4/26/2020 (1) Silencing a HP DL380 Gen8 : homelab

Search

Posts WIKI

Posted by u/FelR0429 1 year ago 

Silencing a HP DL380 Gen8

Labgore

For all folks out there who are running a DL380 Gen8 with a additional RAID card like the P420/P412/...
and are annoyed by the loud fans I found a solution. Not a good one, but it works.

The loud fan noise is caused by the RAID card running hot. To keep it at least at 85 °C iLO spins up the
fans up to 45% in my case. This decent airflow seems needed because the raid card only has a very
small heatsink. My idea was to improve cooling of the raid card by adding a 40 mm fam directly on top
of the heatsink, so that the system fans don't have to spin that fast.

First problem was how to power the fan as the mainboard provides no connector for additonal fans. I
noticed the 10-pin power connector for GPUs on the riser card. Some measurements gave me this
pinout:

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/ba56lf/silencing_a_hp_dl380_gen8/ 1/7
4/26/2020 (1) Silencing a HP DL380 Gen8 : homelab

Search

HP DL380p Gen8 GPU power connector

Using a modified 6-pin to molex adapter I was able to attach a 12V 40 mm fan. The fan itself was
mounted using a zip tie directly on top of the heatsink.

40 mm fan tied to the heatsink

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/ba56lf/silencing_a_hp_dl380_gen8/ 2/7
4/26/2020 (1) Silencing a HP DL380 Gen8 : homelab

Here's an overview. You can see the 6-pin plug in the 10-pin connector, the P421 controller and the 40
Search
mm fan.

Overview

Using this extra fan I was able to keep the raid card temperature below 80 °C (varies between 65 °C
and 75 °C). This caused iLO to spin down the system fan to 9% to 12%, which makes a huge difference
on the noise level. According to a crappy iPhone app the noise level of my whole rack decreased from
71 dB(A) to 69 dB(A) measured in 1 m distance. The sound of the little fan itself is not noticeable
outside the chassis. Despite the additional fan power consuption of the whole system decreased by
about 10 W.

 20 Comments  Give Award  Share  96% Upvoted

This thread is archived

 New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast

SORT BY BEST

 Slyfir20 3 points · 1 year ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/ba56lf/silencing_a_hp_dl380_gen8/ 3/7
4/26/2020 (1) Silencing a HP DL380 Gen8 : homelab

 I have this same exact set up at home, I'll have to find myself a fan and set this up. Cheers
Search
mate!!

Give Award Share Report Save

 BiggRanger 3 points · 1 year ago

 Awesome write-up!
Give Award Share Report Save

 ivanjn 2 points · 1 year ago

 I agree, awesome write-up. But...

Only 5-15º less? Maybe the fan is upside down? I'm no expert so this can be normal, but I
don't think so. Maybe a fan like in laptops on the side and some tape covering the top of the
cooler....

I just noticed that below is another card with its own cooler. Is it running hot? heat can be
transferred to upper card, so you can put another fan there....

Share 

 FelR0429  3 points · 1 year ago · edited 1 year ago

 These 10 °C make a huge difference. iLO is trying to keep temp below 85 °C by ramping
up the fans. With no additional cooling the system fans have to spin at 40% speed
making much noise. Without ramping the fans up I think it would way over 100 °C. With
the additional fan the card stays cool at 75 °C by itself without iLO ramping up the fans,
that stay at quiet 10%.

Primary goal of this write-up is not lowing the raid card temps, there would propably be
better ways, but lowering the sound emissions produced by the system fans.

The other card in the slot below stays at reasonable 55 °C. Comparing to another server
that isn't equipped with this one, it doesn't make a difference. It will always reach 85 °C.

Share 

 ivanjn 2 points · 1 year ago

 I'm just surprised about only getting 10ºC less going from passive to active cooling.
The solution you write about is ok and IMHO very well executed
Share 

 Mistral-Fien 1 point · 1 year ago

 A bigger heatsink might help, but OP may run into clearance issues. Changing the
TIM (Thermal Interface Material), whether it's paste or pad, might help too.

Share 

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/ba56lf/silencing_a_hp_dl380_gen8/ 4/7
4/26/2020 (1) Silencing a HP DL380 Gen8 : homelab

 Gwareth ESXi. 2 points · 1 year ago

 Search
I seem to luck out with my veeam-server. DL360p Gen8, with an extra Smart Array P822 PCIE-
card and an HP Ethernet 10Gb 2-port 557SFP+ PCIE, yet my fans have never gone over 20%.

Give Award Share Report Save

 Plastic_sporkz 1 point · 1 year ago

 Where have you been my while life. I'm dealing with this exact issue. ILo has my fans spinning
at 56% in my rack which is in my bed room with a window AC unit cooling the room to 68-72
degrees. The unit is louder than my Dell r710, r610, Unifi USG pro and 2 Unifi Poe switches
combined. So much so as much as I want to use it, it's too loud. I'm going to have to give this a
try

Give Award Share Report Save

 Makkersjnr HP DL380E G8 | Hyper-V | Vmware 1 point · 1 year ago

 Wow good job dude, I've been trying to lower the noise of my Dl380 for months. Could I have
some more photos of how to mod the cables so I can do this? If it makes that much difference
that would be amazing. My fans sit around 30% :(

Give Award Share Report Save

 FelR0429  1 point · 1 year ago

 Of course I can provide you with some more detailed pictures. Please allow me time til the
weekend as I‘m not near my servers right now.

Share 

 Makkersjnr HP DL380E G8 | Hyper-V | Vmware 1 point · 1 year ago

 Thanks dude, I would really appreciate it. Don't rush for them.
Share 

 FelR0429  1 point · 1 year ago · edited 1 month ago

 Hey mate, sorry for the delay. Here you go:
https://files.ruell.cc/index.php/s/rQ9JX6QRn5reETL

Edit: fixed link

Share 

 Y2KUK 1 point · 9 months ago

 Do you have an active link? the link provided is dead.

thanks.

Share 

 FelR0429  1 point · 7 months ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/ba56lf/silencing_a_hp_dl380_gen8/ 5/7
4/26/2020 (1) Silencing a HP DL380 Gen8 : homelab

 Now the link should work again. It took so long as I had to wait for Nextcloud
Search
bugfix.
Share 

 Ralms 1 point · 11 months ago

 Hi there,

Great post.

Could you do me a huge favor please?

If you are using the 8 x LFF backplane, could you tell me the 8 pin power connector pinout
voltages?
I've purchased the 643704-001 backplane to use in a DIY project where I have a HP DL360p 1U
server to control about 20 drives, so I will need to make my own cables, but I can't find the
voltage of the connector.

He is an image of my backplane:

https://www.serverschmiede.com/images/product_images/info/hp-8x-35-sas-festplatten-hard-
disk-backplane-board-proliant-dl380p-gen8-643704-001.jpg

Thank you.

Give Award Share Report Save

 chiisana 2U 4xE5-4640 16x16GB 5x8TB RAID6 Noisy Space Heater 0 points · 1 year ago

 Is 2dB of sound really noticable? It feels like that's just a minor unnoticeable difference as it's
so little.
Give Award Share Report Save

 FelR0429  2 points · 1 year ago

 dB is a logarithmic unit and doesn’t correlate good with human loudness perception. By
converting it to Sone you can get a better impression as it correlates linear with human
perception. 69 dB is about 17 Sone, 71 dB equals 20 Sone. So for humans it seems 15% less
loud.

If you measure the server alone the difference would probably be much higher, but in my
case it sits in a rack with a (not so) noisy disk shelf and some other servers that add up to
the total loudness. So a single server producing less noise doesn’t have such a great effect.
And with this in mind the while rack emitting 15% less noise seems great to me.

Share 

 chiisana 2U 4xE5-4640 16x16GB 5x8TB RAID6 Noisy Space Heater 0 points · 1 year ago


https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/ba56lf/silencing_a_hp_dl380_gen8/ 6/7
4/26/2020 (1) Silencing a HP DL380 Gen8 : homelab

I understand that. Theres also notes that every 10dB basically doubles the loudness. I
Search
reduced mine from around 70dB to around 50dB and the difference was really noticable.
However pre- and post-tuning, I get +/-2 dB readings and I didn't notice the difference in
either situation.
Share 

 FelR0429  1 point · 1 year ago

 Wow, 20 dB less noise. What have you done? Replaced all your servers with NUCs?

These numbers don’t reflect the real situation good. At high fan speeds above 30%
especially the fans of this particular server produce a high pitched salient sound
that’s really annoying. With my modification and the lower fan speeds it produces a
more muffled sound that you can’t distinguish from the noise of all the other
components.

Share 

 chiisana 2U 4xE5-4640 16x16GB 5x8TB RAID6 Noisy Space Heater 1 point · 1 year ago
 My server is Asus RS926-E7/RS8, a 2U quad sock system. It came with 5 chassis
cooler and 4 passive cpu cooler. The chassis coolers I've replaced with Noctua's
PWM fans which brought the noise level way down, but they weren't enough to
keep the CPU cool -- even on idle the temperature creeps up to 90C++ and doesn't
stop (E5-4640's thermal rating was somewhere in mid/low 90's so I didn't keep
that running for longer to find out if it plateaus). I then added 4 dynatron active
coolers for the CPUs and now I can cryptomine with all cores and not go above
80C.

I think I know the high pitch sound you're referring to. Does it felt like there was
two distinct frequencies that were echoing very quickly back and forth? That was
driving my wife nuts and she refused to enter the office (where the server is
sitting). After the tuning, that ringing went away, and although it is still nosiy, it
mostly feels like an old desktop computer from the 90s. I suspect most of the
noise is also coming from the power supplier fans which I haven't figured out how
to replace yet. Last I checked, I think they looked like stacked 40mm fans... Not
sure when I'll pop one open and see what can be done about it.

Share 

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/ba56lf/silencing_a_hp_dl380_gen8/ 7/7