Hi all, I hope to be in the right section
I've recently got a beastly ProLiant DL580 g5, quick specs:
4 x E7330 quad 2,4ghz
16GB 667 ECC
2 X 73gb SAS 10000rpm
6 X DELTA PFC1212DE -6J32 12v 3.24A reverse PWM
now, the problem is that the fans are quite loud, at the startup looks like a jet engine is inside my room (kind of 5000rpm or more), but even after they slow down, they keep on being noisy and annoying (I think they are around 2000/2500 rpm). I've asked at the HP forum if there's a way to control them via software, but no answer yet, and even after installing the HP Management Suite (huge bundle of software) I haven't been able to find a solution. At this point I was wondering if I can manually control them through a PWM controller like this (edit:as BruceUSA says below, this solution doesn work) , considering that I have to keep some kind of input (I think the speed wire) to the server otherwise it thinks there are no fans and shuts down "by design"...unless there's a way to disable this feature...
Any Suggestion?
EDIT:UPDATE, SUMMARY OF PROPOSED SOLUTIONS "Work in Progress"
Okay, as the thread is starting to become full of posts (I really appreciate all of the ideas that you guys have proposed, and I'm sorry if I've gone a little bit OT), I list a quick summary of all the informations I've collected until now:
Things to know before approaching to the potential solutions:
- The fans are 5 pin reversed pwm, the 5th pin is a bridge on the ground wire that act as a locked rotor check up
- The system starts at full speed (around 5000rpm) then slows down keeping around 40% of the speed (HWinfo reading), as soon as one of the six fans is removed/faulty the speed rise up to max, with 2 or more fan removed/faulty the system automatically shuts down
- The speed of the fan doesn't go under 1500rpm via manual pwm control (thnks LennyRhys)
- Using a standard voltage control the fans require a kick start of 8v and barely keep the voltage of 5v, acting in a weird way due to a sophisticated DSP speed control embedded inside the fan (thnks Lenny and NiHaoMike)
- Temps under occt are at around 40/50C for the cores (note that for xeons the tCase is 68C, so max temps allowed are a bit lower than for desktop cpu) and 70/80C
for the RAMs with the default cooling system, note that this test is very rough as I stopped it after 3min (read max temps in hwinfo).
Potential solutions:
1) Control the speed via software: This would be the ideal solution (if possible), as it doesn't have any side effect, but I still haven't found out which software of the huge HP suite (if there is one) can control the speed of the fans. I've tryed with third party softwares as speedfan but it doesn't work, simple the software doesn't recognize the fans. According to the HP support there's no way to control the speed of the fans via software
2) Use (build) a pwm fan controller like this one: This is not a bad option, but requires some diy (and tools that at the moment I don't have) and a mod of the fan cabling, that would be cutting the pwm cables from the system board and leaving the rest of the circuitry intact, to avoid problems (hopefully) with system check up.
3) Use a voltage controller (a pot or possibly something more efficient): Same as for the pwm controller, but with the need of a kick start and a bit more important mod of the fans cables (depending on the controller used.
4) Use both the solutions 2 and 3: In case the speed obtained by the two methods would be still loud, it may be worth a try to use both pwm and voltage control.
5) Use Arduino:well, here I still can't say much (see the posts below and at page 2 by NihaoMike and Bobnova for details), but apparently there would be a way to control (and maybe program) the sophisticated DSP circuitry embedded inside the fan using Arduino.
6) Substitute the fans: This is a solution that would be optimal from the point of view of silence, especially having a lot of spare fans getting rusty in the drawer, but would require an adapter (diy) 5pin->3/4pin classic, the installation of fans direcly on the cpus heatsink and over the ram modules to compensate the reduced airflow, and a severe check of the temps.
To end here there are some pictures (taken with my phone, sorry for the quality) of the system to better understand the thermal design:
1 - Whole build
2 - Chassis + CPU/RAM board (sorry, I had to censor my pants!)
3 - Detail CPU/RAM board
4 - Detail chassis fans 1
5 - Detail chassis fans 2
6 - Detail chassis fans 3 (fans' headers)
7 - Fan connector
8 - ICS chip (maybe pll....but I couldn't see the crystal)
I've recently got a beastly ProLiant DL580 g5, quick specs:
4 x E7330 quad 2,4ghz
16GB 667 ECC
2 X 73gb SAS 10000rpm
6 X DELTA PFC1212DE -6J32 12v 3.24A reverse PWM
now, the problem is that the fans are quite loud, at the startup looks like a jet engine is inside my room (kind of 5000rpm or more), but even after they slow down, they keep on being noisy and annoying (I think they are around 2000/2500 rpm). I've asked at the HP forum if there's a way to control them via software, but no answer yet, and even after installing the HP Management Suite (huge bundle of software) I haven't been able to find a solution. At this point I was wondering if I can manually control them through a PWM controller like this (edit:as BruceUSA says below, this solution doesn work) , considering that I have to keep some kind of input (I think the speed wire) to the server otherwise it thinks there are no fans and shuts down "by design"...unless there's a way to disable this feature...
Any Suggestion?
EDIT:UPDATE, SUMMARY OF PROPOSED SOLUTIONS "Work in Progress"
Okay, as the thread is starting to become full of posts (I really appreciate all of the ideas that you guys have proposed, and I'm sorry if I've gone a little bit OT), I list a quick summary of all the informations I've collected until now:
Things to know before approaching to the potential solutions:
- The fans are 5 pin reversed pwm, the 5th pin is a bridge on the ground wire that act as a locked rotor check up
- The system starts at full speed (around 5000rpm) then slows down keeping around 40% of the speed (HWinfo reading), as soon as one of the six fans is removed/faulty the speed rise up to max, with 2 or more fan removed/faulty the system automatically shuts down
- The speed of the fan doesn't go under 1500rpm via manual pwm control (thnks LennyRhys)
- Using a standard voltage control the fans require a kick start of 8v and barely keep the voltage of 5v, acting in a weird way due to a sophisticated DSP speed control embedded inside the fan (thnks Lenny and NiHaoMike)
- Temps under occt are at around 40/50C for the cores (note that for xeons the tCase is 68C, so max temps allowed are a bit lower than for desktop cpu) and 70/80C

Potential solutions:
1) Control the speed via software: This would be the ideal solution (if possible), as it doesn't have any side effect, but I still haven't found out which software of the huge HP suite (if there is one) can control the speed of the fans. I've tryed with third party softwares as speedfan but it doesn't work, simple the software doesn't recognize the fans. According to the HP support there's no way to control the speed of the fans via software
2) Use (build) a pwm fan controller like this one: This is not a bad option, but requires some diy (and tools that at the moment I don't have) and a mod of the fan cabling, that would be cutting the pwm cables from the system board and leaving the rest of the circuitry intact, to avoid problems (hopefully) with system check up.
3) Use a voltage controller (a pot or possibly something more efficient): Same as for the pwm controller, but with the need of a kick start and a bit more important mod of the fans cables (depending on the controller used.
4) Use both the solutions 2 and 3: In case the speed obtained by the two methods would be still loud, it may be worth a try to use both pwm and voltage control.
5) Use Arduino:well, here I still can't say much (see the posts below and at page 2 by NihaoMike and Bobnova for details), but apparently there would be a way to control (and maybe program) the sophisticated DSP circuitry embedded inside the fan using Arduino.
6) Substitute the fans: This is a solution that would be optimal from the point of view of silence, especially having a lot of spare fans getting rusty in the drawer, but would require an adapter (diy) 5pin->3/4pin classic, the installation of fans direcly on the cpus heatsink and over the ram modules to compensate the reduced airflow, and a severe check of the temps.
To end here there are some pictures (taken with my phone, sorry for the quality) of the system to better understand the thermal design:
1 - Whole build
2 - Chassis + CPU/RAM board (sorry, I had to censor my pants!)
3 - Detail CPU/RAM board
4 - Detail chassis fans 1
5 - Detail chassis fans 2
6 - Detail chassis fans 3 (fans' headers)
7 - Fan connector
8 - ICS chip (maybe pll....but I couldn't see the crystal)
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