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Supermicro X9/X10/X11 Fan Speed Control

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RolloZ170

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Apr 24, 2016
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I'm just stoked to have a fan cooling the crazy x557 chipset when the system is only running BMC.
supermicro and the main customer don't want false alarms.
it is designed to RUN in a server chassis, install, turn on, turn off after 2/3 years for scrapping / replaced by next gen.
 

foureight84

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Jun 26, 2018
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supermicro and the main customer don't want false alarms.
it is designed to RUN in a server chassis, install, turn on, turn off after 2/3 years for scrapping / replaced by next gen.
Yea. I figured that these boards are meant for 24/7 of constant use or just powered on. But this is a good work around for outlier use cases.
 
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verysneaky

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Jun 1, 2025
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cross posting here because I suspect this is of interest to people in this thread as well. In the pursuit of making my X10QBi quiet, I've been digging into ipmitool raw commands to better understand how it works, with some limited success. If you have an interest in understanding fan control for this specific board, or how ipmitool raw allows one to manipulate the fan controller directly, have a read of my investigation here: https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...icro-sys-4048b-trft.27636/page-13#post-488188

I don't have a good feel for how well this scales to other boards, however.
 

peter_s

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Oct 15, 2021
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cross posting here because I suspect this is of interest to people in this thread as well. In the pursuit of making my X10QBi quiet
...
I don't have a good feel for how well this scales to other boards, however.
It seems to be an edge case, not like other X10/X11 boards.

smfc project just implemented the support of Supermicro X10QBi motherboards, you can give a try.
 
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peter_s

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Oct 15, 2021
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Hey guys, have you seen any information about Supermicro X14 IPMI raw commands?
My experience is that usual X10-X13 IPMI commands are working, but the fan levels are overwritten by BMC control logic.

I made some investigation and experiment here with one of the smfc user without success:

I would appreciate any link to a success story.
 

RolloZ170

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Hey guys, have you seen any information about Supermicro X14 IPMI raw commands?
here is the unzipped firmware folder, maybe you find somthing. some files are ELF, you can disassemble them with ghidra or other tool.
it seems to be openbmc.

Zwischenablage_04-06-2026_01.jpgZwischenablage_04-06-2026_02.jpg
 
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peter_s

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Oct 15, 2021
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here is the unzipped firmware folder, maybe you find somthing. some files are ELF, you can disassemble them with ghidra or other tool.
it seems to be openbmc.
Thanks, it seems to be very useful. How did you find that?
 

RolloZ170

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Thanks, it seems to be very useful. How did you find that?
load the bin file in HxD or your favorite hex editor. search for "img"
imgheader.jpg
Code:
[img]: 0 b50ef 75dd3701 image-u-boot
[img]: 100000 40000 4ea06b04 out_cpldrot_tbl_2nd.bin
[img]: 140000 f0000 b1d0866d tee.bin
[img]: 230000 60000 c7615bc6 out_tee_signtbl.bin
[img]: 310000 20000 6b53219d out_spl128.bin
[img]: 330000 8df8b8 f3aa78fa image-kernel
[img]: d40000 2fea000 c353bda9 image-rofs
[end]
(img): start addr. lenght CRC filename
select and save d40000 lenght 2fea000 bytes to file image-rofs.
extract image-rofs with 7z to folder.
 

peter_s

New Member
Oct 15, 2021
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so far i have extracted linux file tree from any BMC firmware.
I think I managed to reverse engineer the new IPMI raw commands for X14 motherboards, but I'm waiting for a test on real hardware.
The important files in the firmware implementing the RAW IPMI commands:
  • libsupermicrooemcmds.so.0.0.1
  • libmanualcmds.so.0.0.0
The point here is that the built-in BMC PID control can be turned off per IPMI zone and there are new/different raw commands for set/get duty cycles. You can find more details here on my GitHub, with a description of the raw commands and a test script.

If you or anybody can check that on a X14 motherboard it could help as well.
RolloZ170, thanks for your help!
 
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RolloZ170

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If you or anybody can check that on a X14 motherboard it could help as well.
Code:
#Set FAN to full speed
saa.efi -c RawCommand --raw "30 45 01 01"
Set FAN back to normal behave
#saa.efi -c RawCommand --raw "30 45 01 00"
iKVM_captureSTH.jpg
i have to use saa.efi tool local because i can't get access with ipmitool form other PC.
But I can access BMC dashboard and iKVM from that PC, disabled Firewall doesn't help. even IPMIView does not see the X14SBW-F
 

RolloZ170

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X14
if we can get access to running BMC filesystem we could change FAN settings of phosphor-pid-control.
Zwischenablage_04-14-2026_01.jpg
 
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