I’ve got a few servers in my home lab and I’ve always taken steps to make sure they’re quiet. I like running my lab out of my office closet, but I don’t want to hear any of them running. I’ve blogged about how to build a silent PC, but today I’m tackling another noisy beast – an off-the-rack server.
Dell PowerEdge 1900 Internals
Quest got me a Dell PowerEdge 1900 to use as a virtualization host, and it’s been great. Two quad-core CPUs, 16gb of memory, six SATA drives in a RAID 10, and about a hundred pounds of solid steel. Seriously, the case is bulletproof and gawdawful heavy.
But it’s loud. Deafeningly loud. It’s got 6 92mm fans that can wake the dead. They’re temperature-controlled, so they don’t go full blast unless the server’s working hard, but even at very light loads they’re just way too loud. I couldn’t carry on a conversation next to this server, let alone record a podcast. This wasn’t a problem when I had the server in the basement, but now that I’ve moved to Chicago and my “datacenter” is my home office closet, it’s a problem. I can’t run cables inside the walls since it’s a rented condo, and I can’t run cables along the floor because I’ve got a girlfriend with a keen sense of design.
The Fix: Replacing the PowerEdge Fans
The stock fans are Nidec BetaV TA350DC 92mm fans that:
- Move up to 150 cubic feet of air per minute
- Spin at up to 6,000 RPM
- Scream at 57 decibels – not quite as loud as yo momma, but close
- Have pulse width modulation (PWM) speed control – the motherboard can control the fan speed based on how hot the server gets
Removing a Fan
Fans like this rely on very fast rotation speeds to push a lot of air, but the faster the blade spins, the more noise it makes. Quiet-PC freaks like me turn to fans that turn slower, yet still push a lot of air. I bought six Nexus PWM Series DF1209SL-3PWM fans from Newegg for $10 each that:
- Move up to 43 CFM
- Spin up to 2,500 RPM
- Whisper at 16 decibels
- Also allow PWM speed control
If you don’t get fans that are PWM-controlled, then the Dell motherboard will freak out upon boot-up and think there’s no fans connected. Some models will wait for the user to hit a key to acknowledge that error, and I don’t want that happening – I leave my servers in the closet without a monitor attached.
PowerEdge Fan Cage
The Good News: It’s Easy to Swap the Fans
Unlike some vendors, Dell’s fans use a removable cage surrounding an industry-standard fan. Just pop the fans out of their orange cases – no tools required – and pop in the new one.
Any 92mm fan up to 38mm thick will work, and thinner fans like the Nexus work fine too. One side of the fan cage has click-on tabs that hold the fan in, so even thin ones are fine.
The power cable is even easy to remove, but about that power cable…
The Bad News: The Power Cables are Proprietary
Unfortunately, even with PWM-controlled fans like the Nexus, the pin connections don’t match Dell’s proprietary connector.
Fan power cables aren’t plug-and-play either. You’ll need to bust out the solder gun to cut the Dell fan cable leads and attach them to the Nexus fan’s power cables. Both the Nexus and the Nidec fans have the same number of wires, and the same color codes. Connecting them is just a matter of cutting the cables away from the power connectors and soldering them together.
Just Like Disarming That Bomb
The Result: Enjoying the Silence
I can’t believe what a difference it made. I can hear again. I can record podcasts with the server running in the closet right behind me.
I haven’t taken scientific measurements, but the PowerEdge now sounds roughly similar to a home-built desktop. It’s not as quiet as my home-built silent PC or my Optiplex 360, but it’s more than quiet enough to work with in the closet.
The PWM fan controls work smoothly too, reporting back their speed to the motherboard just like the native fans. Below is a screenshot of VMware Virtual Center showing the fan speeds, happily spinning along well below their maximum speeds. I’ve seen them running faster (2250 RPM) during heavy load, which tells me that the motherboard is throttling down the fans. That would seem to indicate that the motherboard isn’t overheating, because the motherboard doesn’t feel the need to ramp up fan speeds to full blast. That’s what I call a success.
vSphere Fan Alert
The Drawbacks
One problem shown above is that sometimes fans spin slow enough that they trigger Dell’s thresholds for slow-moving fans. This isn’t a problem by itself, but since vSphere color-codes servers according to their alerts, this means that my host goes red a lot, but I have to switch over to the alert screen to find out if it’s just a slow fan or something more serious. Gotta figure out how to fix that for good one of these days.
Because the fans are so quiet when they’re running slow, I’m also much more aware of the server’s load now. When I start doing CPU-intensive stuff, I hear the fans start to spin up louder – something I wouldn’t have noticed before when the fans were always running full steam. Even at their loudest, they’re still quieter than the stock fans, but the changing fan speeds can break my concentration sometimes. (I’m easily distracted.)
Another problem is that the server isn’t any cooler. This server lives in my office closet, but I can’t close that door or else it gets hotter and hotter in there. I leave my office window open full time, even in the Chicago winter.
Next time we move, though, I’ll try to get a condo with a bathroom adjacent to my home office. I’ve got this dream of using the toilet tank water and a liquid-to-liquid cooling exchange to get silent cooling. But that’s another blog post…
Note: I’m on a cruise ship this week and won’t be responding to comments until Monday, January 11th. If you post a comment that requires moderation, don’t fret – I’ll approve it when I get back.
One thing I recently did was add two additional layers of acoustic foam to my server. I picked up the AcousticPack Ultimate kit which contains a few extra sheets of the stuff and it lowered my noise by more than 50%. Cost about $40 and I didn’t have to bring the server down.
Toilet tank water cooling? Will there be a sign on the tank that says “flush twice it’s a long way to Round Rock Tx” (DEll’s home)?
Am amazed… Rock Solid DBA and who can dig deep in with Soldering Iron ! Thanks for a wonderful journey presented as a blog…
HAHAHA, I dunno about dig deep, but I know where the hot point goes, heh.
It would be interesting if you try and tackle some sort of conduit improvement where you pull air from the window through a counduit, use a fan to force it upward across the server, and then have another conduit shove the air back out the window. I think I was reading how some of Intel’s data centers were using outside air, filtered but not naturally cooled, for some of their low-medium load servers. Saved ‘em a ton in cooling costs.
I would love to do that here in Chicago during the winter. I’d worry about the humidity during snowfall, but it’s a neat thought.
Hi Brent,
~
I also have one of those very noisy DELL PowerEdge servers (which I can not get rid of), namely a 1850 one. I am trying to quiet it down as much as I can
~
The 1850 was actually designed as a blade (not a tower) and specially the 4 front fans are very noisy
~
Here is a picture of them (I took one out):
~
http://hsymbolicus.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/pe_1850_san_ace_40_fans.jpg
~
It says on the fan:
San ACE 40
9CR0412S5038
DC 12 V 1.1 A
EP 110524C R
SanyoDenki
)?
Made in China
~
and the technical specs of the (most similar) fans I could find are here:
~
http://www.sanyodenki.co.jp/en/techrepo/16e/e.pdf
~
exactly the specs of the 9CR0412S5038 model I couldn’t find the closest I got was:
~
http://www.sanyodenki.co.jp/en/news/2007/20071025sanace4048pwm.html
~
which (based on the preffix of the model code name) seems to be a pwm fan. I see the one on their technical spec doesn’t look like the ones on the PE 1850
~
I am planning to generally follow your instructions. Is there anything you would have done differently (after you gained the experience
~
Also, I like quietness (I am what they call a semi-musician). Unnecessary noises annoy the hell out of me. I know DELL boxes are very proprietary (not that “open”) are there any combinations of hardware + BIOS + OS + internal box design + … as servers and/or high-end PC boxes you would recommend as specially quiet or at least easily quietable through open source software such as the lm-sensors and fan control libraries? And of course I would like for whatever I do to be reliable, even if it is undervolting a box. Any tips?
~
Thank you
lbrtchx
Oooo, yeah, the 1850′s tougher because it’s rack-mounted. Rack-mount boxes have very small diameter fans, so they have to turn at a higher RPM in order to move the same amount of air. It’s almost impossible to make them quiet.
I built a totally silent PC for my desktop and I documented the parts here:
http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2009/05/how-to-build-a-silent-pc/
It’s fantastic. The only way I know it’s running is if I hold my hand over the top vent and I can feel a slight breeze from the fans. (I don’t have any lights on the front either.) I’d recommend that case very highly.
My son built his first PC about five years back and I would kid him about how it sounded like an airplane. I just install a Dell T710 (has redundant cooling fans) in our shared home office. Now he is giving me grief over the jet engine (what comes around goes around).
Nice to know someone else tried this first. Thanks for the tip.
Hi Greg, Did you give this a go on your T710? We have just upgraded to one and it is much much louder than what it replaced.
Hi Brent,
How did you connect the wires, they seem to use different color codes?
Mine used similar color codes.
So I tried this with the exact same fans as you did. I assumed the red wire and the green wire are supposed to be connected to each other since they are the only ones that don’t match up. I power on my poweredge 1900 and the fans don’t come on at all. any ideas?
Nevermind. Basically with the fans you provided the link to, you have to connect the wires according to the following as the colors don’t completely match up.
Black – Black
Red – Yellow
Yellow – Green
Blue – Blue
I had two fans that have a red instead of blue wire. should i just follow the colors on those? The others worked great following our chart.. thanks
Ken – unfortunately I don’t know anything about the fans that you’ve got, and I’d hate to give you advice that might cause you problems.
I had bought the ones you recommended. 4 out of the 6 followed the:
Black – Black
Red – Yellow
Yellow – Green
Blue – Blue
two of them had a red wire instead of a Blue one, so just following the color to color for the back, yellow, red, and doing blue to green worked for them.
Thanks. This article was a great help and the new fans made a big difference.
Hi,
I’ve ordered one Replacement Set of the original fans for my poweredge 1900.
So, how’s working your server? Well? Whats about the temperature? Less RPM’s = warmer system??
I use also esx 3.5 but i will migrate soon to vsphere..
What will you suggest? My 1900 is in my homeoffice.
To loud!
Greetings Fab
I didn’t take before-and-after temperature measurements, but they’re not registering as warm in the system management tools, so it seems fine.
Yess, that’s what i want to hear from you! Well, i will give my best this coming week.
Other question. Did you install the Open Manage Tool in your VSphere System?
No, sorry.
Hi again,
The fans you’ve removed, where they from Nidec BETA V ?
Greetings Fabio
Fabio – sorry, but it’s been a while. Everything I know is on this page.
Where do you get a replacement fan for an Optiplex 360 and is it hard to replace?
Just pop the Optiplex open, examine the make & model of the fan, and buy a replacement off Ebay.