I have gotten a quad opteron 64 core server as a gag gift as a part of an inside joke, and I would like to have the last laugh.
The only problem is that the cooling solution would not make it good to have at home and IBM has this 6 pin proprietary hot swap fan mount for the chassis. I was wondering if anyone had ever modded a 2U server to run quad cpu as a home computer.
I was thinking about removing the 60mm delta jet engines and simply zip tying 120mm fans onto the copper 1u heat pipe copper coolers on the chips, and them simply soldering the 120m fans into the proprietary connectors and having them go into the hot swap plugs for the server chassis fans. Provided that pwm 120mm fans are used I don’t see there being a problem.
My only concern is that if the motherboard decides that “hey chips are getting warm, set the cpu fans to 11000 rpm” where the 120mm fans go to like 1800rpm…fun stuff could happen? Is this a valid concern?
The motherboard doesn’t set the RPM per se, it sets the voltage. Or more correctly the pulse of the Pulse Width Modulation would be longer.
The real problem here is that the motherboard will likely expect a certain RPM at minimum, and it will give an error if it is below that threshold. The 120mm fans probably won’t meet that minimum even running at full speed, or at least I have had that experience on a different workstation.
There are a few options. You could try to go Arduino or similar and fake the RPM for the CPU connectors, and hard wire the fans. You also might be able to use a different fan (perhaps a quiet oriented 80mm) so it can meet the minimum RPM and use it as a case fan. You could also just break the fins off of the 60mm fans so they don’t make an insane level of noise and use the 120mm units for the actual cooling as planned.
I’m not sure if you can simply split the output from one RPM lead to 4 different connectors. It seems like something that would work as it is just measuring impulses being sent out by the fan. That could let you set one fan as the dummy to fool the motherboard.
I don’t know how your board will work and if you can disable some of the warnings in BIOS. You might just be able to hit a function key at startup to dismiss the low RPM warning and use the machine as normal. You might need to use alternate methods to measure the fan speed and CPU temperature, in conjunction with something that can run a script to safely shut the machine down should something happen where one or more processors are overheating.
In any event, I wouldn’t even try to make the 120mm fans work with the CPU fan connectors. I would power them straight through the PSU or via a fan controller. The RPM output from the fans probably won’t be enough as mentioned above, so no point in connecting that to the CPU fan connectors. There may be a way of connecting the PWM from the motherboard to adjust the fan speed according to CPU temperature, but I am not sure if the motherboard has options to adjust it so that fans run at an acceptable speed for the noise and CFM you want.
Honestly those delta fans are doing the job better than whatever thing you strap to them. TBH I’m jealous. Opterons have a lot of firepower in them. You could put that thing on folding at home and really get some shreds done with it. Or run some sorta science on it. Those are actually really great for that. I’m not sure why opterons are a meme other than “lel they aren’t in workstations”
You could get water or oil coolers for it. Those are extremely common in the server market.