I was visiting a friend of mine to setup a switch and noticed his Supermicro X10 series 1u rack server was too loud. He had it bought few weeks ago. We were curious and got to know the server. Its a CSE819U chassis. We then checked inside and found there are active cooling fitted to each of the two intel 2680v4 cpus. It says Dynatron 2 ball bearing. Looking online, its either Dynatron R25 or R13. The fans fitted are Delta-Fan GFB0412GHS-C. Those are very loud. There are 8 fans in total with 12V 4 pin connections on the motherboard and only 6 of those fans are in use because two are taken by Dynatron. There are also 2 NAS HDDs and two SSDs and a 4 port 10Gbps nic with two 750 watt psus.
We looked online and wondering if its possible to replace those 6 set delta fans with something more quieter. Noctua’s 40mm 12V 4 pin fan NF-A4x20 PWM or arctic S4028-15K or arctic S4028-6K.
The information about the cfm and static pressure and RPM are from the fan specifications.
Delta
Noctua
Arctic S4028-15K
Arctic S4028-8K
CFM
31.40
5.53
19.23
7.1
static pressure H2O in mm
49.32
2.26
26.5
4.2
RPM
16k
5k
1400-15k
250-6k
Its clear the delta fans provide a lot of air flow. At the moment, with the active coolers, the temperature of cpus are around 34 degrees Celsius at idle and 55-65 degree Celsius on load.
Does it make sense to install either noctua or arctic fans considering the mounted active coolers ? Any other suggestions ? Thanks
Well the reason is simple, smaller fans/blades need to spin a lot faster to move any amount of air in a 1U chassis.
Hence why they are so darn loud.
I think Noctua has some smaller 80mm fans but these are only really viable for lower power 1U devices like some switches/routers etc.
I think Wendell did a recent video on why most 1U server chassis’ are going the way of the dodo, one of them is this, cooling really is bad in anything less than a 2U chassis.
I would first try lowering the PWM value of the delta fans if the bios / ipmi allows.
See if that helps with the noise and see if things are starting to overheat.
Those delta fans cool more than just the cpu: HDD/nvme disks, VRMs, NICs, HBA/RAID controllers, etc.
Many/most server components don’t have big/fancy heatsinks like in consumer PC’s as the servers are built for density / saving space and rely on high airflow/static pressure of the fans to cool the components.
In dense 1U server you need a lot of pressure to actually push air through, and I doubt that the noctua’s might deliver enough airflow/pressure to properly cool the server. If you could go very very low with the PWM settings without things overheating then you might try to swap the deltas.
I put some delta/san ace fans into my meshify 2 pc to cool some HBA/NICs. Even at 1-2% PWM they blow more air than a normal consumer fan (they still run with 1600/2400 rpms at 1-2% PWM)
Correct, a 1U chassis is not tall enough for these types of fans, this is one reason why going to 2U + Multi-Node is the current trend in the enterprise.
Looking into PWM control form supermicro, came across couple of youtube videos and also documentation from supermicro showing how to use ipmitool to get and set fan speed data. I can try out to see if this is a viable option.
At the moment, with fans idling RPM is around 6k and the cpu temps are at 43 degree celsius. Like you mentioned, i will have to test out different speeds and temperature and find a optimal spot for lower rpm , noisy and better cooling.
migrated a whole stack to 2U not three months back. Noise isn’t an issue for a server room but what you lose in real estate you make up for in efficiency and reduced complexity. Compatibility & price plays a role as well. I’ll never own 1U again for my personal setup & be glad to be only occasionally putting on earmuffs.
.02c
Yeah pretty much what Wendell is stating, there are going to be more edge cases that can use 1U devices but the sweet spot is now 2U and I bet this has a lot to do with tech in how they are creating multiple nodes in a 2U form factor chassis
Also, isn’t $0.02 now more like $0.034 or so due to inflation, ha
Noctua makes them in 5v and 12 variants. I have some 40mm x 20mm and 40mm x 10mm fans in my Nasberry Pi case. They are intended for switches and small servers and the like. the come with the connectors and extra wire and taps to fit any situation.
Thanks all for the inputs. I had a deeper look into the case, fans and read a lot, of course finally experimented with it as well. Here are my findings:
i used this script to control the fans speed and its working well so far. The server rig is stable, usable inside home as noise has reduced a lot, under or around 50 dB most of the time. It now runs around 4500 RPM and 1800 RPM.
By experimenting with the ipmi fan measurements i was able to find the high and lows for both delta and dynatron fans. Delta runs between 2400 RPM and 15000 RPM, dynatron runs between 1300 RPM and 8000 RPM. The fan thresholds are set accordingly in the script and its working fine. The cpus are kept at around 32 to 35 degree Celsius on idle and hasn’t exceeded 60 degree Celsius under stress-ng full tests. The 10 Gbe NIC is kept around 53 degree Celsius most of the time, though it gets down to 49 degree Celsius when everything is at idle.
Here are further trials, if anyone interested, measured under following conditions:
idle: fresh and simple proxmox with No vm or containers
low load: 1 windows vm
medium load: 2 windows vm and 10 containers doing nothing
2x E5-2680v4, 1x 10 Gbe NIC, three ssds, no fans for ssds, no other pcie expect NIC, 2x 750 watt power supply.
optimal fan speeds of 4500 RPM for detla and 1800 RPM for dynatron; cpus kept around 30-35 degree Celsius at idle
power measured from wattmeter and also from ipmi
No. of CPUs
RAM
No. of Fans (Delta + Dynatron)
10 Gb Quad NIC
Power (Idle/ Low Load/ Medium Load) in watt
2
128GB
6 + 2 → Optimal mode
Yes
105/ 140/ 220
2
128GB
6 + 2 → Full speed mode
Yes
200/ 240/ 380
2
128GB
6 + 2 → Heavy IO mode
Yes
180/ 220/ 360
2
128GB
6 + 2 → Optimal mode
No
85/ -/ -
1
64GB
6 + 1 → Optimal mode
No
61/ -/ -
1
64GB
3 + 1 → Optimal mode
No
58/ -/ -
1
64GB
3 + 1 → Optimal mode
Yes
74/ 100/ 180
When server is off and only ipmi is available, the power is 20 watt. A loud continuous beep can be heard after 10 seconds if second power supply was disconnected, even though cpu2 was also removed. Beep goes away if both PSU are connected. Supermicro manual says both PSU are required, so no redundant power supply.
