Dell R730xd 100% loud fan speed even with server room at 20 C/68 F temperature

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uberguru

Active Member
Jun 7, 2013
463
31
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SSH into your iDRAC and run the following command so its not ramping the fans for your Mellanox cards.

racadm set system.thermalsettings.ThirdPartyPCIFanResponse 0

This isn't going to suddenly drop it to 20%, but it should make a difference. After you run this you should check your card temperatures after a day or so and make sure they are in a comfortable range.

Your fans are also going to be running at a higher RPM due to the two SSD's in the back (ramps to make sure they get good airflow). So if you are never going to fill the front bays, moving the SSD's to the front (with appropriate adapters) would further lower the fan RPMs.
Code:
/admin1-> racadm set system.thermalsettings.ThirdPartyPCIFanResponse 0
[Key=system.Embedded.1#ThermalSettings.1]
Object value modified successfully
it was the mellanox card!!

i ran the command and now here is what i see

1730326202639.png

thanks a lot!
am fine with 51%
 

oldfett

#iwork4dell
Jul 20, 2016
44
21
8
I think alot of this comes down to how you want to engineer something. I kind of miss the days of crank windows, carbs and basically a dozen wires running a car. Its simple and it works, but its very manual and there isn't a safety net (literally and figuratively). Inversly a nice new car I'm very comfortable in, it monitors everything and does things automatically but its amazingly complicated. The old car will happily destroy itself because it hasn't a clue something is wrong with the engine, fuel, whatever, however the new car will step in to save itself but as a result may shut off. Both are 100% valid ways to engineer something, both will have pros and cons.

This isn't apples to apples to the current conversation but it is similar. As the world moves along to more open standards it will be interesting to see how this all shapes up.


Glad to see that did the trick though!
 

uberguru

Active Member
Jun 7, 2013
463
31
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you never said anything about my points. and just keep sticking to your beliefs.
if you think about things logically i dont see how you will support what dell is doing

they can do what they have and still have a way for people to modify the fan settings to their needs
the current setup of not allowing me to modify these fans speeds is obviously annoying to me and i am spending unnecessary hours trying to fix that. compute what the results to by thousands of people who might face same issues and number of servers
not to mention the extra electricity bill multiply by millions of servers around the world

all am saying is if my server room is made cool, then i dont need fans to ignore that. that is all am saying
the dell servers are by default made to just run high for no damn reason

just checked another R630 server with 1 CPU of 90 watts and only 2 drives and the crap is running at 68% also blowing noise
how do you justify that is a good decision? after all i have laid out?

if anything the dell fan setup is more of the old car technology, dumb and have no sense of other factors that matter

one last thing i wanted to add, is am not sure if you know this but there is a huge difference in blowing cold air vs blowing hot air, HUGE difference
it is like getting a big high rpm fan in a room vs getting a mini split to pull out the hot air and push cold air
you can increase the rpm of that fan and create unnecessary noise and you will never ever get the same coldness and low humidity with a small mini split running whisper quiet that will not even run all the time and still keep that room super child
so thinking the dell fans running at high rpm is some how a great thing to do might not be the case
again not saying it should not, not even saying it shoul dnot be default settings but for crying out loud, allow us to modify the settings
it can be done and they purposely dont want to do it for whatever stupid reason that is

i am assuming you might be ignoring this huge air flow technology but i may be wrong
 
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oldfett

#iwork4dell
Jul 20, 2016
44
21
8
I admit I am biased. I do also concede they seem agressive on fan RPM and have been for a while.

Example case: I have a not Dell running an Epyc Rome that I like, good box. Inlet temp is 20 C, CPU is 34 C. The GPU and Connectx-6 DX are all very happy campers, as am I because its quiet and just works. I installed two Micron 9300 Pro's on a PCI card in the back, first drive (closest to fans) gets uncomfortably hot, second card just about immediatly thermal throttles copying a cat meme over to it. Fans don't care or ramp at all. Now the question of should I have done this, no absolutely not. But nothing stopped me from doing it... Would a Dell have stopped me? No, it would have ramped the fans to the moon and would have made things better for a while, but this was still stupid for me to try.

So from this experience and a few other fun ones and amazingly crammed full dense boxes, CFM matters. 100% agreed room on fire CFM isn't going to net you anything and room temp is the more critical measurement.

I am personally a huge advocate for 'I know what I'm doing' options or nerd knobs, so I think you and I very much align on that.
 

uberguru

Active Member
Jun 7, 2013
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yeah thinking about it, i will have to find a solution because i can not accept the unnecessary noise the servers are creating for no reason. again my server room is 66-68 F, that is like a fridge, i dont need fans making noise in there

even with the other server resolved, regular R630 still making noise without anything even running on them
imagine they running at 90% capacity, the whole server room will be like ready to explode due to noise

so yeah i just swapped my servers from lenovo blade server to these dell servers and now am not happy at all
the server roomt hat used to be whisper quiet is not making significant noise all over the place

i have to stop this, and it sucks that this will be a huge effort to accomplish

how did dell get to this and continue to do this? so no one is complaining about this thing?
 

oldfett

#iwork4dell
Jul 20, 2016
44
21
8
Any chance are your R630's are running into the same thing with ThirdPartyPCIFanResponse? If not could you check the following under Hardware -> Fans? Even if you think not, wouldn't hurt to run it and see if they drop down.

  • Thermal Profile is set to Default or Low Power
  • Fan offset is off
  • Minimum fan speed is set to default or as low of a value as it will take
  • Exhaust temp is set to Default (70)

I quick checked an example R630 I have access to with a single 2660v3 (105W), two expansion NICs, 4x 15k drives and a PERC H730 and its fans are around 20% (mind you the box is very idle this time of night). So yours running at 68% seems strange.

I personally am a fan of these two changes to save some wattage when things are idle, I don't think it would impact fans much though
  • Setting the System Profile in the BIOS to Performance Per Watt (OS)
    • I usually leave the OS at defaults, this just lets it have control over everything and ramp down when not needed
  • Setting the Thermal profile in the IDRAC to Minimum Power


Anyway sorry for the tweaking, I think you can get there though.
 

uberguru

Active Member
Jun 7, 2013
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the R630 do not have any PCIe card installed if not woul dhave ofcourse ran the same racadm command.
just 1 CPU and 2 drives and running at 68%
at least not the 100% the stupid R730xd was running till that was resolved


i just ran the same command on the R630 servers and nothing happens, fan still making noise


Code:
/admin1-> racadm get system.thermalsettings
[Key=system.Embedded.1#ThermalSettings.1]
AirExhaustTemp=70
#FanSpeedHighOffsetVal=68
#FanSpeedLowOffsetVal=23
#FanSpeedMaxOffsetVal=100
#FanSpeedMediumOffsetVal=45
FanSpeedOffset=Off
#MFSMaximumLimit=100
#MFSMinimumLimit=0
MinimumFanSpeed=255
ThermalProfile=Default Thermal Profile Settings
ThirdPartyPCIFanResponse=Enabled

/admin1-> racadm set system.thermalsettings.ThirdPartyPCIFanResponse 0
[Key=system.Embedded.1#ThermalSettings.1]
Object value modified successfully

/admin1-> racadm get system.thermalsettings
[Key=system.Embedded.1#ThermalSettings.1]
AirExhaustTemp=70
#FanSpeedHighOffsetVal=68
#FanSpeedLowOffsetVal=23
#FanSpeedMaxOffsetVal=100
#FanSpeedMediumOffsetVal=45
FanSpeedOffset=Off
#MFSMaximumLimit=100
#MFSMinimumLimit=0
MinimumFanSpeed=255
ThermalProfile=Default Thermal Profile Settings
ThirdPartyPCIFanResponse=Disabled
they both still running at default 68%, the one with 2 x 145 watt CPU with 22 cores i understand but the other one with just 1 x 90 watt CPU also running at 68% doing nothing i dont get


server with 1 x 90 watt CPU doing nothing

1730356369641.png

1730356387086.png

1730356406784.png


1730356469035.png


1730357689539.png



also what version of iDRAC are you running?

here is mine

1730357540303.png
 
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oldfett

#iwork4dell
Jul 20, 2016
44
21
8
I was running iDRAC 2.86.86, I downgraded to 2.84.84 just to see if it changed anything, it did not.
1730395500659.png

I played around with the performance profiles, unplugged a drive, unplugged PSU, etc. and I keep settling into18% once the OS boots (Windows 2019 - admin box) and the system is sitting idle.

1730395388600.png



Still thinking but I guess a few questions:
1) When the server boots and/or you login to the iDRAC do you see the Dell logo and it says its a PowerEdge R630? Would doubt its a custom OEM box with its on ID module, but just wanted to be sure.
2) No other crazy alerts or anything iDRAC is flagging as unhealthy?


Will keep thinking of what else it may be and respond if I have an other ideas
 

uberguru

Active Member
Jun 7, 2013
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yup when booting up it says dell poweredge R630
here is full screenshot of iDRAC landing page to show it is pure dell R630

1730401917416.png


1730402206654.png

1730402234204.png

if you need me to take any particular screenshot of any page will do
but no alerts, as you can server shows everything working fine and i also shared the temperature readings which are under 21 C
also showed the CPU and drives, so anything else you need me to share, will do
server room currently is between 66 to 68 Fahrenheit and humidity is 34-39%, so server room is chilled but then the fans dont even care about that
 

oldfett

#iwork4dell
Jul 20, 2016
44
21
8
Maybe a dumb question, but your post seems to kind of imply these systems are new to you and you are maybe still in setup phase. Also Overview screen above shows you are at System Setup. Are there OS's installed on these servers and are you booted to those when you are primarily looking at fan speed?
 

uberguru

Active Member
Jun 7, 2013
463
31
28
Maybe a dumb question, but your post seems to kind of imply these systems are new to you and you are maybe still in setup phase. Also Overview screen above shows you are at System Setup. Are there OS's installed on these servers and are you booted to those when you are primarily looking at fan speed?

yup the servers are new, i used to use lenovo blade server before and prior to that hp blade server
i just started the switch to dell poweredge servers and that is why this is annoying because all the other brands understands that server fans should react to room temperature but dell server fans dont care about that

the screenshot shows setup page because i went there, there is OS installed on it already just had it at setup page to check some stuffs as am trying to figure out what the hell is going on

so i rebooted the server now and allow the OS to boot up and now the fan speeds went down
didnt realize being in setup menu lets the fans blow so high
anyways fan speed now down to 30% which i will accept

1730410408426.png

ok cool, well learning more and more about these dell servers

so let me check what else is going on the other R630 with the 2 x 145 watts CPU and see if i can get that fan speed also down from 68%
 
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uberguru

Active Member
Jun 7, 2013
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@oldfett installed OS on the other 2 x 145 watt, 22 core CPU server and now fan speed also down to 30%

alright not as much disappointed in dell afterall
looking reasonable, so being in setup menu creates fan chaos i see
cant remember that being the case with the lenovo/hp blade servers thought but either ways all good now

thanks for all your help, really appreciate it
 

Koop

Well-Known Member
Jan 24, 2024
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imagine they running at 90% capacity, the whole server room will be like ready to explode due to noise
If you think a few of these running at 90% is this bad I got some really bad news for you if you ever encounter a room full of XE9680s and mellanox switching.
 

oldfett

#iwork4dell
Jul 20, 2016
44
21
8
@oldfett installed OS on the other 2 x 145 watt, 22 core CPU server and now fan speed also down to 30%

alright not as much disappointed in dell afterall
looking reasonable, so being in setup menu creates fan chaos i see
cant remember that being the case with the lenovo/hp blade servers thought but either ways all good now

thanks for all your help, really appreciate it
Glad its better! Hope the rest of the setup is smooth sailing.