Fan speeds are constantly cycling

[phil1c]

Hello All,

 

I am new to the wonderful world of unRaid (6.1.7 Plus) here (everything was up and running starting a week ago) and I'm experiencing inconsistent fan speeds with my new server.  My motherboard is a SuperMicro x9SRA (with latest BIOS) which has five (5) PWM fan headers, none of which are labeled as "CPU", only "Fan" and a number.  I have the CPU fan plugged into Fan2 (fans are plugged into ports based on distance that the cable will reach) and my four (4) case fans in the other slots, all of which are PWM fans of varied 120mm and 140mm sizes.

 

Now, to the issue: I noticed that all of my fans are constantly cycling between minimum speed and maximum speed.  They do so in roughly 6 second cycles (2 seconds full speed, 4 seconds minimum).  While it's doing this, my server is under no load (no Plex streams, no streaming over my local network), my CPU temp is 36C and my harddrives (5 in total) range in temp from 31C - 38C.  Right now there are a few Plex streams encoding and this cycling is continuing.

 

As for attempted fixes, I have installed the Dynamix Auto Fan Control and while it detected some of my fan inputs, applying it did nothing to change the behavior.  I also tried the unraid-fan-speed shell script that's floating around here and that did run, picked a temp to base the PWM speed on, and set a PWM speed but, again, no change in speeds.

 

What I'm looking for is some way to stop my fans from constantly spinning at full speed then back down, just because of the noise (this server is near my home theater).  I would love for the fans to run based on HDD and CPU temp with the CPU fan controlled independently.

 

Additional notes: as I'm writing this, a couple more plex streams have been opened (transcoding), my CPU temps are up at 45C now, two of my HDDs are up at 41C now, and my fans are now running at constant speeds (~65% full speed).

 

So, shortening: at idle, my fans are all over the place.  Under load the speeds are mostly constant.  As I've currently witnessed my temps have never neared a critical level, just looking for some quiet consistency.

 

Any help you have would be great.

 

Cheers,

Philip

[mattbr]

I had the same issue and solved it through IPMITool. Dynamix AutoFan doesn't recognise the controller on my X10SL7-F, for some reason, so...

 

ipmitool sensor list all

 

ipmitool sensor thresh "FAN<foo>" lower <n> <n> <n> (first number should be Lower Non-Recoverable, then Lower Critical, then Lower Non-Critical)

 

ipmitool sensor thresh "FANA” upper <n> <n> <n> (first number should be Upper Non-Recoverable, then Upper Critical, then Upper Non-Critical)

 

You'd then want to set the bios to the desired management mode. "Standard" is 50% of max speed and up, "Optimal" is 30% of max speed and up, temperature-adjusted. Also, if you set your lower critical / non-recoverable to something higher than a third of the upper speed, you might get wonky behaviour.

 

PS : on some SuperMicro boards, the CPU fan should be connected to FAN1.

[phil1c]

The x9SRA board that I have doesn't have IPMI and given that I'm very new to unRaid and Linux I'm not sure if the sensor threshold settings you are altering can be changed in some other manner.

 

And yes, once this pre-clear is done I'll move my CPU fan to Fan1.

[PeterB]

If using the fan auto control plugin, try increasing the Minimum PMW Value.

 

I suspect that what is happening is that the software control is setting the fan speed low, then the firmware watchdog is deciding that the fan speed is too low, and setting it to maximum.

[limefrog]

@phil1c

 

Did you find a fix? I have the exact same problem as you. This is my server:

 

CPU: Intel Xeon E5-1650 v3

CPU Fan: Noctua NH-U12S (NF-F12 120mm 1500/1200rpm)

MOBO: SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SRA-F-O

RAM: Kingston 32GB (4 x 16GB) 288-Pin DDR4 2133 SDRAM ECC Registered

Case: Norco-4224

Case Fans: Noctua NF-P12 PWM (1300/900rpm) 120mm x 3

Case Fans: Noctua NF-R8 PWM (1800) 80mm x 2

PSU: SeaSonic Snow Silent 750 (62A)

Cache Drive: SAMSUNG 850 EVO 2.5" 500GB SATA III SSD MZ-75E500B/AM

Array: WD Red WD60EFRX 6TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s x 2

OS: unRAID 6.1.9

[limefrog]

Here are some detailed instructions on how to fix the fan revving up and down problem for other newbs like myself. Note these instructions are for mac.

 

Links with some additional information:

https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=22527.0

https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=34557.15

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-to-change-sensor-thresholds-with-ipmi-using-ipmitool.23571/

 

1) Transferred ipmitool-1.8.13-x86_64-1_fs.tgz into the flash drive (downloaded here: https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=34557.15)

2) SSH into unRAID

3) in Terminal, type "installpkg /boot/ipmitool-1.8.13-x86_64-1_fs.tgz"

4) in Terminal, type "modprobe ipmi_si"

5) in Terminal, type "modprobe ipmi_devintf"

6) in Terminal, type "ipmitool" to start IPMItool

7) in Terminal, type "ipmitool sensor list all" (read https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-to-change-sensor-thresholds-with-ipmi-using-ipmitool.23571/)

in Terminal, type "ipmitool sensor thresh "FAN1" lower 0 100 200" (the first number, 0, is for the Lower Non-Recoverable threshold, the 2nd number, 100, is for the Lower Critical threshhold, and the 3rd number, 200, is for the Lower Non-Critical threshold. I got these numbers by ensuring my threshold was just below the minimum RPM of my fans, which I found on the manufacturer's website)

9) repeat for remaining fans

 

[mikeyunk]

Any other way to manage the fan speeds other than this?

[dmacias]

Any other way to manage the fan speeds other than this?

What board do you have?

[mikeyunk]

On 10/13/2017 at 8:22 PM, dmacias said:

On 10/13/2017 at 8:04 PM, mikeyunk said:

Any other way to manage the fan speeds other than this?

What board do you have?

Supermicro X8DTL. I just installed the IPMI support plugin and set the fan speed to 50%.  Seems good now.

Edited October 16, 2017 by mikeyunk

[mikeyunk]

The IPMI support is not actually working.  I thought it was for a while.  I loaded up some torrent downloads and the fan speed went up to 9000 RPM's again.  I lowered the maximum % to 25 but that didn't work.  Not sure what to do now.

[highgear]

On 4/16/2016 at 12:02 PM, limefrog said:

Here are some detailed instructions on how to fix the fan revving up and down problem for other newbs like myself. Note these instructions are for mac.

 

Links with some additional information:

https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=22527.0

https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=34557.15

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-to-change-sensor-thresholds-with-ipmi-using-ipmitool.23571/

 

1) Transferred ipmitool-1.8.13-x86_64-1_fs.tgz into the flash drive (downloaded here: https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=34557.15)

2) SSH into unRAID

3) in Terminal, type "installpkg /boot/ipmitool-1.8.13-x86_64-1_fs.tgz"

4) in Terminal, type "modprobe ipmi_si"

5) in Terminal, type "modprobe ipmi_devintf"

6) in Terminal, type "ipmitool" to start IPMItool

7) in Terminal, type "ipmitool sensor list all" (read https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-to-change-sensor-thresholds-with-ipmi-using-ipmitool.23571/)

in Terminal, type "ipmitool sensor thresh "FAN1" lower 0 100 200" (the first number, 0, is for the Lower Non-Recoverable threshold, the 2nd number, 100, is for the Lower Critical threshhold, and the 3rd number, 200, is for the Lower Non-Critical threshold. I got these numbers by ensuring my threshold was just below the minimum RPM of my fans, which I found on the manufacturer's website)

9) repeat for remaining fans

 

Thanks for the detailed write up! Worked great on my Supermicro X11SSL-CF. No more cycling issues since. I used 20% less than my fan's lowest rated speed for the Lower Non-critical (rounded to nearest 100), then subtracted 100 from that for the second number, then subtracted another 100 from that for first number (Lower Non-Recoverable threshold. This method was mentioned in the linked thread on the freenas forums. Also, here is a direct link to the file needed:

 

https://github.com/dmacias72/unRAID_6.0/releases/download/2015.03.22/ipmitool-1.8.13-x86_64-1_fs.tgz

[mikeyunk]

I just removed the loud Intel heatsink and used my original heatsink which has larger quieter fans.  The issue is still there but not as bad now since the fans are pretty quiet.  I may try installing the IPMI Tools but I an not really sure how to SSH into the server.  I'm surprised there is no plugin that can install this.

[dmacias]

I just removed the loud Intel heatsink and used my original heatsink which has larger quieter fans.  The issue is still there but not as bad now since the fans are pretty quiet.  I may try installing the IPMI Tools but I an not really sure how to SSH into the server.  I'm surprised there is no plugin that can install this.

If earlier you were referring to my IPMI plugin (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dmacias72/IPMI-unRAID/master/plugin/ipmi.plg), Fan Control won't work yet for Supermicro X8 or X9 boards. Even when I implement it, there will only be a control over all fans using high, medium and low based on a single temp source. However all other functions of the plugin will work.

Most useful to this thread is the Config Editor, a web based text editor. It allows you to edit the sensors config and save/commit it to the BMC. It will allow you to load the config on system start if settings don't persist through a reboot. So you don't need to load any packages or use the command line. The plugin uses freeipmi instead of ipmitools.