Supermicro SuperServer 7045B-T / Norco Case Mod

[coolrunnings82]

I'm not sure if this is the right location for this thread but I chose here since many viewing this section seem to have the Norco cases.

I recently purchased a Supermicro SuperServer 7045B-T on Craig's List. I got it home and was greeted with the sound of a miniature Lear Jet. I am considering modifying this chassis with the intention of reducing the insane volume and lowering its power consumption. This model has hot-swap 80mm fans. I noticed that the midplane is extremely easy to remove (or at least appears so). I would like to put in the 120mm Norco fan wall for the RPC-4220 case but I can't seem to find the dimensions of that piece to see if it would work. Can anyone here give me the dimensions of that fan wall?

I intend to replace the motherboard with a Supermicro socket 1155 board and either an E3-1220 or an i3 2100 once I find out if the i3 really does support ECC RAM. I have all 8 drive bays populated and 16gb of RAM, does anyone know if I could get away with 3x quiet 120mm fans in the midplane and some quiet 80mm fans in the back without compromising the long-term stability of the system? Not sure if it matters, but this server will be converted to a rack model and used in a 16u rack.

Any help or advice on this topic would be appreciated!

 

[sotech]

Our main server has 24 green HDDs and three 120mm fans, two of which are pushing through a radiator - and they're the only fans in the system, apart from the slow/quiet PSU fan. They manage to keep the HDDs at a desirable temperature as well as keeping the PCI-E cards and motherboard heatsinks/RAM cool - temps were better for the PCI-E cards when we put the non-radiator fan blowing directly onto them, as you'd expect. We ditched the rear 80mm fans as we didn't find they really improved temps by more than a degree or two if anything and for the lessened noise/power use it was preferable to not have them.

I have no experience with that chassis, though - I can say that the above works for us in a 4224, YMMV.

 

[coolrunnings82]

Thanks sotech! If you don't mind, is there any way you could post what type of temps you're getting from the motherboard and cpu sensors as well as your ambient temperature in the room?

 

[sotech]

Sure - under a normal workload (probably 12 drives being read from/written to at any given time) with ambient temperature being around 20 degrees the hard drives sit around 33-35 degrees, CPU temps sit around 33 degrees and the motherboard temp reads at a couple of degrees below that. The temperature inside the rack is typically about 3 degrees higher than ambient and the exhaust temperature behind the PSU (hottest part of the exhaust) is around 16-17 degrees above ambient, usually sitting around 36-37.5. CPU load typically doesn't crest 75% across all twelve threads and sits around 25% when all of the VMs are idle so I'm not exactly pushing the CPU hard - when we upgrade the processor I plan on doing a bit of folding for a while to test out how efficient the cooling can be but that won't be for a few weeks yet.

 

[coolrunnings82]

Awesome. That helps quite a bit... Any way you could give me the dimensions of the 120mm fan wall? (the 80mm one should be the same come to think of it if you still have it handy.)

 

[sotech]

Awesome. That helps quite a bit... Any way you could give me the dimensions of the 120mm fan wall? (the 80mm one should be the same come to think of it if you still have it handy.)

Haha, next time I have it out to do a writeup of the water cooling installation I'm happy to measure it, in the meanwhile it's in a production server

It didn't occur to me to measure it before installation - you're right, the dimensions aren't easy to find Maybe someone will have an 80mm fan wall they took out and replaced that they could measure...

You could probably do a reasonable job of guessing - if you know the distance that the fan holes are apart for 120mm fans you could take measurements based on that and the online photos and if you can find high res enough photos that aren't distorted it might even be somewhat accurate.

 

[Patrick]

Another thought is you could try different 80mm fans. I did this before doing 120mm fan upgrades and it does make a big difference in noise.

 

[coolrunnings82]

If I were to put in 4x 80mm fans that were quiet enough to not be a disturbance when working in the same room, would it get enough airflow though? The room is 78 degrees F on average...

 

[Patrick]

That is a fairly warm room. I have not used that chassis recently so not sure, if you have green drives you are probably OK though. Really hard drives just need enough airflow to stay cool, especially if you are not loading the system with tons of very hot add-in cards.

 

[coolrunnings82]

That is a fairly warm room. I have not used that chassis recently so not sure, if you have green drives you are probably OK though. Really hard drives just need enough airflow to stay cool, especially if you are not loading the system with tons of very hot add-in cards.

Yeah my office fluctuates between 76-80 due to being located in Tucson, Arizona and keeping it cool is quite a chore! The only add in cards would be an Intel Dual-Port NIC and possibly an IBM M1015 card. I'm seriously debating the merits of modding the Supermicro vs. selling it as a whole and using the money to buy a Norco case. I'm heavily leaning toward the Norco the more I read...