Supermicro 846 chassis noise level

[coolrunnings82]

I am looking for a way to reduce the noise of my environment since my rack in in my 20x10 office and a server room isn't in the budget for the forseeable future. I currently have 2x Supermicro SC216 chassis each 1/4-1/2 populated with SSDs, a Supermicro X9DR7-TF+ motherboard, 2x 2670's, and 256-384gb of RAM. The noise level at idle is enough to make me lose my mind thanks to 5000rpm fans. I'm using Supermicro 2u cooling fans and they're usually at 5k rpm all the time and the chassis fans aren't that much better at 3500rpm-4200rpm on average. I do have PWS-920SQ power supplies in there and while that does help, it isn't enough.

I modded the heck out of an old 846TQ with a 120mm fan wall fabricated from HTPE but it was a pain in the butt. I'm wondering if the modern 846 chassis have quiet enough fans that with a 4U Supermicro cooler they would be quiet. I don't expect silence but I need to have them not noticeable sitting 14' away. I never intend to use SAS spinners, just SSDs so I assume that would take a lot less to keep things cool.

Any suggestions on this topic?

 

[T_Minus]

FWIW I use a SM 4U HSF in my workstation that is 1' or less away from me, they're silent at idle and even 50% CPU+ for 1hr+ I can't hear it. This is in a room that's 70-75*F too.

I don't think the 846 is that loud how it is with the 4U SM HSF myself. They are crazy quiet compared to the 216s

 

[coolrunnings82]

I guess I am more worried about the midplane and exhaust fans than the 4U heatsink in an 846... What do you think?

 

[Chuntzu]

I would recommend recommend updating the fans in your chassis to pwm fans, it along with updating the psu to the 1200/1000 watt versions, has made my nodes almost silent, my switches are the only thing left making noise. Update all the fans and connector to the 4 pin pwm fans and your good. This goes for any supermicro chassis (I have done it to 826,846,836,and 216 chassis) and negates all noise issues.

 

[coolrunnings82]

@Chuntzu - Are you able to look at any of your 216 chassis and tell me what fans you have that aren't noisy? I have PWM fans in mine and they are loud as heck because at idle, the fans are 4k rpm all the time while the CPU fans are 5k+. I already did the SQ PSU's and those were an amazing difference but those 80mm's have a really annoying pitch. I guess it's all relative because I had some 920 non-rated PSUs that had 10k+ rpm fans and my original 846 came with non-PWM fans. Those were literally painful to be in the same room...

I am also wondering if the reason they are so noisy is because I'm using a motherboard not designed for that chassis. It fits and all but do they have some thermal tuning built into the motherboard for specific chassis?

 

[coolrunnings82]

The fans that are currently in my 216 chassis are 2x Nidec UltraFlo Model V80E12BHA5-57 and 1x San Ace 80 model 9G0812P1G09. I just removed the 1x San Ace fan all together and interestingly enough, the all the fans including the CPU slowed down to sub-4k rpm at idle and the temps remain within 1C of what they were previously. Quite interesting. Still a bit of an annoying whine but MUCH less irritating than before.

With my configuration above, I am wondering if I could safely replace the CPU hsf/fans with passive 2U HSF units and just put in a Nidec Ultra-flo in place of the SanAce to remove the noise problem. The room is kept at a steady 77 degrees fahrenheit or lower with a minisplit AC less than 8' away from the rack...

 

[britinpdx]

Any suggestions on this topic?

I've been down this path several times, and there are several areas to look at. Bear in mind that my workloads, hardware configurations and acceptable noise levels could well be different from others. There's a ton of data on the SM web site, and I have the highest of regard for SM in the way that they engineer their systems.

I often look at their "superserver" products to see how they are factory configured to get a reference. There is usually a link to the specific motherboard and base chassis that is used for that specific configuration. Most of the SM superserver and chassis product pages have a link at the bottom of the page that shows the "parts list" for that build. ( You can get lots of details from this list )

The other SM reference docs that I often use are the Power Supply Matrix, the Heatsink Matrix, the Heatsink Compatability Matrix and the System Fan Matrix.

Anyway, here's the areas that I've looked at to reduce noise ...

1) CPU Cooling
The majority of SM "superservers" are configured with passive cooling. The notable exceptions are the LGA2011 workstation towers that are based on the 745 chassis, and these us the SM 4U cpu cooler.
The LGA2011 motherboards have either "narrow ILM" or "square ILM" heatsink footprints. The X9DR7-TF+ has a square footprint, so for 2U chassis your choices from SM are the passive SNK-P0048P or the active SNK-P0048AP4. I found the SNK-P0048AP4 to be a noisy little bugger and swapped out the fan with a Noctua, which brought the noise levels down nicely, but CPU temps under load were nowhere near the standard fan, so I went back to the standard fan.

Now, there is one other option that I will recommend for a "square ILM" footprint in a 2U applications, and that is the Intel STS200C active cooler (I think it's better than the SNK-P0048AP4 in terms of both noise and cooling).

My other recommendation for 4U applications is the awesome SM active SNK-P0050AP4. This is the CPU fan that SM use in their "whisper quiet" 745 based workstation builds.

2) Chassis Fans
This is where the data in the System Fan Matrix comes in handy. The SM 2U chassis predominantly deploy 80 x 80 x 38mm fans. (Older SM chassis used 3pin non-pwm fans and they are to be avoided at all cost if noise is a concern).
If you filter the SM fan list by size (80 x 80 x 38mm) and then sort by dBA, you will see that the FAN-0074L4 has the lowest noise at 45dBA (note that static pressure and CFM are also the lowest of the bunch, so reduction of noise has a cost).
The FAN-0074L4 is also the fan that is standard in the "whisper quiet" workstation configurations .... who would have guessed !

Now, be aware that the plastic fan housings are a little different (by design) between chassis. The FAN-0074L4 will not fit into the SC216 chassis.

Here's a couple of SM fans that I have to hand, left to right is the 0074L (green), 0094L4 and the 0126L4 ...

The 0074L plastic holder is larger than the others. Note that the 126L4 holder is notched so that it will only accept fans without corner ribbing.
It's pretty easy to pull the fans from their housing and swap them around. If you wanted to put the fan from the 0074L into the housing of the 126L4 you have to cut off the notched corner to allow the fan to fit.

A while ago I picked up a "lot" of the 0094L4 fans from eBay as these appear to be the "generic" enough to accept a range of 80mm fans.

Note that the 0074L4 fan is the same physical housing (different color though) as the standard fans in my SC846 chassis. In other words, its a drop in.

3) Power Supply
I think that you already have a handle on this one. I have found that the "PWS-920P-SQ" power supplies are good for low noise.

4) Fan Settings
It appears that different SM motherboards (as well as different FW revs) offer different fan settings. I seem to remember that I have used some SM motherboards that didn't allows fan settings to be changed from the BIOS, but had to be set using the IPMIView utility. "Optimal" is my usual choice.

I can usually get the SM 2U chassis to be noise reduced, but my preference for noise control is to use the 846 rack mount chassis (even though I don't need all of the disk space). The 743/745 tower chassis are also excellent choices.

 

[coolrunnings82]

@britinpdx - Thanks for the helpful info! I really appreciate it - especially the fan breakdown. Seems 846 is the way to go if I stay with Supermicro because I really don't want to compromise cooling and the noise level out of the 216 chassis even at idle has an obnoxious whine to it. I do have the fans set to optimal per the IPMI console (you're right, couldn't find the settings in the BIOS). Unfortunately I cannot seem to find any leads on chassis without expanders in them. Since I intend to run several arrays of Intel S3700 SSDs and not hard drives, that doesn't leave me with much in the way of options. I'm considering getting a Dell R720 and selling off my SM gear but I haven't decided yet...

 

[BatServ]

Britinpdx's pictures pretty much tell the tale but hopefully my tale will help others. I have a Supermicro SC847 4U chassis. It has 36 harddrive trays and to cool it there are 7 fans close to the middle of the chassis. Like you found out, the original fans would drive a person up the wall. It came with -0099L4 6,500RPM, 84CFM 38mm fans in it. (Looks just like the rightmost picture) Even though they are PWM capable, they were connected to the hard drive backplane with no speed control. Connecting them to the motherboard provided much relief, but there was still a bit of annoying whine.

I bought 3 of the -0074L4 5,000RPM, 68CFM 38mm fans and tried running the chassis with them alone. They come in the green colored carrier, which doesn't fit my chassis. So as Britinpdx mentions, you can chop out one corner to make them fit the thumb grip in the beige hot-swap carrier. With 3 SSD's and 13 consumer grade (mostly green) hard drives and just 3 fans the temps were higher than satisfactory. Although, the dual CPU's ran just over room temp.

So, looking for something that would just drop in, I found a cheap auction for -0044L4 3,750RPM 48CFM 25mm fans. They come with the carrier like the middle picture in Britinpdx's post. That carrier will swap with the thumb grip (rightmost pic) style as long as you have room for the extended handle that hangs out above the fan guard. In the SC847 three of the fans don't have room for this, but the other four fit fine. I didn't find out until after I bought them that the -0044L4 fans are NOT PWM, they are just three wire. It turns out to not be a big problem, they are quiet enough as is.

Since I was tired of buying fans that didn't fit or were too loud, I quit there. I have a good bit of wind noise, but the annoying whine is completely gone. It sounds about like a laser printer as it's working. Standing one room away I can barely hear it.

I did buy some -0104L4 2,800RPM, 33CFM, 25mm fans. They are really really quiet, but decided to see how temps hold up once I get all my disks transferred from my older storage towers into this new chassis. I didn't want to cut airflow that much until I can prove temps remain stable.

I have 1,400 watt power supplies, and even though they are not SQ rated, they barely make any noise at all.

 

[coolrunnings82]

I finally just decided to get a Dell R720. Very quiet, though not silent, and was able to get the features I needed, albeit at a higher price-point. Thanks for all the feedback guys!

 

[kapee94]

Britinpdx's pictures pretty much tell the tale but hopefully my tale will help others. I have a Supermicro SC847 4U chassis. It has 36 harddrive trays and to cool it there are 7 fans close to the middle of the chassis. Like you found out, the original fans would drive a person up the wall. It came with -0099L4 6,500RPM, 84CFM 38mm fans in it. (Looks just like the rightmost picture) Even though they are PWM capable, they were connected to the hard drive backplane with no speed control. Connecting them to the motherboard provided much relief, but there was still a bit of annoying whine.

I bought 3 of the -0074L4 5,000RPM, 68CFM 38mm fans and tried running the chassis with them alone. They come in the green colored carrier, which doesn't fit my chassis. So as Britinpdx mentions, you can chop out one corner to make them fit the thumb grip in the beige hot-swap carrier. With 3 SSD's and 13 consumer grade (mostly green) hard drives and just 3 fans the temps were higher than satisfactory. Although, the dual CPU's ran just over room temp.

So, looking for something that would just drop in, I found a cheap auction for -0044L4 3,750RPM 48CFM 25mm fans. They come with the carrier like the middle picture in Britinpdx's post. That carrier will swap with the thumb grip (rightmost pic) style as long as you have room for the extended handle that hangs out above the fan guard. In the SC847 three of the fans don't have room for this, but the other four fit fine. I didn't find out until after I bought them that the -0044L4 fans are NOT PWM, they are just three wire. It turns out to not be a big problem, they are quiet enough as is.

Since I was tired of buying fans that didn't fit or were too loud, I quit there. I have a good bit of wind noise, but the annoying whine is completely gone. It sounds about like a laser printer as it's working. Standing one room away I can barely hear it.

I did buy some -0104L4 2,800RPM, 33CFM, 25mm fans. They are really really quiet, but decided to see how temps hold up once I get all my disks transferred from my older storage towers into this new chassis. I didn't want to cut airflow that much until I can prove temps remain stable.

I have 1,400 watt power supplies, and even though they are not SQ rated, they barely make any noise at all.

Did you actually change the power supply as I am looking to get one from eBay but the older 846 I have moded heavily with change in power supply and fan controller to reduce the noise levels.

If you can post some pictures or links for any mods you have done to reduce the noise level would be appreciated

 

[BatServ]

Did you actually change the power supply as I am looking to get one from eBay but the older 846 I have moded heavily with change in power supply and fan controller to reduce the noise levels.

If you can post some pictures or links for any mods you have done to reduce the noise level would be appreciated

No I have the original power supplies. They are the 1,400 watt Gold level versions and except for the initial power on blast the fan noise from them is quite acceptable.

The only other changes I made to the factory setup are:
1) I bought fan extensions and moved the fan connector from the hard drive backplane to the motherboard. The backplane does not provide PWM control, but the motherboard does.
2) As I mentioned in my post, I changed the fans out. The mid chassis fans were the source of all the annoying noise.

 

[i386]

If you wanted to put the fan from the 0074L into the housing of the 126L4 you have to cut off the notched corner to allow the fan to fit.

That's what I did for my Supermicro 836BA, the middle fans run about 300 rpms slower (2200-2300 instead of 2500-2600) and the temperatures of the hdds (6tb HGST nas drives) increased about 3°C in idle mode and about 5°C under load.
But the annoying "whining" noise of the 126L4 fans is gone and the cooling is sufficient.

 

[epicurean]

Where does everyone buy the Fan-0074L4 from? seems to be out of stock everywhere except a few ebay sellers who are charging a premium for it

 

[K D]

Where does everyone buy the Fan-0074L4 from? seems to be out of stock everywhere except a few ebay sellers who are charging a premium for it

It is cheaper to buy directly from supermicro estore. I just got a few to replace the ghetto noctua ippc fan wall I was using. Very similar performance and noise levels. For the 846, it is a direct drop in replacement.

 

[Rand__]

What are the recommended silent(ish) replacement fans for the rear end blowouts?

 

[i386]

Im using the stock rear fans from by 836ba (FAN-0125L4).
I used my phone and a soundmeter app to measure the noise. Result is that 5k rpm fans run at 40db 3-4db quieter but have a high pitched/whining noise vs 43db with the 0125l4.

 

[K D]

FAN-0104L4 is another option. Quieter than the FAN-0074L4. I have it running at full speed in a chassis with 16 8TB reds (and no exhaust fans). Currently it has been doing a file write for the past 18 hrs and the temperatures are between 38-40deg. Idles at ~34deg. These drives usually run hotter than other 5400 rpm drives. So the performance should be even better if you are using cooler drives.

Between the 0104L4 and 0074L4, I see no more use for a ghetto fan wall with 120mm fans.

 

[Rand__]

0104L4 for mid section, not exhaust I assume?

 

[K D]

0104L4 for mid section, not exhaust I assume?

Yup. That's right.