At my Wit's End with the supermicro variant of the Dell C6100 regarding fan noise

[DubVBenz]

I purchased this: Supermicro | Products | SuperServers | 2U | 6026TT-TF and I've read the "Taming the C6100" thread multiple times and have taken the following actions:

1. Swapped out the supermicro fans that were originally rated for 9500RPM (FAN-0141L4) for versions that are only rated for 6500RPM (FAN-0099L4)
2. Used ipmitool, ipmiutil and smcipmitool to adjust the high and low thresholds. I had hopped that by setting an artificially low threshold, it wouldn't actually spool up above that. I was wrong, because all that appears to do is set the thresholds at which it will log alerts. It also does not live past a reboot (even if using the -p persist option)
3. Used the smcipmitool to attempt to set the fan to optimal mode, but received errors about unsupported devices or invalid modes
4. I'm ordering an even slower set of fans next (FAN-0074L4)
5. Disabled Intel Xeon turbo mode in an attempt to keep clock speeds and temp down
6. Set the bios to use an energy saving mode
7. Tried plugging the fans directly into the BMC header instead of the ones on the node mobo (no PWM at all on BMC)
8. Updated bios to the latest version
9. updated IPMI to the latest version

My findings so far:

1. Bios options make no difference
2. Temperatures on all sensors show low or normal, but the fans still spool up as fast as they'll go after the system has been on for 4-5 minutes and stay there. There seems to be absolutely no relation to the reported temperature and the fan speed. The system is also sitting by itself in a Air Conditioned room (70F) with no other heat generating sources
3. The bottom node on both side's fan spins significantly slower.
4. The node header it's plugged into doesn't seem to make much difference

I stupidly spent around 3Grand on all of this equipment thinking I could mitigate the fan noise, but when they're spinning at 7000RPM, there's no way to hide the noise.

Can anyone suggest any other steps I may have missed? I bought this thing used from an ebay reseller, so I'm not even entirely sure the nodes were originally cabled correctly. I do know that they did not include the air shrouds, but I can't imagine those make a huge difference.

Please let me know if I need to move this posting elsewhere. Thanks!

 

[Jeggs101]

I think you bought a high-density server and those are loud. Even a "tamed" C6100 is still not quiet from when I tried it, just manageable to leave in the garage.

 

[DubVBenz]

I think you bought a high-density server and those are loud. Even a "tamed" C6100 is still not quiet from when I tried it, just manageable to leave in the garage.

I definitely got greedy when I saw the specs, but I just need to explore every possible avenue to get this thing down to an acceptable noise level. I'm in a condo in a high rise, and I don't want the noise to escape my unit and bother my neighbors.

I'm wondering if I should just get some 3 pin fans that spin at a constant 4000RPM and call it a day. I know this thing isn't going itself in my apartment given the relatively light load it'll be doing.

What's frustrating is that all of the supposed IPMI and PWM fan management features seem basically useless on this chassis, as the fan speed does not appear to correlate to sensor temps.

 

[neo]

I'm wondering if I should just get some 3 pin fans that spin at a constant 4000RPM and call it a day.

This is exactly what I was about to write. Look into static RPM third party fans in the same size - which you know will be quiet. Check the dBa before you purchase. If you choose to go this route, I would monitor your temperatures after to ensure it's cooling will suffice.

 

[MiniKnight]

It's a lotta stuff that needs to be cooled. Like you have 8 processors, at least 24 DDR3 DIMMs, multiple drives, that old IOH which uses lots of power (like having an Atom C2750 extra on every board) 2 PSUs all in a 2U case. Quiet will mean low airflow. Low airflow will mean hot.

 

[Terry Kennedy]

What's frustrating is that all of the supposed IPMI and PWM fan management features seem basically useless on this chassis, as the fan speed does not appear to correlate to sensor temps.

I don't know about the Supermicro, but on the Dell R710s I have, the fan speed is controlled by the BMC, with a fail-safe that the fans run at full speed until the BMC wakes up and takes control. So at hard power-on and when updating BMC firmware the fans go wild, but soon settle down to around 4000 RPM (dual X5680's, 48GB RAM, 6 x 15K SAS drives). This can be tweaked somewhat in the BIOS performance menus, but the BMC is still the final arbiter of what speed the fans should run at. If the cover is off, the cover switch also forces the fans to run at high speed. BTW, the R710 is one of very few systems qualified to run the X5698 4.4GHz CPU, and with one of those installed all of the fans run at full speed all of the time.

In my RAIDzilla II systems, which use Supermicro X8DTH-iF motherboards in the CI Design NSR316 chassis, the fans also run at full speed until the BMC wakes up and takes over. But in there, "full speed" is somewhere north of 24000 RPM, so they sound like they're about to take off when first powered on. Even at the operating speed of 4000-6000 RPM (depending on which fan) I certainly wouldn't try running one in anything but a dedicated server room.

 

[DubVBenz]

So perhaps the air shrouds are more important than I originally considered. I realized that the second set of memory (towards the back) on the top node was significantly hotter than than others. I pulled that memory (temporarily) and now the fans seemed to have settled at 2700-3000 RPM, which is completely tolerable. I've already contacted the ebay reseller to see about them sending me the appropriate air shroud (which should have been included ) per node, but have not yet heard back yet. Anyone know if the hot swap air shroud will work with the non-hot swap model? Those seem readily available online but i'm having some difficulty finding the non-hot-swap version.

 

[DubVBenz]

Alright, question for the experts here... I found some 80x25mm non pwm fans that stay at a steady 3100 RPM. Any idea if I can mount those or what effort would be involved in doing so?

 

[Diavuno]

very little effort... but that might cook your components.

check the bios for a few settings, turn on PWN and workstation mode.

maybe you need to properly repaste your cpus?

 

[MountainDew]

Did you make any progress on your 6026?