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Supermicro X9/X10/X11 Fan Speed Control

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FozzieBear

New Member
Aug 24, 2015
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Working on an X10SRH board with the latest IPMI. Just a note, if you're using slow fans (like the fans on the Noctua NH-U9DX i4 I'm using) and set the duty cycle to something low, they'll drop below the lower critical threshold and the IPMI will spin them right back up again. Just lower the threshold to below whatever your fans are at to prevent that. (e.g. ipmitool sensor thresh FAN1 lower 100 150 200)
 

epicurean

Active Member
Sep 29, 2014
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I recently put a X9SRH 7TF in a 836 chassis. The SM P0048AP4 HSF on the CPU keeps going at a crazy speed, speeding and slowing in an alternating high pitch. I change to standard and also optimal fan configuration, same effect. Its even noiser than the X9DRD 7LN4F which was in the same chassis previously.

As a linux newbie, I do not understand this article despite reading it a few times. The X9SRH 7TF is a esxi host with only a napp-it VM, so I do not even know how to get ipmitools working as the article says. Any help much appreciated on lowering the noise on this setup.

Much thanks
 

weust

Active Member
Aug 15, 2014
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ESXi has nothing to do with GNU/Linux (anymore, or barely anymore), but where are you trying to install ipmitools?
On the host or in the napp-it VM?

Also, keep in mind that a Supermicro motherboard does not know the chassis it's in, unlike a Dell server for instance.
Meaning, it only knows the fans attached to it. Hence you want to control it in some way.
 

epicurean

Active Member
Sep 29, 2014
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Frankly, I do not know where is the best place to install ipmitools. Should it be done on the esxi host or the VM?
 

weust

Active Member
Aug 15, 2014
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The ESXi host. The VM can't access the hosts hardware (apart from maybe some passthrough PCI devices).
Not sure if there is a guide in this topic for it, but you should be able to find is easily how to install ipmitools on a ESXi host.

You will need SSH access to the host to download and install the ipmitools package.
That is basically it.
 

epicurean

Active Member
Sep 29, 2014
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Ok, installed the ipmitool vib. I cannot seem to get the X9SRH CPU fan (FAN 1) to change . Is a reboot or reset necessary somewhere?


ipmitool raw 0x30 0x91 0x5A 0x3 0x10 0x10
 

weust

Active Member
Aug 15, 2014
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Reboot should not be needed.
What does a "ipmitool sensor" show you? This should pull all sensor data it can display for you.
 

epicurean

Active Member
Sep 29, 2014
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Reboot should not be needed.
What does a "ipmitool sensor" show you? This should pull all sensor data it can display for you.
Populated all the sensor readings. Showing my CPU fan at > 6K RPM. Which is the one fan I want to tame
 

djay

New Member
Jun 27, 2020
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I was able to get manual fan control working on a X10SLL-F. I'm using a NH-U12S which has a minimum speed of 300 RPM. Here are some notes I made. Hopefully it'll be useful to others.

The BMC will override manual fan control if any fans in the zone fall below the configured threshold. You can see the current RPM and thresholds with ( ipmitool sensor ). This is logged in the SEL ( ipmitool sel list ).

Notably, if you disconnect a fan in the zone the BMC will see it as running at 0 RPM and will override fan control. The only workaround I found was to reset the BMC to defaults ( ipmitool raw 0x3c 0x40 ) and cold reset ( ipmitool mc reset cold ), then start over.

I began by setting very low thresholds for the CPU fan ( ipmitool sensor thresh FAN1 lower 0 100 200 ). Next I selected the full speed fan profile ( ipmitool raw 0x30 0x45 0x01 0x01 ). Then I reset the BMC to make sure it stuck ( ipmitool mc reset cold ) and waited for it to come back ( ipmitool sensor ).

The PWM duty cycle is reset to 100% on every reboot. I set up a systemd boot script to adjust it, which runs ( ipmitool raw 0x30 0x70 0x66 0x01 0x00 0x32 ). This sets system fan zone to duty cycle 50% (hex 0x32 = 50).

Now it runs quiet enough to sit in my lounge until I can relocate it.
 

Falloutboy

Member
Oct 23, 2011
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Hopefully Linux fan control will work on my X10DRX otherwise things are going to get pretty noisy pretty quick, running Windows 10 Pro at the moment but will be switching to whatever flavor of Linux can still support ConnectX2 - VPI, it's going to be a deep dive this Saturday.
 

otspadmin

New Member
Nov 9, 2020
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Does anybody with a X10QBI board managed to get his/her system more quiet?

Or knows if this example code works?
Intel Xeon E7-4800/800 V3/V4 CPUs in servers/motherboards made for V2 CPUs
I have the exact same question. I have the X10QBI and spent hours trying to get the raw commands to work without success. I have 7 fans running at 6000rpm on the standard mode.
This command DOES work: ipmitool raw 0x30 0x45 0x01 0x01
However these commands DO NOT work: ipmitool raw 0x30 0x70 0x66 0x01 0x00 0x24
I have tried cold and warm resets of the bmc but nothing is sticking. I'm curious if this mobo has a different command hex instead of the 0x70 & 0x66
 

dreamsin

Active Member
Oct 31, 2018
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Could anyone recommend a script for dynamic fan speeds for X10 running on proxmox directly?
I have previously used a pretty simple bash script before on Asrock, but everything I found available for Supermicro is meant for freenas and are written in perl... I'm not sure they are directly compatible.
 
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PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
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Could anyone recommend a script for dynamic fan speeds for X10 running on proxmox directly?
I have previously used a pretty simple bash script before on Asrock, but everything I found available for Supermicro is meant for freenas and are written in perl... I'm not sure they are directly compatible.
Perl works fine on Proxmox and the perl-based fan speed scripts from the FreeNAS forum should do the job for you. Most of the ones I've seen use smartctl to read disk temps and ipmitool to get cpu temp so they should be portable between BSD and Linux.

I don't know if perl is installed by default on Proxmox but its in the standard debian repos. You'll likely have to install perl from the repos - "apt install perl -y" should do it.
 

lte

Member
Apr 13, 2020
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I have a SC836 with three fans connected to the backplane (BPN-SAS2-836EL).
Currently they are connected using some wires with a soldered-in resistor, ending on a 3-Pin connector - they are obviously nowhere close to low spinning.
my question is, is it possible to control the fans connected to the backplane by any means?
have not found any information about them so far but maybe somebody has already encountered a smilar issue.
 

i386

Well-Known Member
Mar 18, 2016
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my question is, is it possible to control the fans connected to the backplane by any means?
The manual for the 846 sas2 backplane says that it's possible to control the fans over i2c:
Backplane.JPG
But so far I didn't see any posts that somebody could control the fans connected to the backplane...
 

kodi

New Member
Aug 5, 2020
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So... was anyone able to figure out if the possibility to control fan duty cycle on x9dri-ln4f+ is possible?
Funniest thing is I have two of those, identical fans. Same FW version. But one has optimal mode duty cycle 30-100%, the second one 40-100%.
With my 826 case it means one can run from 2175 to 7000 RPM, second one 3k ish to 7k.