HP Proliant cooling solution

CptCarbonat · March 10, 2017

I bought an HP Proliant SE316M1 (dual Xeon L5520) a while ago for playing around with virtualization. The only problem I have with it is, that it is pretty loud and I want to try to solve that. I already transferred the mainboard into another case and changed out the power supply for a standard ATX one. The question know is if it would be sufficant to use 80mm fans on the CPUs (just mount them on the existing CPU coolers) and for airflow in the case I would probably use 120mm fans. The case I am know using is a 4U case. I attached an image of the inside of the server in the original case.

Kick · March 10, 2017

Haha, imagine how loud a couple hundred of those would be with just the motherboard on a cardboard tray, fans ziptied on. Now imagine that your desk is in the middle of all of that. I wear ear protection...

I can't offer much advice on fan setup without knowing the case, but generally if you can ensure air flows over the heatsinks you'll be fine, especially if you're just using it to experiment with virtualization. Those little fans move a lot of air, though, so make sure whatever you replace them with move a decent amount too.

Potentially something to try first, update firmware to latest if you can get it without a service contract, that can sometimes fix problems where the fans run faster than needed.

CptCarbonat · March 10, 2017

2 hours ago, Kick said:

I can't offer much advice on fan setup without knowing the case, but generally if you can ensure air flows over the heatsinks you'll be fine, especially if you're just using it to experiment with virtualization. Those little fans move a lot of air, though, so make sure whatever you replace them with move a decent amount too.

Thank you for the advice. I don't know exactly what case it is, but the layout is similar to an iStarUSA D Storm 4U, though it is longer than that case. I guess I'll make the assumption that four 120mm in the case plus two 80mm on the CPU coolers (ziptie mounted the Linus way for sure ;D) are enough, if not it'll be hard to fit more anyways.

Didn't think about the firmware affecting it. I'll have a look into that, I have no idea if I have the option to update the firmware or if it is already on the latest version, but I will check it then.