Proliant DL 380 gets hot after cpu upgrade

[MrBean1962]

I would like to present the following to you: I have a ProLiant DL 380 Gen. 9. It has run perfectly fine for a year and a half. The fans fluctuated between 20% and 80% and were noisy during heavier workloads. I have been running Unraid for two months and have never received a warning about excessive temperature, neither for the CPU, memory, nor the hard disks.

The server had 128GB and 2x CPU E5-2695 v3. I was able to acquire a second DL 380 cheaply, mainly for spare parts. I transferred the 128GB of memory and 2x CPU E5-2680 v4 from this DL 380 to my existing DL 380.
128GB was installed in the white slots and 128GB in the black slots (according to the instructions on the lid), and I swapped the CPUs so that my existing DL 380 now has 2x E5-2680 v4.

Everything seemed to be working fine until I received a warning in Unraid that the hard disks in the rear bays were getting hot (50 to 57 degrees Celsius). I noticed that the fans were running quietly. ILO indicated that fans 1 and 2 were at 17%, while the other four were around 28%. The 12 hard disks at the front remained within acceptable temperatures, ranging from 38 to 44 degrees Celsius. The fans stayed at this level and did not ramp up as they used to. In the BIOS, fan control was set to "optimal," so I changed it to "increased cooling." Now, the fans constantly run at 100%, except for the first two, which operate at 80%. The temperature remains just within safe limits.
The CPUs are installed with good thermal paste, and the airflow guide is properly mounted. Despite this, the server is very warm, even on the outside.
The memory is running at 2133MHz (one set of 128GB is 2133MHz, and the other set is 2400MHz).
Does anyone have an idea of what could be causing this issue? I still have other CPU heatsinks (standard efficiency) that are in the other DL 380 server. Would it make sense to install them instead of the high-performance heatsinks I’m currently using? That doesn’t seem logical, but could it possibly improve things?
I hope someone can help.

[ghayth1994]

Hello 

Gen 9 DL 380 came in two fan options, high performance fans and standard fans.

did you swap the fans from the spares unite as well, you can check if they have the same part numbers, if the fans are diffrent, i would recommend swapping the fans from doner server as they should match the CPUs TDP.

[MrBean1962 · Accepted solution]

@ghayth1994 

Thank you for your suggestion.

I swapped the high-performance fans with the standard performance fans, as you suggested. That did not do the trick, alas. The fans were still fixed at 13% and 21%. 

Next thing I figured might be worth a try, was to execute a bios reset. Part of this reset is that the present hardware is reevaluated. All I needed to change afterwards is for the DL380 to use UEFI-boot. After the reboot that followed the bios reset, I noticed a different behaviour of the fans. Instead of one same level they were fluctuating in speed. And yes! After the system rebooted the fans speeds were at 21% and 27%. A minute later 29% and 22% and after some time 22% and 28%. So ILO seems to be controlling the fans again. I'll monitor this in the coming days. I guess that if you update CPU and memory certain settings in the BIOS are not updated accordingly and a BIOS reset is needed. 

I am considering replacing the standard fans by the high-performance again. Are you sure the type of fans to be used depends on the CPU used? I thought I read ILO is controlling the fans, how would a CPU be part of this? I am not a true techie so maybe this isn't a good question. 

[Cali]

Yes, iLO measures all the temperature sensors and regulates the Fan and Power.

Cali

[support_s]

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[MrBean1962]

@support_s 

Yes, resetting the BIOS was the solution. 

By-catch is that standard performance fans are more suitable for me because they are less noisy. 

[Sunitha_Mod]

Hi @MrBean1962, 

That's Excellent! 

We are extremely glad to know your were able to resolve the issue and thank you for keeping us updated.