SuperMicro fans won't stop revving

[azev]

You can definitely lower the fan thresholds.

I am sure from Supermicro perspective changing the fan thresholds is considered a hack and an unsupported change, hence their comments.

 

[fmatthew5876]

I have an Supermicro X11SAT-F motherboard with a Noctua CPU cooler. My fans were constantly reving up and down and it was loud and annoying.

Running ipmitool to view the sensors showed the problem, the FAN1 was running at 300RPM

ipmitool -H HOSTNAME -I lanplus -U ADMIN sensor
FAN1             | 300.000    | RPM        | cr    | 200.000   | 300.000   | 500.000   | 25300.000 | 25400.000 | 25500.000
FAN2             | 700.000    | RPM        | ok    | 200.000   | 300.000   | 500.000   | 25300.000 | 25400.000 | 25500.000
FAN3             | 1100.000   | RPM        | ok    | 200.000   | 300.000   | 500.000   | 25300.000 | 25400.000 | 25500.000
FAN4             | 1800.000   | RPM        | ok    | 200.000   | 300.000   | 500.000   | 25300.000 | 25400.000 | 25500.000
FAN5             | 1100.000   | RPM        | ok    | 200.000   | 300.000   | 500.000   | 25300.000 | 25400.000 | 25500.000

Changing the fan thresholds fixed the problem for me

ipmitool -H HOSTNAME -I lanplus -U ADMIN sensor thres FAN1 lower 100 150 250

I don't think this is a "hack" anymore than supermicro might say they don't support third party fans.

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

Changing the fan thresholds fixed the problem for me

ipmitool -H HOSTNAME -I lanplus -U ADMIN sensor thres FAN1 lower 100 150 250

Just be warned that I've had two SM motherboards with Noctua fans where the rpm actually dropped to 0, so the revving would happen regardless of whatever thresholds I set. Annoying, but seems to be a quirk of the SM IPMI combined with some of the Noctua fans.

 

[uldise]

it depends on SM motherboard used. newer generations have a special feature for that: Low-noise fan speed control
Last time i see something similar on my old X9SCM-iiF with Noctua Fans - you can set lower thres for zero, but this don't help at all - board thinks that fan is dead, and ramp up all ot them to max speed, then settle them down until again it think it stops..

 

[i386]

Just be warned that I've had two SM motherboards with Noctua fans where the rpm actually dropped to 0

Do you know what fan(s) you used?

 

[uldise]

Do you know what fan(s) you used?

this computer is not with me now, but i think it's a NF-F12 PMW.

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

Do you know what fan(s) you used?

Pretty sure it was the NF-S12A's that gave me that particular problem; I think I've used the NF-F12's successfully although I just tend to avoid using Noctua fans with SuperMicro boards as a whole now. FWIW I've never had the same problem with any of my ASRR IPMI implementations, touch wood.

 

[TXAG26]

Just a reminder, the fan thresholds reset to factory default if you upgrade/flash the IPMI firmware. You'll need to go back in and re-program those thresholds.

 

[dominic]

I've been running into this same issue with my Supermicro X11SCL-IF-O and Noctua fans. I noticed that only 1 fan seemed to be dipping down to 0 RPM (triggering the spin up). I tried putting one of the Noctua low noise adapters in on the cable for that fan, and it seems to have fixed the problem (for now). The fan is reporting a steady 200RPM on the IPMI web interface, and I'm not getting any more oscillation.

I don't know if it was the adapter or I just got lucky on a reboot of the system, but I thought I would share.

 

[Operations]

It has ben a few years but how do you do this?

ipmitool -H HOSTNAME -I lanplus -U ADMIN sensor thres FAN4 lower 100 150 250

I have download this files:

GitHub - ipmitool/ipmitool: An open-source tool for controlling IPMI-enabled systems

An open-source tool for controlling IPMI-enabled systems - ipmitool/ipmitool

github.com

But not sure what to do next.
Via SSH the command is not accepted.