Dell PowerEdge T640 as a Workstation : Powerful and Silent.

[frankly]

Wow, I am very surprised the 12 x 8Tb Dell/EMC drives don't trigger the 43% fan response!
I had verified that even the default 1Tb dell boot drive did so I am surprised that higher capacity models work. Do you mind sharing more details about these Dell/EMC drives? Are they from an EMC NAS appliance?
Dell took out the ability to control fan response on the 14th gens in iDrac v3.34 (I had complained loudly about this to them) so unlike the T630 there is no default solution without expensive modding of the machine (6 PWM fake fan controllers + noctua'ing the system - IF it works) but that'd be quite an enadeavour.

I'll help any way I can but I don't know much about the server they were pulled from. They were used at a corporate real estate company. The guy who sold them to me told me that the company routinely pays to have tens of thousands of networking/office equipment hauled away. Based on that, I have a hard time believing they wouldn't just purchase the drives directly from the vendor who supplied the servers.


Here are the idrac grabs of the fans running at under 16% PWM with the 12x 8TB drives installed. iDRAC is on firmware 7.00.00.183 and H730P perc is in HBA mode if that matters.

 

[madindehead]

@ElCoyote_

Do you happen to know if you can remove the 4 inner fans when running an 18-bay version? Or is iDRAC going to have a fit if I do that?

Fans currently idle around 43% PWM - definitely triggered by some of the drives sitting in there. Will need to work on replacing those if I want the noise to come down.

Also - thanks for the info about the external high performance fans requiring the high performance internal fans and triggering the iDRAC response. Will steer clear of that!

frankly

Thanks for the info above on your hard drives. These are showing as Certified and is clearly what helps with the fan speed. I'll be targeting some ASAP to keep my fan noise down!

 

[ElCoyote_]

@madindehead I am not sure the iDRAC wll play nice with the 18bays backplane and the absence of the middle fan tray. It's worth a try but make sure to do a flea power drain before you turn it back on so that the iDRAC forgets about the fan tray.

 

[madindehead]

What I thought yeah. I might skip it for now. Replacing drives with Dell certified drives is probably the better option based off the post from @frankly.

I am compiling a list of all Dell part numbers and their underlying drives from one re-seller website that I know holds all that info in a somewhat reliable and similar format for all drives. It details the Dell part number as well as the underlying drive e.g. the one that frankly has is an HGST HUS728T8TAL5200 / DC HC320 Series drive and this info is matched on the re-seller website. Should help me to know what I'm looking for across eBay and re-sellers. While the main goal is to have Dell certified drives, and those are easy enough to find, it's nice to have a resource that outlines what drive you are actually getting. Can also verify sellers somewhat.

I'm slightly frustrated at myself for not checking out the info on the T640 iDRAC fan response, but the 18 bay I picked up was too good to miss.

 

[ElCoyote_]

Yeah, the 14th gen fan response became unconfigurable after iDRAC 3.34 firmware (Dell took it away).
The T630 was a lot easier to work with in this regard because the fans could still be configured manually.
So my recommendation for T640 owners is to usually avoid HDDs and go with flash.
in my 18bay T640 (a V1 chassis) I do have HDDs (5 x 16Tb WD RED ) and like yours the fans are all around 42%-43%. I never investigated sourcing Dell HDD's because that T640 is now in another room and my other T640 is all-flash so it doesn't carry the same noise payload.

 

[madindehead]

I'll help any way I can but I don't know much about the server they were pulled from. They were used at a corporate real estate company. The guy who sold them to me told me that the company routinely pays to have tens of thousands of networking/office equipment hauled away. Based on that, I have a hard time believing they wouldn't just purchase the drives directly from the vendor who supplied the servers.


Here are the idrac grabs of the fans running at under 16% PWM with the 12x 8TB drives installed. iDRAC is on firmware 7.00.00.183 and H730P perc is in HBA mode if that matters.
View attachment 46148 View attachment 46149View attachment 46150View attachment 46151

Do you have any other PCI cards in your T640? I'm running the same iDRAC version as you, all drives now 'Certfied'. Still getting fan speeds of around 40%. Quite annoying now!

 

[frankly]

Do you have any other PCI cards in your T640? I'm running the same iDRAC version as you, all drives now 'Certfied'. Still getting fan speeds of around 40%. Quite annoying now!

I have a NIC, HBA, and NVMe m.2 adapter but all 3 are dell branded unfortunately so I don't know that I can be of much help.

The 40% fans are very annoying. The dell branded cards were just a few dollars more expensive and sometimes the same price as non-dell ones so if you went through the trouble of getting certified HDDs, it may be worth it to get Dell PCIe cards.

 

[frankly]

I have been running the 'Valley' GPU benchmark for 20 minutes, GPU at 135W/140W with GPU temp in the 70C-80C. Seems good to go.

@ElCoyote_
A few years later, everything still running smoothly with your dual SATA to 6 pin PCIe solution? I am very tempted to try this method with a 190W GPU (Radeon Pro W7700). I know PCIe 75w + dual SATA 108w still leaves me 7w short but I was planning on just undervolting the GPU a bit so it would never try to pull more than 108w from the adapter. Do you know if the T640 with 18x 3.5" even has 2 spare SATA connectors? I know the optical drive is one but I am not sure if there is a 2nd available.

Ideally, I could install the GPU with the power board as intended but man has it been a very frustrating process/learning experience. I have the baffles/shrouds, external fans, power board, and cables but only 4x standard mid-bay fans. I can install GPUs with this kit but the fans go to 100% (I am assuming because my mid fans are standard performance). For some reason, I thought that the mid-bay high performance fans were "optional", would throw an iDrac error, but not force fans to 100%. I really can't handle the external jet engine fans at 100% so now I've spent hundreds to get all the other GPU kit components that are now collecting dust. I just can't bring myself to pay like $450 for 4 high performance fans.

 

[ElCoyote_]

@frankly
Yes, everything still going strong, thank you. I wish the fan on the A4000 would drop to zero on light 2D / idle work so it'll eventually wear out but hey.. good enough for now.

Now, on the topic of standard fans going 100% when you install the GPU kit, I believe this is because of the external fans. Once you install the GPU kit, the system will start requesting one external fan kit (the left one or the right one, not sure I remember). Once you have that extra external fan connected, the main fans should drop somewhat but it will still be very loud. Also, I tested this years ago so later iDRAC versions might have changed it and YMMV.

On watts, with the A4000 I had a power margin; with your W7700, you're gonna be close to the margin (or slightly above it) so you're in uncharted waters, so perhaps it would be best to keep a thermal monitoring solution nearby (or one of those optical thermal imaging addons for phones found on amazon).