I have an r740, and I got the minimum fan speed down a bit by setting my PCIe LFM modes to disabled as having a consumer GPU in one of my slots was making the fans idle relatively high.
I couldn’t get the fan noise to an acceptable level for my use case though, but one idea I tried might work for you.
I 3d printed a fan shroud to put 4 120mm 40 dba, 7.31 mmAq, 108CFM fans at constant 100% on the front , but with both of my CPUs pushing out ~100W, with like 10C ambient air, my CPUs were thermally throttling so I gave up. Considering your CPUs are both only 85W, this could work, and the sound is more of a low whoosh than the my existing r740 fan whine.
A negative is that this mod would make your servers not fit in the cabinet due to increased depth and height.
If you’re interested I can find my freecad and STL files and put them somewhere if you want to play with them.
1 Like
I did some testing against R740xd and R440 in terms of noise (because believe it or not those two monsters are in my bedroom) and turns out the iDRAC firmware version makes a large difference
On version 3.36.36.36 the fans would always hover at around 12% with approx 200w power usage
On versions 4.00.00.00 and higher the fans would always hover at around 30%
This is 3.36.36.36 on R740xd with default thermal profile (aka no minimal fan speed set)
You want to set your performance profile to Performance Per Watt
Configuration > BIOS Settings
On some OSes the non-DAPC setting does weird things so I like to have it sitting at DAPC
Make sure that your OSes also have RACADM/Dell tools installed to regulate fans, I have spotted a behavior where the fans would continue roaring until a full OS boot
if you got to iDRAC 7.0.0.0 you won’t be able to downgrade unfortunately (Maybe only if the rollback option is available?)
2 Likes
wow.. I have the latest Proxmox VE installed. To my knowledge, Debian is not supported by Dell?
I, ofc, can check this out myself, just thinking out loud.
I hope this will be of some help since, at least right now, the load is literally 0%.
1 Like
Try to boot Rocky Linux live cd and see if the fans quiet down.
I did a quick search and Proxmox also lacks ipmi tools apparently which is kinda bonkers, this would also explain why the fans keep roaring.
1 Like
iDRAC version: 7.00.00.184 (latest as of two days ago)
I have set the System Profile to Performance Per Watt (DAPC)
Turns out there is an ipmitool package for Debian. Installed it and checking now what I can do with it.
The iDRAC itself should see that everything is fine and lower the fan RPM, the OS should not interfere with that.
Here is something else in play, as I run 3 Dell servers with Proxmox and have no problem with the fan noise.
If you need IPMI tools, you can install them without any problems, but I prefer to SSH into the iDRAC, as it’s less software to keep track of/update to fix vulnerabilities, as we have to match off those updates already in the last weeks 
OP, have you unplugged the PCI card already to see that happens?
Then we know more.
Not yet. Just installed ipmitool on Proxmox.
I’m not advanced enough to manage iDRAC via the command line. I saw iDRAC for the first time well after buying these servers.
Otherwise, I would agree that the fewer moving parts, the better.
Once the server boots to Proxmox, I will shut it down and remove the add-on cards and NVMe drives. Starting from a clean/basic conf and moving up from there.
“Here is something else in play, as I run 3 Dell servers with Proxmox and have no problem with the fan noise.”
You have a well-ventilated server space? Because mine sure as hell isn’t. But it has to deal with it.
1 Like
omg, it’s quiet! 
But I don’t have high-bandwidth NICs anymore or NVMe drives 
What I did:
hardware
- Removed the two NICs
- Removed the two NVMe drives / also detached the backplane connector
software/iDRAC
System - Overview - Cooling - Temperatures - System Board Inlet Temp
Changed the Warning Threshold Min to max (45C)
Changed the Warning Threshold Max to max (46C)
Configuration - System Settings - Hardware Settings - Cooling Configuration
Raised the Target Exhaust Temperature Limit from 40C to max/default 70C.
The new minimum of the Minimum Fan Speed in PWM is now 17. Changed the value to 17 as well.
thunderysteak was correct in that while the fans were running at ~61% while in POST, once I got to Proxmox, the fans are now idling at 17%. There are no RACADM tools, though.
My action plan is now to add the pieces back in this order:
- Reattach the NVMe backplane connector + restart + full boot to Proxmox
- Add back the NVMe drives + restart + full boot to Proxmox
- Reattach the NIC riser without the NICs + restart + full boot to Proxmox
- Attach NIC1 + restart + full boot to Proxmox (I expect here things to revert to the system being loud as duck again)
- Attach NIC2 + restart + full boot to Proxmox
2 Likes
The issue is my new Micron 7400 PRO 960GB U.3 NVMe drives
As some have already guessed here, the server probably doesn’t know how to monitor the drives and just cranks the cooling up to max 
I bought everything else 2nd hand. Wanted shiny new storage for the servers.
The good thing is, I don’t have to sell the servers, but how do I know if whatever other drives I buy don’t cause the same issue?
Trying to find some sort of supported drives doc, as consumer motherboards have.
Good to know that you know the issue now.
We have an open floor just below our roof, and the servers are in an APC rack.
On hot days it can get almost 40°C there; fans spin up when it’s that warm there, but it is still not that loud. I do help it a bit by putting a fan in front of the rack, but there is no cooling, just a small open window to vent a bit.
As my storage, I use a 250GB SATA SSD (WD or Samsung, I think) for Proxmox and have 2 SAS drives and 2 SSDs (Samsung) where all the LXC and VM data lives. Works great and is fast enough. Never had problems with the iDRAC and the drives temp.
Might be a x40 series thing; I run x30s at the moment.
So if you have some SSDs (and maybe some SAS spinning rust ;)) lying around, I would start with that and see what happens. Getting drives now is too expensive anyway.
I don’t have any spare drives of any kind, and the server doesn’t have a backplane for hard drives. Spent a bit extra to get the cheapest NVMe box they have.
Circling back to this, I had asked around and it might be outdated backplane/expander firmware. Check SEL logs for any sensor issues.
Also check if you have standard OR high performance fans installed. Apparently if you don’t have performance fans installed then the regular fans will go full blast as a failsafe. If you have the budget of like $150 and want to gamble, try switching the regular fans to high performance ones.
While I never worked with the NVME backplane, regarding using regular SAS/SATA drives the backplane (Dell P/N J54R1 or MWY54) should be a hybrid one and just needs a connection to a PERC or HBA card with a PERC to Mini SAS HD cable with Dell P/N 8Y2C8 connected to ports A0 and B0 on the backplane
1 Like
I think I updated everything I could last month, including the backplane.
But I do have standard fans at the moment.
I don’t have a PERC/HBA card.
This was the response from the reseller:
“The R640 utilises the U.2/U.3 drives through software RAID only and does not use the controller but the S140 is built into an R640 as the onboard controller”
omg, was searching for the high performance fans in Europe and found this information on newserverlife.com (R640 conf) 
Wish the reseller would’ve told me this.
Anyway, thanks for pointing that out. It’s going to cost me an additional 673€ + customs tax
1 Like
You may be able to save money buying them refurbished (The company I work for sells them, so I’m biased). KG52T is the Dell part number.
Yeah, I know, the price I gave was for refurbished fans. The cheapest I found in Europe. The same place I got my servers from.
42.06€ (including vat) * 16 (2 servers) + whatever customs tax I will have to pay. Ordering from the UK.
If you operate in Europe and have better prices, I’m not against paying less 
Sorry did not understood this from the thread, are you setting fans in idrac web or with special ipmi commands that enable manual profile?
I am current user of dell 7425 and it goes nuts if it sees ‘unautorized hw’, even like ssd it did not know about. and goes full speed on fans. Or some card requesting some specific lfm, etc
I do manual control
enable
ipmitool -I lanplus -H 192.168.3.163 -U user -P pass raw 0x30 0x30 0x01 0x00
set fixed falue. change last number 0x64 is 100%
ipmitool -I lanplus -H 192.168.3.163 -U user -P pass raw 0x30 0x30 0x02 0xff 0x34
I’m using iDRAC since it doesn’t allow me to change fans at all using ipmitool.
