Project Supermicro 846 Plex Server Build Part 2 - Silencing The Beast
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 มี.ค. 2020
- Today we're going to "Silence The Beast" in regards to the obnoxiously loud server cooling fans.
The first and easiest part was i didn't order the chassis with the stock power supplies, which are little tornadoes in themselves. Instead I opted to buy a compatible power supply that is part of supermicro's "super quiet" line of power supplies.
What takes the most work is ripping out the old fan wall, and replacing it with 3 120mm fans. I used noctua's flagship 120mm fans as they have pretty good static pressure (not the best) but more importantly they have a reputation for reliability.
Last we ripped the 2 80mm blowers out of the back wall hot swap chassis, and replaced them with 80mm noctua redux fans (which I already had on my soon to be retired rosewill chassis).
Next time we'll be working on the external ascetics of the case.
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Almost the same case setup I got except this one has 2 of the standard power supplies:
www.theserverstore.com/Superm...
Supermicro 6-Inch 16Pin Front Control Split Cable (CBL-0084L):
amzn.to/3a5LGOU
Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM, Premium Quiet Fan, 4-Pin (120mm, Brown):
amzn.to/3clOER9 - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Great job glad to see I'm not the only one who uses zip ties, tape, and foam to get builds done.
They're basic tools IMO!
Subscribing! Dude you have the exact same idea I had except you're way ahead of me. I'm going to do this with you. Keep the great content coming. I appreciate you.
excellent choice of fans :D
Thank you!
As an owner of two noctua A12 owners via my U12a.. they are amazing fans, but the pitch. ek Vardars are no where near as nicely made, but kinda prefer their softer tone even if they are nominally louder for the given airflow.Still 1000x better than what you started with, and noctuas are as good as it gets for peace of mind.
👏👏👏
I kept the front 3 fans, i plugged them into my motherboard to control. I deleted the rear fans and removed the power supply for a standard atx style. Mine is very quiet. no issues with cooling in 6-7 years of continuous running.
Gotta keep them drive cool cool cool! Plus I bet with the bigger fans...gonna be able to move more air..and quieter too...WITH less power!
Nice build going. I want to get this same bare bones chassis for my plex server. Currently just in a full tower and will need to make an upgrade in the future.
It's worth every penny compared to a typical tower case.
Any reason you didn’t go with a Norco 4224? Comes with a 3x120 fan wall and compatibility with any power supply.
I am looking at this chassis on ebay right now. As soon as I identify which backplane revision supports drives larger than 2TB I am probably going to get myself an early birthday present.
What sort of ancient backplane could possibly limit drive sizes like that?
@@reformCopyright I don't know which is which but some of the older enterprise backplanes would not support larger drives. I ended up grabbing a InterTech 4420 so I never had that issue. The good thing about supermicro chassis 846 is that you can swap out an older back plane for one that supports newer specs. I just decided to go with a simpler solution.
Great video. I just ordered the same barebones SC846 for an upgraded setup. Can you tell me what cable adapters you used for the fans?
The cable adapters came with the noctua fans.
What is that 3m Silver Ducttape you used on top of the fan wall called?
It's probably Nashua foil tape, I have some that I used to form an air duct to a heat sink. It's great stuff, usually it's used for taping HVAC ducts. It can tolerate high temperature and it's very very sticky. You need to be sure it's positioned correctly before sticking it on, it's hard to get off.
Is the 120mm fan wall conversion required, as opposed to replacing the three existing 80mm fans in the fan wall with Noctua's as well (so keep the existing fan wall, no modding needed just drop-in the new 80mm's)? Would 3x 80mm replacements simply not move enough air within the case to compete with the originals they're replacing?
Since any quiet fan will move less air then the high rpm loud server fans, switching to 120mm fans helps to mitigate some of the loss of air flow from going quiet. 80mm may work if you only use 5400rpm HDD's, but I feel a lot safer with 120mm fans.
@@madelectronengineering Ok thanks. I will only be using 5400 rpm's (all shucked WD's), but I also don't need truly "quiet" fans to replace the stock ones.. my server is in the basement and I'd happily accept a middle-ground between noise and airflow if it means I can just drop-in replacement fans. I'll shop around and see if there's any 80mm's that move enough air without sounding like the stock jet engines. Thanks!
@@binarymango2853 If you want a non-destructive method (only a little work), replace the 3 fans on the fan wall with FAN-0074L4 and replace the rear fans with FAN-0104L4. You'll just need to take the fans out of their green housings and depending on what model fan holders you have on the fan wall, you might need to break the black webbing on the side of the fan. This is very easy to do though and can be done with pliers. The webbing is soft and will break off without much effort. In the end, you'll still have the hotswap functionality, less noise, and a very significant amount of airflow. I sit by my Supermicro 836 and don't find it annoying at all. You can definitely hear it but it's more just like large amount of air going by.
What motherboard did you go with? Thanks for the video
Have you measured the difference in hard drive temperatures under load before and after the switch? I imagine he bays don't do as well with the lower pressure because there is hardly room for air between the drives. I'd be especially interested in the temps of the drives in the middle/center because I'm planning on silencing a Supermicro rack case as well.
Thanks for the video. It was interesting.
After doing a parity check on my array that took around 16 hours the drives never got warmer then 93'F with the fan wall turned up to 100%. I would say it worked great! And remember that I taped off the empty swap bays as well.
Mad Electron Engineering Sounds great, thanks! That gives me hope that sealing my construction properly will improve my temperatures as well compared to my first test.
@@madelectronengineering Oh, but now I saw you have only nine drives in yet. That would explain why your temperatures are so much lower than mine. Mine takes only 16 drives. But I think I'm going to leave at least two bays in the middle empty for better air flow. It makes a big difference.
Great work! A lot of good info. Could you link to or give the model of the super quiet line of power supplies? I just want to make sure I am buying the right thing. Thanks!
The quiet power supplies have a Q in the model number
I am just thinking of this
Do you have a link for the Noctua Redux fans that you used?
amzn.to/3ms42RO
@@madelectronengineering this link points to the wrong fans now? Any chance you could update it? I'm just following along with your video on my new 846 case. Thanks and keep up the great work :-)
Why is your power supply so quiet? My P/S sounded like a turbo prop so I replaced it with an ATX.
where the old fans in the fan wall 92mm? you might not get enough static pressure to move air through the case, but you did get noctua fans wich are great for noise vs static pressure. anyway good job!
Stock fans were 80mm.
is the power supply very loud?
The power supplies that don't have a Q in the model number are jet plane loud. The ones that have a Q in the model number are quieter, but how much quieter I do not know.
7:00 and by drilling you get metal parts into the pdu
unfortunatly they are out of stock at the moment, I cant find one of these cases anywhere :( they have the 36 bay version but that is a bit overkill for me
Yeah all the 846 cases have been bought up this year it seems. Keep your eyes peeled next year.
@@madelectronengineering trust me I will be, seems to be the only really good solution other than making my own DAS
Currently building my nas/plex/flux node rig in a 826 with 16 core epyc. I think I have plex working but it plays at like 380p. Rather watch mY hair Grey than 380p
While I don’t care for any of the things you did to the case, I did want to thank you for the link to the adapter cable for the supermicro front panel cable. I had been using ipmi to turn my server on 😂
I Did About the Same Mods To My CSE-846 Case But I Never did anything i cant Put Back to 100% Stock if i Ever Needed to for whatever reason But I Used All Be Quiet Fans Instead Of Noctua Love Their Fans But i just hate to buy 8-10 at a Time like a Can the be Quiets at 10-12$ ea as to 25-30$ ea But i went with dual E5-2696 v2's with a pair of Noctua NH-U9DXI4 Coolers then 144gb of Ecc Ram an Got To Have 10Gb Nic & Nvidia Quadro several ssd's for cashe & vm's,Plex How Ever I Noticed my Dual 1200w 80+ Platinum PSU Fans Would Get Loud From Time To Time So the 2 back fans a stuck the stock fans back in & set the speed of them to about half & its quiet ..to me any how But My PSU Fans Still Get Loud AF from time to time And I am Not going to pay 100$ ea for a pair of sq fans so i am going to mod the fans with a Noctua LNA & I am Willing to Bet That Will Solve The Noise Problem From Now On ..I half to cut the noctua LNA apart & thet the Resistors Value & Then just use my Own Resistor..lol. ! I have 2 more Dual Xeon Servers i Built & manage & they all run 24/7 but they are in Big Desktop Gaming Cases..my First Dual Xeon Build is in a Fractal XLR2 case an the other is in a Thor V2 Case..Its Hard To Find a Server Case That Will Work with These Massif Super micro Bords !..i think thy are like 13x13 or 14 thair about ..Huge..But i love them..!