DL585 G2 removal of psu2 fans

[Qube]

Hey, i'm having some problems with noise and i was thinking, is it possible to remove the 2 fans blowing on the psu2, which is not in use nor connected to power.

I don't need the psu redundancy and therefor doesn't have psu2 connected to power. Would it be a big problem to remove the 2 fans or does it even matter?

[waaronb]

I wouldn't recommend it.  Even though it's not blowing air onto an actual PSU, it's still moving air from the front of the server out the back (cold zone to hot zone), and that's a critical part of the system's airflow design.

If noise is an issue, then I would either recommend moving the server into a space where you can't hear it (but still has good ventilation... that is, don't shove it into a closet with no air in/out).  Or don't use a noisy HP server as your system...

I like HP servers, I really do, but if your only choice is to have it next to people or within earshot, then pick something designed to be quiet.  It might not have all the bells and whistles of a full blown server platform, but that's where you have to make some design compromises.

There may be some server manufacturer out there that actually tries to make their machines quiet... or you could get your own pizza-box case and a generic "server" motherboard, throw some components in there and give it a liquid cooling solution for the CPUs.  But even those generic 1U / 2U boxes are going to come with a set of fans in the front to move air through... that's what rack mount servers need.

Your quietest boxes are going to be tower cases with liquid cooling.  Like I said, I love HP servers, but I put them in server rooms well out of hearing range.  For my personal desktop, I went with off-the-shelf parts and a nice Corsair liquid-cooler.  If I have to sit next to a machine all day, I want it to be whisper quiet.  The noisiest part of that box is when the spinning drives are doing their thing (main drive is an SSD, but I have spinning disks for bulk storage).

Considering the wide array of choices in motherboards you can pick from, you shouldn't have any problem getting a good, fast system.  The case I use even has 4 hot-plug drive bays on the side in addition to a good amount of internal drive bays, so that's almost server-like.  Pair something like that with a decent array controller or even the Intel RAID built into some motherboards and you have a "good enough" solution for many things.

I've even seen tower cases with redundant power supplies, and of course you can pick a motherboard that uses registered DIMMs, dual or even quad processors, etc.

Again, not trying to sway anyone away from getting a decent HP server... I'm just pointing out that if you want a quiet box, a Proliant probably shouldn't be your choice.

[Qube]

Well my "problem" is that i've been "gifted" 2x dl585 g2 and 6x 465c g6.

So buying loud server wasn't my idea :D

Anyways thanks for the answer

[waaronb]

LOL... okay, free servers are hard to pass up.

Well, my best advice would be to find somewhere to put these, far far away from humans.

Unfortunately you can't just unplug the fans and setup some alternate cooling system, because the server will see missing fans and start throwing errors.

Otherwise you could take all the fans out and point a portable AC unit right at it or something. The DL5xx models are even big enough that you *might* get away with liquid coolers on the CPU's, although mounting the radiators would be tricky to place with the off-the-shelf coolers. They don't always have the longest tubing. You'd probably be looking at one of the systems that routes the tubing outside the case entirely and has an external pump/radiator.

But you'd still need to have fans installed to avoid the errors... yeah, no good way around that, besides figuring out the pinout on the fan pins and faking it into thinking a fan is there, but there's also a speed sense so it knows how fast it's going, and that might need to be faked too.

The big problem is, anywhere you put this server to minimize the environmental noise is also probably going to mean shoving it in a closet or something with minimal air exchange, which will lead to overheating. If it weren't for that, you could wrap the thing in insulation and call it good; but it would melt in a few minutes. :)

The nearest example I can come up with of my own is an installation of a handful of servers that went into what used to be a tiny office, turned into a storage room, and then they threw some telco racks in there and made it a "server room".

It had zero ventilation once the door was closed, and if the door was open, it was too loud for people in other offices.

The "solution" was to get one of those portable AC units you can find at any big-box store, put that in the room and then run the exhaust of the AC unit up into the drop ceiling and just let it flood that space with the warm air.

It wasn't perfect, and those portable AC units also have a lovely side effect of dehumidifying, so I found myself checking the water in there each morning to empty out a few pints.

Once, I didn't check that water level for a couple days. It filled up, the AC shut off because it's water thing was full, and next thing you know that tiny room had an ambient temp of over 100 degrees F, which caused all the HP's to thermal shutdown and made the switches unhappy too.

We finally found a sweet spot on the portable AC of around 74 degrees F which was cool enough to keep the equipment happy and warm enough to keep it from dehumidifying, so it didn't normally condense anything. If we changed it even a couple degrees to 72, it would dehumidify... so it's a very fine line depending on your relative humidity. In the deep south or coastal areas with high humidity, you'd probably be dealing more with 80F or even higher... which is still tolerable for servers, though not ideal.