Electrical engineer here. Most newish (made in the last 5-8 years) server PSUs are designed to detect if their fan has failed and will go into protective shutdown mode if it detects such a failure. Usually this is done by measuring the fan's RPM using the tachometer wire, so if you leave this unconnected, the PSU will interpret this as 0 rpm, which normally would indicate the fan had failed. You can determine if a server PSU needs the tachometer wire connected by unplugging it, sticking something through the blades of the fan which will obstruct it and prevent it from spinning, then turning the PSU on. If it doesn't shut off after a few seconds (if it turns on at all), then you can get away with just leaving the tachometer wire disconnected. But more than likely, you'll discover that the PSU will detect the fan isn't spinning and will quickly shut off. There are even some PSUs that not only measure the fan's RPM, but measure if the fan's RPM responds to the PWM control signal as expected. For those PSUs, all 4 wires must be connected. PSUs like this are not that common but they definitely exist. Personally, I recommend always using a 4 wire fan and connecting all 4 wires when swapping out a PSU's fan since it's hardly any extra effort and if you already have it apart, might as well. Plus you retain the fan speed control functionality of the PSU.
"But more than likely, you'll discover that the PSU will detect the fan isn't spinning and will quickly shut off." Well he did set out to make it quiet
I cannot speak on Dells servers however I can on their switches. I recently acquired a dell 24 Port POE switch and they had a delta fan and I swapped it for a noctua fan. I didn't need to solder any wires but simply use a pin removal tool to pop the pins out of the fan connector on the noctua fan and swap them around and push the same pins into the required place. The switch throws the fan error light but the fan works perfectly fine. Not sure if this same kind of foolery would work on the server fans or not but you've got to love the proprietary connectors these vendors use and then they quickly drop support for the products and replacement parts become very hard to find.
Great silent mod for that server. I've seen another silent mod, but that guy a Supermicro server. I remember he had normal PWM connectors for case fans, but the server wouldn't boot if it didn't have a case fan into the connector that corresponds to PSU cooling and at least another one in any other slot that corresponds to CPU cooling. I guess Dell doesn't have a requirement like that. He also did the PSU fan mod from loud Delta 40mm fan to quiet Noctua 40mm fan to 2 wires connector and didn't had problems. It would have been nice to have them all on Noctua to have a full silent built, but still the difference is huge, from jet engine to whisper quiet.
reminds me of when i got my hands on an old poweredge 2950, holy crap that thing was loud as heck (and a power hog) got rid of it because it was so dang loud, even after messing with the oem fans to get them to run as silent as possible
An ear saver mod for the home!! Beforehand my choice was putting the server under the house or in the storage room, the former is not good enough unless I build a box with sound proofing foam.
what you could have done was just use ipmitools to set the fans to a static 20%. i do this with my r720 and its almost as if its not on when its running,
Just noticed in your video looking at the original fan in the PSU it looks like it has 4 wires, one of these wires is a tachometer signal. If the PSU sees no pulse the PSU will shut down. If you put an oscilloscope on the tach wire you can see if it A: triggers to ground or power and B if the trigger pattern will match with the Noctua. However, most of the time they will not match, so... in order to trick the PSU into seeing the tach signal we simply attach the tach signal wire to the appropriate trigger source. On my HP it didn't like the trigger pattern of the Noctua, so I attached the trigger input to the mother board to the fan ground as this is what the tach signal triggered to. This makes the PSU think it has a strong tach signal and it will post. BUT BE WARNED - The tach signal is a PROTECTION MECHANISIM to shut the PSU down in the event of fan failure. If you perform this modification and a fan fails, if it goes unchecked it can overheat causing damage and possibly result in a fire so if you do this modification, you do so at your OWN RISK. That being said I maintain my equipment regularly and have performed this mod on my HP without issue, my PSU's also have a temperature sensor built in, that not only controls the fan speed based on temperature but is also a redundant failsafe that will shut down the PSU if it overheats.
Likely to do with the fact the power supply is getting no speed reference. You only connected the 2 wires. The other 2 wires are important to 1. Set the speed and 2. read the current speed of the fan.
In my experience, Noctua fans cannot replace OEM fans in the majority of enterprise grade equipment. They are not the same thickness, which can leave gaps, as it did in the power supply you modified, and they only move a fraction of the air that OEM fans do. You replace a double, counter-rotating fan module with a wimpy single fan that blows next to nothing compared to the fan unit it replaced. Also, in my experience, Dell power supplied are silent or nearly so. So replacing those fans is probably a useless exercise.
probably because the fan was reporting or NOT reporting any RPM, the the PSU shuts down as a safety measure- 4 wires = power/negative/PWM control/RPM reporting
A simple + and - wont tell the PSU a thing about its fans and how/if they are operating. This is why the PSU will shut down after 5 seconds. It needs a tach signal. And preferably a PWM signal as well. My Lenovo X3650 M4 has a target fan speed set and will correct the PWM signal to match the desired speed. So If I try to slow the fan down, the system will just alter the PWM signal to make the fan spin faster and match its target speed. This is why all the fans will spin up to max speed at startup and after a while, quiet down. This is to check that all the fans are working correctly. I guessing replacing the original fans with Noctuas will throw a fan error as the fans can't hit their target speed. The server will probably still work, but will throw a error at every startup as well as throwing a error on the diagnostics panel. Still considering Noctuas though as I have a whole spare server. 🙂
Maybe getting a r320 and gutting the MB and PS then opening a huge hole for a monster and quiet fan that would then be used to push air into the top of your r510. You could also get an 8 bay 320 as the donor so you could then add an additional raid card to the r510 and feed the cords from the 320 drives to the second 510 card. Quiet and a huge drive capacity upgrade.
Have you considered stacking multiple Noctua fans in the front for highter static pressure? It might help, it might not, but it's something I haven't seen anyone try.
Many servers will run the fans at 100% or not work at all if a single fan is disconnected or has failed. Daisy chaining them would not work on those. I found on ebay a adapter for my HP ProLiant server taking the 6 pin on the mb to standard 4 pin but they cost 15-20 usd each so 75-120 usd for my 6 fans and then I need to buy the fans on top. I´m hoping to work out a diy solution before I choose to buy those. Just be aware that these mods in this video though clever may not work for you.
I have this issue with a new server which is going to sit near an employee office. it sounds like a jet! Dell has something called "sound cap" in the bios to reduce noise at the expense of performance limits. I'd rather not use that, but it may have to do for now until I can try acoustic panels because the server is in an alcove and I can cover all sides, even the front with a self-standing acoustic panel and hopefully bring the noise level down that way because I figure the noise must be bouncing off those 3 walls so why not dampen it?
This does not work. If you live in a hot place you will get overtemperature alarms with time as the serves becmes dirty. I did the same on a Proliant DL380P Gen 8 and it looked like it worked for some time but as time passed the alarms appeared. Dust on a room is unavoidable, that's why server rooms have filters . Sorry to bring bad news.
I've tried this on a PowerEdge R550 but the fan connection is completely different. The connector is attached to the fan housing so it's not that easy to do. I manage to cut of the connector from an original fan and managed to splice it in with an extension cable that came with the Noctua fans. However, the fan does not spin at all and the iDrac outputs an error that the RPM of said fain is too low and it's missing redundancy. Does this mean I've got to switch the wires around (green and yellow)? EDIT: Switched them arround and still the same error. Why is this happening? Dell, I really hate you! EDIT2: You can ignore the above. I was using the cable splicers that came with the Noctua fans I've bought years ago (40 mm). But apparently they're trash and not working correctly. I just soldered them together and it's working fine now using the colors shown in the video. CPU does throttle however when doing a stress test, but it's idling at about 70 - 75 degrees C, and whisper quiet!
@@STSYT Your mod might have actualy raised the CPU power draw. When running the same workload a hotter cpu consumes more as it's internal resistance increases. However the original fans could draw tens of wats at full speed.
I'm not sure why you didn't use the IPMI tool within iDRAC. Costs nothing and you can control your fans down to even 5%. Seems like a waste of time and $$$.
Why would you do this to the system? Just configure the fan speed via the IPMI. Set a threshold so that it can't cook itself. This poor machine. . . Can you imagine if someone opened you up and then replaced your lungs with that of a babies? Noctua fans are not good fans.
he have no problem because he is not using it as it shod. With 4 HDD there is not problem with heat. Problem comes when you populate all 12 bays with 16W 3TB SAS drives.. They block air for starter and another problem is that they are HOT. So i think that with noctuas it will be impossible too cool it down. All saw, he put all of his HDD on non CPU side of board and temp rise 10 degrees. Imagine all HDD on CPU side. And i know that i has ventilations openings between HDD case and fans but then HDD will be cooked. IPMI is best solution but you have, but you need to monitor it from time to time.
Electrical engineer here.
Most newish (made in the last 5-8 years) server PSUs are designed to detect if their fan has failed and will go into protective shutdown mode if it detects such a failure.
Usually this is done by measuring the fan's RPM using the tachometer wire, so if you leave this unconnected, the PSU will interpret this as 0 rpm, which normally would indicate the fan had failed.
You can determine if a server PSU needs the tachometer wire connected by unplugging it, sticking something through the blades of the fan which will obstruct it and prevent it from spinning, then turning the PSU on. If it doesn't shut off after a few seconds (if it turns on at all), then you can get away with just leaving the tachometer wire disconnected.
But more than likely, you'll discover that the PSU will detect the fan isn't spinning and will quickly shut off.
There are even some PSUs that not only measure the fan's RPM, but measure if the fan's RPM responds to the PWM control signal as expected. For those PSUs, all 4 wires must be connected. PSUs like this are not that common but they definitely exist.
Personally, I recommend always using a 4 wire fan and connecting all 4 wires when swapping out a PSU's fan since it's hardly any extra effort and if you already have it apart, might as well. Plus you retain the fan speed control functionality of the PSU.
"But more than likely, you'll discover that the PSU will detect the fan isn't spinning and will quickly shut off."
Well he did set out to make it quiet
@@minime9400 can't be loud if it's dead
thanks alot for sharing
With your powersupply the loose cables are used for pwm and fault detection. if i remeber correctly you could just bridge the two
I cannot speak on Dells servers however I can on their switches. I recently acquired a dell 24 Port POE switch and they had a delta fan and I swapped it for a noctua fan. I didn't need to solder any wires but simply use a pin removal tool to pop the pins out of the fan connector on the noctua fan and swap them around and push the same pins into the required place. The switch throws the fan error light but the fan works perfectly fine. Not sure if this same kind of foolery would work on the server fans or not but you've got to love the proprietary connectors these vendors use and then they quickly drop support for the products and replacement parts become very hard to find.
nice work! not often we see these kind of content on rack server fan mods
Great silent mod for that server.
I've seen another silent mod, but that guy a Supermicro server. I remember he had normal PWM connectors for case fans, but the server wouldn't boot if it didn't have a case fan into the connector that corresponds to PSU cooling and at least another one in any other slot that corresponds to CPU cooling. I guess Dell doesn't have a requirement like that.
He also did the PSU fan mod from loud Delta 40mm fan to quiet Noctua 40mm fan to 2 wires connector and didn't had problems.
It would have been nice to have them all on Noctua to have a full silent built, but still the difference is huge, from jet engine to whisper quiet.
reminds me of when i got my hands on an old poweredge 2950, holy crap that thing was loud as heck (and a power hog)
got rid of it because it was so dang loud, even after messing with the oem fans to get them to run as silent as possible
An ear saver mod for the home!! Beforehand my choice was putting the server under the house or in the storage room, the former is not good enough unless I build a box with sound proofing foam.
well done man, fair playfor the the effort you put in and sharing this with the community .
Glad you enjoyed it
what you could have done was just use ipmitools to set the fans to a static 20%. i do this with my r720 and its almost as if its not on when its running,
I’m about to build one of these. Is there more I need to know to do this? I really don’t wanna spend 75 on noctua fans if I don’t need to.
But that will affect the server life span..
@@vascovalente3929so will putting in low output Noctura fans lol
@@vascovalente3929no
@@vascovalente3929 how?
Just noticed in your video looking at the original fan in the PSU it looks like it has 4 wires, one of these wires is a tachometer signal. If the PSU sees no pulse the PSU will shut down.
If you put an oscilloscope on the tach wire you can see if it A: triggers to ground or power and B if the trigger pattern will match with the Noctua. However, most of the time they will not match, so... in order to trick the PSU into seeing the tach signal we simply attach the tach signal wire to the appropriate trigger source. On my HP it didn't like the trigger pattern of the Noctua, so I attached the trigger input to the mother board to the fan ground as this is what the tach signal triggered to. This makes the PSU think it has a strong tach signal and it will post. BUT BE WARNED - The tach signal is a PROTECTION MECHANISIM to shut the PSU down in the event of fan failure. If you perform this modification and a fan fails, if it goes unchecked it can overheat causing damage and possibly result in a fire so if you do this modification, you do so at your OWN RISK.
That being said I maintain my equipment regularly and have performed this mod on my HP without issue, my PSU's also have a temperature sensor built in, that not only controls the fan speed based on temperature but is also a redundant failsafe that will shut down the PSU if it overheats.
Thats noise difference is insane 😅
great tip on daisy chaining the fans 😃
It's not glue. It's a anti corrosive gel. It keeps moisture out. Also, great video
Damn.
That makes so much more sense😅
Thanks :)
Likely to do with the fact the power supply is getting no speed reference. You only connected the 2 wires. The other 2 wires are important to 1. Set the speed and 2. read the current speed of the fan.
You mean on the mini fans for the psu?
That makes sense
Exactly, makes SENSE 🙃
"The bomb has been planted"
In my experience, Noctua fans cannot replace OEM fans in the majority of enterprise grade equipment. They are not the same thickness, which can leave gaps, as it did in the power supply you modified, and they only move a fraction of the air that OEM fans do. You replace a double, counter-rotating fan module with a wimpy single fan that blows next to nothing compared to the fan unit it replaced. Also, in my experience, Dell power supplied are silent or nearly so. So replacing those fans is probably a useless exercise.
The thing that really bothers me is that he could have just set the fans to a static speed via the built in management system (Lifecycle Controller).
I thought the server wasn't running by the end of the video 😂
probably because the fan was reporting or NOT reporting any RPM, the the PSU shuts down as a safety measure- 4 wires = power/negative/PWM control/RPM reporting
A simple + and - wont tell the PSU a thing about its fans and how/if they are operating. This is why the PSU will shut down after 5 seconds. It needs a tach signal. And preferably a PWM signal as well.
My Lenovo X3650 M4 has a target fan speed set and will correct the PWM signal to match the desired speed. So If I try to slow the fan down, the system will just alter the PWM signal to make the fan spin faster and match its target speed. This is why all the fans will spin up to max speed at startup and after a while, quiet down. This is to check that all the fans are working correctly.
I guessing replacing the original fans with Noctuas will throw a fan error as the fans can't hit their target speed. The server will probably still work, but will throw a error at every startup as well as throwing a error on the diagnostics panel.
Still considering Noctuas though as I have a whole spare server. 🙂
Maybe getting a r320 and gutting the MB and PS then opening a huge hole for a monster and quiet fan that would then be used to push air into the top of your r510. You could also get an 8 bay 320 as the donor so you could then add an additional raid card to the r510 and feed the cords from the 320 drives to the second 510 card. Quiet and a huge drive capacity upgrade.
Great video, its exactly what I have been wanting to do to my machine so I can have it in the same room when working. Thanks.
I did this and my r510 12 bay was overheating constantly if you have any load over 60% for more than 2 minutes expect it to overheat fast
Have you considered stacking multiple Noctua fans in the front for highter static pressure? It might help, it might not, but it's something I haven't seen anyone try.
so 10°C more for silent server, not bad !
Great video.
Thanks!
Many servers will run the fans at 100% or not work at all if a single fan is disconnected or has failed. Daisy chaining them would not work on those. I found on ebay a adapter for my HP ProLiant server taking the 6 pin on the mb to standard 4 pin but they cost 15-20 usd each so 75-120 usd for my 6 fans and then I need to buy the fans on top. I´m hoping to work out a diy solution before I choose to buy those. Just be aware that these mods in this video though clever may not work for you.
I have this issue with a new server which is going to sit near an employee office. it sounds like a jet! Dell has something called "sound cap" in the bios to reduce noise at the expense of performance limits. I'd rather not use that, but it may have to do for now until I can try acoustic panels because the server is in an alcove and I can cover all sides, even the front with a self-standing acoustic panel and hopefully bring the noise level down that way because I figure the noise must be bouncing off those 3 walls so why not dampen it?
This does not work. If you live in a hot place you will get overtemperature alarms with time as the serves becmes dirty. I did the same on a Proliant DL380P Gen 8 and it looked like it worked for some time but as time passed the alarms appeared. Dust on a room is unavoidable, that's why server rooms have filters . Sorry to bring bad news.
You did not conect the third wire to the PSU so the PSU is tinking the FAN is dead and he shot down
Hi, really liked the mod!
Could you give more information about the stock fan of the PSU?
My brother in Christ. You can just run a script to call some ipmi commands that will set the fans to whatever speed you want.
I've tried this on a PowerEdge R550 but the fan connection is completely different. The connector is attached to the fan housing so it's not that easy to do. I manage to cut of the connector from an original fan and managed to splice it in with an extension cable that came with the Noctua fans. However, the fan does not spin at all and the iDrac outputs an error that the RPM of said fain is too low and it's missing redundancy. Does this mean I've got to switch the wires around (green and yellow)? EDIT: Switched them arround and still the same error. Why is this happening? Dell, I really hate you! EDIT2: You can ignore the above. I was using the cable splicers that came with the Noctua fans I've bought years ago (40 mm). But apparently they're trash and not working correctly. I just soldered them together and it's working fine now using the colors shown in the video. CPU does throttle however when doing a stress test, but it's idling at about 70 - 75 degrees C, and whisper quiet!
i just want to ask what operating system are you using on your R510 ? because ive got the same server and wondering which OS i should use
Hi, have you also checked the power consumption before and after the fans have been replaced?
Nope, but doubt that you’re going to see a big difference. Even if they spin really fast, they are just fans
@@STSYT Your mod might have actualy raised the CPU power draw. When running the same workload a hotter cpu consumes more as it's internal resistance increases. However the original fans could draw tens of wats at full speed.
Would this work with the R730 at all?
Why you wouldnt recommend it when i have heavy loads?
10 degrees more with lid on or off?
13:18 Dell wire splicing to Noctua fan mod.
I understand the dell connectors are noy same as noctua but couldn't you get power for new fans vis USB for example?
Thanks for the video :)
If you hack bios to look for the fans over USB, I'll salute you 😚
i did this to a qnap u2 rack server and now it shuts down due to overheating of the CPU.
Yea, dumb mod. Those noctua fans dont move anywhere near enough air, all ya gotta do is turn the fans down via idrac
Don't know your hourly rate but 12h of work you buy a new and better server or you build a silent cabinet 🤷🏿♀️
I'm not sure why you didn't use the IPMI tool within iDRAC. Costs nothing and you can control your fans down to even 5%. Seems like a waste of time and $$$.
your original PSU fans got PWM and speed signal wires. u cut them off. that's why. solder all of them next time. ;)
Your server melted down after this "silent mod"?
Now just let it burn by itself
Why would you do this to the system? Just configure the fan speed via the IPMI. Set a threshold so that it can't cook itself. This poor machine. . . Can you imagine if someone opened you up and then replaced your lungs with that of a babies? Noctua fans are not good fans.
he have no problem because he is not using it as it shod. With 4 HDD there is not problem with heat. Problem comes when you populate all 12 bays with 16W 3TB SAS drives.. They block air for starter and another problem is that they are HOT. So i think that with noctuas it will be impossible too cool it down. All saw, he put all of his HDD on non CPU side of board and temp rise 10 degrees. Imagine all HDD on CPU side. And i know that i has ventilations openings between HDD case and fans but then HDD will be cooked. IPMI is best solution but you have, but you need to monitor it from time to time.
Many people have been opened up and had both lungs replaced
"PVM"