Help Silence SuperMicro Server Fan Array

[Peter Jay]

I have a fix that will very likely work and cost you nothing except time. And will make things non-standard, but the fans will probably never wear out this way. Wire 2 fans in series - disregard all but the red and black wires (tape the ends of the other one or two) and wire two fans at a time this way: connector black wire -> black wire fan1 | red wire fan1 -> black wire fan2 | red wire fan 2 -> connector red wire (use only one motherboard fan connector for 2 fans). If you do this with the pigtails that run from the motherboard, the fans will STILL be hot-swappable (!). If you're careful, you can still revert to the original wiring.

Leave at least 1.5 inches of wire outside the connector so you can re-do if a fan goes bad or if you need to re-strip the insulation. You will have a now-spare motherboard connector pigtail left over.

Fans will always run the same speed but will be much quieter, and because they are running half-voltage, will probably never wear out. I have done this many times with other devices that have noisy fans, when I'm sure that the machines will never run too hot even at 1/2 fan speed.

Will try this with my Supermicro case and fans in a bit and hope to report back with results. But I'm betting this is a good fix.

Follow-up: Yes, this worked. Needed to set the fans to full speed in BIOS (old X7DBU mobo, btw) but all is working fine. I just re-wired the middle two fans and unplugged the other ones. This server will be very lightly loaded, so I don't anticipate any CPU overheating - the CPUs (2 dual-core Xeons) only have heatsinks, no attached fans. System is much quieter.

And yes, I'm willing to take the consequences if a fan fails. But at half speed, the fans will probably outlast the rest of the system.

 

[Churchill]

I'd rather spend the $30 and buy 3 new fans and put them in with them working than hack the shit out of my fans and lose my entire system.

 

[azev]

I keep reading these "make my case quieter thread", but I am stuck with the higher speed fan especially during the summer cause things get super heated where I put the computers, and I just have to put a earplug when I am near them hehehe.

 

[vangoose]

I keep reading these "make my case quieter thread", but I am stuck with the higher speed fan especially during the summer cause things get super heated where I put the computers, and I just have to put a earplug when I am near them hehehe.

Being there.
I use a whisper quiet chassis for controller, adding a 8-disk mobile rack for SSDs. connect to an external 846E16 storage chassis (replacing the PSUs with Super quiet ones). The whole setup is relatively quiet and cool.

 

[TommyL]

1.5YR update, the fans have made a world of difference. Picked up 3 more to mod another server case and going to make sure that one is silent as well.

Good job. Were you able to just pop the 0074L4 fans into the original housings? Or did you have to do any modifications?

My CSE-826 is screaming like a jet on full afterburners, need to do something about this.

Regards

Tommy

 

[Churchill]

Good job. Were you able to just pop the 0074L4 fans into the original housings? Or did you have to do any modifications?

My CSE-826 is screaming like a jet on full afterburners, need to do something about this.

Regards

Tommy

the fans 'fit' into the original housing AFTER you cut away a bit of the original fan shroud to make room . It's a bit of a pain in the ass the first time but after fan 10 it's cake.

 

[TommyL]

It's a bit of a pain in the ass the first time but after fan 10 it's cake.

LOL

Ok, i see. You have to cut. So it was worth it? Still pleased with the result?

I’ve been looking at some Evercool fans, but not sure if they are any quieter than the SM ones.

https://www.amazon.com/Evercool-EC8038HH12BP-80mm-Hi-Speed-Bearing/dp/B00BCR48TY#customerReviews

Tommy

 

[Churchill]

LOL

Ok, i see. You have to cut. So it was worth it? Still pleased with the result?

I’ve been looking at some Evercool fans, but not sure if they are any quieter than the SM ones.

https://www.amazon.com/Evercool-EC8038HH12BP-80mm-Hi-Speed-Bearing/dp/B00BCR48TY#customerReviews

Tommy

I wanted stock SM Fans to "Just Work" with my server without any hacking including fan control. I've done this mod 10+ times on 4 servers. Between this mod and getting the SQ+ PSU's my servers make pleasant white background noise and nothing more.

 

[TommyL]

Thanks for taking the time to answer. I will probably go the same route.

 

[nthu9280]

Actually, you can simply swap the housing without any cutting. There is a small snap-on clip. Pop it open remove the screamer. Do the same with quiet fan. Swap it and put the respective clips back on.

 

[TommyL]

Actually, you can simply swap the housing without any cutting. There is a small snap-on clip. Pop it open remove the screamer. Do the same with quiet fan. Swap it and put the respective clips back on.

Thanks for the tip! Will try

 

[TDJ211]

I just got done replacing the screamers with the FAN-0074L4's on my SC826 and wow what a difference!

I previously had the original fans connected with some spare Noctua low noise suppressors in line to keep the noise down. I had fan speed set at Standard. Problem was when turning off the AC during the day and heading to work, my HD temps would creep higher (~39C) than I would like (I like to keep my temps below 35C). Ive yet to do a proper scrub on my FreeNAS VM, but I imagine it would push it over 40C. I figure it's cheaper to replace the fans than have to keep my AC on all day while im at work.

Its a lil tricky at first figuring out how to get that lil clip that holds the connector off without breaking it. Practice on the green housing first, once you see how that pops off, you'll know what to do with the white housing. Once you get that sorted its very simple. There is one corner where the old housing is indented and you'll have to snap off the plastic on that corresponding corner of the new fan to get it to fit. I just took some pliers and snapped that lil bit off (came off real easy) and the new fan slid right into the old housing.

Once you get through the first fan, the rest of are super easy. It took maybe 10 mins to do the other 2 fans.

 

[Drew_Jackson]

I wanted stock SM Fans to "Just Work" with my server without any hacking including fan control. I've done this mod 10+ times on 4 servers. Between this mod and getting the SQ+ PSU's my servers make pleasant white background noise and nothing more.

Thank you for following up on the post and all of the info. Just bought a SM 846 myself and ordered the SQ+ PSUs. Thinking of going with the FAN-0074L4, just sucks they are $30 each, and looking at the Super Micro fan chart only drop the DBA from like a 56 to a 45. Do they really make that big of a difference and worth it more that trying to hobble together some Noctuas? Also, I don't think I saw you mention did you replace the two fans on the back of the case and if so with what? Thanks!!

 

[C_n0te]

Thank you for following up on the post and all of the info. Just bought a SM 846 myself and ordered the SQ+ PSUs. Thinking of going with the FAN-0074L4, just sucks they are $30 each, and looking at the Super Micro fan chart only drop the DBA from like a 56 to a 45. Do they really make that big of a difference and worth it more that trying to hobble together some Noctuas? Also, I don't think I saw you mention did you replace the two fans on the back of the case and if so with what? Thanks!!

dB is on a logarithmic scale. An increase of 10dB roughly doubles the loudness.

 

[TommyL]

Its actually 3db for every doubling...

I swapped my PSU's for the SQ ones...and damn what a difference! I can almost leave the stock fans now...almost

 

[ullbeking]

I am considering getting an SC846 chassis simply for running experiments. I want near-silence, and the fact is that rack servers are not designed with silence in mind.

I have a workstation that has the following chassis and PSU's:

SC747TG-R1400B-SQ | 4U | Chassis | Products | Super Micro Computer, Inc.

It has a 2p POWER9 server+workstation in it. Each CPU is 4-core and SMT4, which I chose because they idle cool and quiet. RAM is 64 GB.

The primary use case, which I discussed with the vendors before hand, is that it will be a DAW (digital audio workstation). Of course these 1400 W PSU's are too loud, even the -SQ ones. I think -SQ is relative to normal kW+ PSU fan noise.

Therefore I am discussing downgrading to redundant 1280 W -SQ PSU's, along with PDU's and other required hardware. I heard that these are the second-quietest PSU's that SM offer (aside from the 900 W -SQ PSU's, which I understand are the quietest; maybe these would be the wisest choice?).

Am I crazy in expecting a giant, heavy, SC747 chassis with 1280 W PSU's to be near-silent?

I have heard of people being driven mad by the noise produced by the more powerful Supermicro workstations and their chassis, even when efforts are made for silence. I don't know however if this is another chassis vendor trying to push his product on to me.

I am well prepared for the possibility that I might need to re-fit the computer into a chassis designed for quiet operation. In this case I would use Seasonic PRIME Ultra PSU's, which I think are best for workstations (and possibly even servers too).

 

[Rand__]

The question is what you need to keep cool in there. If you run 24 sata ssds and a cool board you might not even need extra fans unless the environmental temp is too high.
My goto PSU is the 501P - efficient and silent enough.

O/c you can use the 4U space and simply remove the SM PSU array and add an ATX PSU if you don't care about resell value, done that on some old intel chassis.

 

[kodi]

Sorry for waking up the old thread - I just got two of Fan-0074l4 and trying to figure out how to fit them inside the 826 in place of the original fan-0126L4. There is no way they will fit as they came in - they are just too wide (or am I missing something). If anyone can explain to me how to open those shrouds (especially the parts that are holding the plugs) I will be very grateful.

 

[Rand__]

Brute force?

well a small screwdriver, pry it in, lift it up gently until it pops out

 

[Churchill]

Sorry for waking up the old thread - I just got two of Fan-0074l4 and trying to figure out how to fit them inside the 826 in place of the original fan-0126L4. There is no way they will fit as they came in - they are just too wide (or am I missing something). If anyone can explain to me how to open those shrouds (especially the parts that are holding the plugs) I will be very grateful.

You literally have to crack open the old fan shrouds, remove the fans, then pry open the new "Green"(at least they were to me) fan shrouds, remove said fans, and put new fans in old fans shrouds.

The wiring is the same, you need to be careful in removing the old fans to not damage anything too terribly much.