The Problem: I’ve posted elsewhere re: my inability to lower my fan speeds below 20 percent of full power due to the IMPI’s hard floor: Asrock X570d4u, x570d4u-2L2T discussion thread - #671 by johntdavis . I’m trying to use consumer-grade actively-cooled CPU components with “let’s take off for the sky” server fans meant to provide airflow for passive cooling, and at the IMPI fan controller’s lowest RPM (20 percent duty), it’s just way more airflow than I need. I need to slow down the fans some other way.
Question: Does anyone have any opinions on or experience with doing this using any of the three options below:
- IPMItool: I can’t figure out how to control individual fans with this yet. It’s very complicated and I haven’t found a good idiot’s guide yet.
- Noctua low-noise adapter: Simplest hardware solution; should drop speed by 20-30 percent? I’m looking at these: NA-SRC7
- Add-on fan controller: Something like this: NA-FC1
Noctua really doesn’t want you using the low-noise adapter on non-Noctua fans. I’m wondering if it’s possible to damage those fans if you do.
The add-on fan controller does exactly what I want, but costs $25, and I need three of them since I’m wary of running three high-powered Supermicro fans off a single motherboard header.
I’d like to try IPMItool, as it’s free, but I can’t find an example that doesn’t involve controlling all the fans as a single entity (e.g., set all case fans to x percent). I need to be able to control fans individually, as I’m running rear exhaust and front intake at different speeds because they’re different models of fan.
I also need to get this done so I can get the server off my table and into the rack, so I’m very tempted just to throw hardware at it if that woud be effective.
Thanks!