitter for like $90. So I honestly didn't care if it had a board in it, it was purely based on cost and a easy way to control fan speeds. Figured if I wanted/needed to change the speed I could plug into the onboard HDMI and adjust it exactly how I wanted in the bios.


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[fmatthew5876]

I'm using this preconfigured machine for pfsense. It comes with a quiet PSU and a single quiet 1u 40mm fan. I'm adding a 10g pci-e nic, so I bought a second fan.
Supermicro | Products | SuperServers | 1U | 5018A-FTN4

It uses FAN-0100L4 which runs up to 8.5k rpm. This case is stone silent.

Its likely you could get an SC846 quiet with the atom board this machine uses.
Supermicro | Products | Motherboards | Atom Boards | A1SRi-2758F

You could probably cool it quietly with just a heat shroud and no additional fans.

The board is more than enough for a file server and you'd save on power usage.

Theres also Xeon-d, which is more capable but has higher cooling requirements. It would be interesting to know how far you could get with quiet cooling in the SC846 with these boards.

 

[maze]

I just changed my fanwall with 120mm noctua industrial fans, and two 80mm noctua pwm fans in the back. Running a xeon-d board. Temps went up a bit on the cpu, but a little fan and they dropped like 10 degrees. Gonna have to get a new heatsink I think, and a noctua 40mm fan maybe - to just drop the temp as much as possible.

Noise went down massively with the change of the fanwall and even more so with the back two fans being removed.

 

[Rand__]

Got a pic? How did you fasten them?

 

[K D]

I just changed my fanwall with 120mm noctua industrial fans, and two 80mm noctua pwm fans in the back. Running a xeon-d board. Temps went up a bit on the cpu, but a little fan and they dropped like 10 degrees. Gonna have to get a new heatsink I think, and a noctua 40mm fan maybe - to just drop the temp as much as possible.

Noise went down massively with the change of the fanwall and even more so with the back two fans being removed.

Pics please. Interested in the fan wall.

 

[maze]

Quite ghetto like. But just ziptied the fans together - they kinda fit tight inthere. Then put two zipties down beneath where the cables went under the old wall, and put them through the outside holes to keep them in place (not really needed, dont move this one around much )

 

[K D]

Was the fan wall in the 836 removable or was it riveted and you had to drill them out?