Thermal controller

[ziggygt]

I could not seem to get the right codes to control the fans on my Supermicro X9DRH-7F. It does not respond like my other Supermicro X9 motherboards. Even in the "optimal setting" the fans were too loud. I decided to use a hardware alternative. I used a ZIHYU 4 pin thermal control card and a multiple fan header that I bought from WiSH. It has a separate power connector so it can deliver power to all the fans. I ran it a long time on the bench and in the chassis to set the thermal parameters. I ran some video renders that pegged all the cores the 100% for long durations and monitored the temperatures via IPMI. I modified the fan header to output the tach signal from one of the fans to the mother board and also unplugged the tach signal from each fan and fed it to the motherboard fan header. In this way the MB still gets an indication of the fan speed. If it is not spinning, the MB will give an error. My nephew designed and printed a bracket to mount it in my Supermircro Chassis. I get a readout of the thermocouple and the speed of the fans. They run between 1800-2000 in my unloaded system. They ramp a much faster speed as the system get hotter. The thermocouple is wedged into the passive cooler fins. I only monitor one of the CPU's, but by placing the thermocouple in the fans of one CPU, and placing it properly I think I capture both.

I am happy with the noise level and it looks like the system is handling the temps well. I thought I'd share this solution. While I never see the CPU core temp it does not seem like it is possible to overheat my chassis.

 

[i386]

is wedged into the passive cooler fins.

That would be the first thing that I would replace.

In my experience the best cooling vs noise solution is to use active heatsinks on the cpu(s) + airshroud + system/midwall fans.
The active heatsinks cool the cpu on their own and the midwall (and if 3u or bigger chassis: rear fans) don't have to push as much air which reduces the noise drastically.

 

[ziggygt]

$40/cooler still run off same MB that wants to spin fast. Different strokes for different folks. The controller and fan header < $15 and looks cooler.

 

[tiro_uspsss]

very nice, very nice.. must be even harder in a 3U rack. My build is in a Lian Li case, with a Noctua NH-U12DX-i4 a-top the CPU. I'm thinking of taping the thermal probe to the top of the heatsink baseplate (in that space between baseplate & fin stack).

is there a quick easy way to have the tacho wire separated so that it can be plugged into mobo, so that RPM can still be monitored? How'd you do yours?

 

[ziggygt]

very nice, very nice.. must be even harder in a 3U rack. My build is in a Lian Li case, with a Noctua NH-U12DX-i4 a-top the CPU. I'm thinking of taping the thermal probe to the top of the heatsink baseplate (in that space between baseplate & fin stack).

is there a quick easy way to have the tach wire separated so that it can be plugged into MB, so that RPM can still be monitored? How'd you do yours?

I cut a slot in the thermal sensor metal mount and I placed it on top of the CPU cooler flange hooked around one of the CPU cooler screws. The screw holds it tight to the aluminum and gets a good measurement.

To get the Tach back to the motherboard I modified the "Fan Hub" so that the RPM feed back from one of the fans I call the "master fan" is connected to the tach pin on one of the "fan hub" connectors. I have a jumper from that board to the one or more of the MB fan headers. I have tried to make the mods so they can be backed out if needed.

I have a couple different servers. In a different one I just took the yellow RPM feedback pin out of each fan connector and put it in a different plastic fan header and plugged that into MB where I wanted to read the fan speeds. That way I can make sure all the fans are actually spinning even if they are controlled by the thermal controller. This is a safer way because the MB will detect a fan that is not operating properly and IPMI can read the speed.

In another system I just have something like you used "item 1" in my expansion chassis. I then fed that signal to the main MB so I could see the speed with IPMI. Here is that description of my JBOD mods.

Best practices when dealing with JBOD disk shelves?

I've searched the forums but I don't see much related to disk shelves/JBOD's, and I'm wondering if someone can give me some insight I am decommissioning my NAS02 virtual TrueNAS install because the ESXi host it is on will be going away, and instead of building a second NAS again, I have moved...

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