fan control issues in EMC x400 chassis with supermicro X8DT6-F

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slaxx

New Member
Dec 9, 2019
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0
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Hello All,
I recently acquired a new system for expanding my NAS and aside from the inability to see or control the chassis fans its awesome, low power, fits my 14tb drives and aside from some network drivers it works right out of the gate. The only problem I have is that it's really really LOUD, like "WHY ARE WE ALL YELLING" loud. It throws an error on boot saying the bios can't control the fans because no fans are connected, but they run at 100% it seems. I've updated the bios and BCM firmware and still neither can see the fans to do any type of management on them. Since it's an ebay purchase and I'm not an enterprise customer getting any info from dell is impossible, so here I am.

Has anyone had any experience with this setup? If so can they point me in a direction on how to quiet it down a bit?

references
chassis: x400-301430-0113
mb: Super Micro Computer, Inc. - Products | Motherboards | Xeon Boards | X8DT6 / X8DT6-F / X8DTE / X8DTE-F
ebay posting: Supermicro 36 bay 4U Server Storage x8dt6-a-is018 2x E5603 Ethernet Freenas | eBay

Any help or direction is greatly appreciated. Its currently 3/4ths populated with disks and everything temp wise is far below any threshold.. using hddtemp the hottest drive is 32(c), and its one of the 7200rpm's.

Thanks in advance
 

Aestr

Well-Known Member
Oct 22, 2014
967
386
63
Seattle
Based on what you say and the pictures in the listing the fans are not connected to the motherboard. This is not uncommon and they are likely connected to the drive backplane. Take a look at where the fans are plugged in and if possible connect them directly to the motherboard (extension cables may be required).

FWIW the fan speed control on the x8 motherboard is not amazing so while you can hopefully get it down from the current full speed, if you're looking to really tame the noise and can get away with less cooling you can either upgrade to an X9 or greater series motherboard where you can have granular control over the fan speeds (See guide here) or get a third party fan controller.
 
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