Water cooling server CPUs

[Radium_Angel]

I have a Dell PowerEdge 2900 III (dual Xeon E5430s, 32GB DDR2 ECC Registered RAM, tons of SAS drives, some SSDs, GTX 660 nVidia card, wireless, etc) that I use as a testbed for all manner of things, runs Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

 

It's not a primary box, just a play toy more than anything.

When you power it up, as with all servers, it does go "whoosh" and I thought about trying to quiet it down somehow.

There is a modification that can be done on the physical fans themselves with a resistor to slow them down, but then the BIOS goes stupid, so there's a modification for the BIOS, but it's beyond my ability to do (it involves actual programming) so my thought was dump the huge heatsinks, and replace them with dual watercooling blocks (or two individual AIO units) but I've not found anyone online whose ever tried that before...

 

A few challenges that spring to mind:

Xeon socket...it's.....LGA771

Most servers are tightly integrated when it comes to cooling, and changing out parts generally freaks out the BIOS.

Power for the water block(s). The motherboard doesn't have any 3pin headers on the board, but I do have some molex plugs that are available if need be.

Space for the radiators.

 

Anyone ever try something so off the wall as water cooling a server?

[Olaf6541]

Watercooling a test machine seems unnecessary expensive, what about a fan controller or/and some quieter fans?

[Enderman]

Just replace the fans?

[NelizMastr]

You'll have to create custom water blocks as socket 771 never saw desktop boards aside from the skulltrail, which had 775 mounts. I wouldn't bother personally.

[Radium_Angel]

24 minutes ago, Olaf6541 said:

Watercooling a test machine seems unnecessary expensive, what about a fan controller or/and some quieter fans?

 

21 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Just replace the fans?

There is a modification that can be done on the physical fans themselves with a resistor to slow them down, but then the BIOS goes stupid, so there's a modification for the BIOS, but it's beyond my ability to do (it involves actual programming) , as I mentioned in my original post.

 

If quieter fans exist that are drop in (remember, custom mounts and power plugs, this is a server we are talking about) I don't know about them...

 

 

[Olaf6541]

Connect the 12v wire from the fans with the 5v wires from the psu? At least that's safer than soldering in some resistors, those are generally not meant for heat dissipation...

[NelizMastr]

5 minutes ago, Olaf6541 said:

Connect the 12v wire from the fans with the 5v wires from the psu? At least that's safer than soldering in some resistors, those are generally not meant for heat dissipation...

The issue is slowing down the fans will trigger the BIOS to throw errors at you. On some servers this might make the system unbootable until fixed.

[Olaf6541]

8 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

The issue is slowing down the fans will trigger the BIOS to throw errors at you. On some servers this might make the system unbootable until fixed.

Then i would suggest finding out what that machine allows you to change exactly, but watercooling doesnt seems worth it...

If it's just a "play toy" why not consider more recent hardware with better performance/watt? I don't know what you're doing with it but if you don't do rendering or anything cpu intensive some cheap consumer grade build could be quieter and cheaper to use in the long run.

(I'm using a D1800M as fileserver and a J3355M as VPN server, both passively cooled, 0dB)

[Radium_Angel]

47 minutes ago, Olaf6541 said:

Connect the 12v wire from the fans with the 5v wires from the psu? At least that's safer than soldering in some resistors, those are generally not meant for heat dissipation...

The power supplies are dual (redundant) and have no leads, they plug directly into the chassis, so attaching anything to them directly is out.

27 minutes ago, Olaf6541 said:

If it's just a "play toy" why not consider more recent hardware with better performance/watt?

That's no fun

I have plenty of systems with way better specs, the challenge here was always to take something like this server, and push it well beyond what they engineers had designed it to do. LIke adding a modern video card, wireless, SSD chassis, blu-ray, etc.

It's the challenge that makes it fun. Doing these sorts of things with modern hardware is all plug and play, and presents no challenge whatsoever. 

[Falconevo]

The old Dell units run hot and the fans are designed for data center rack usage so they will always be at 3000+ RPM unless you modify the fan resistance. Water cooling won't fix the fan speed below the minimum rpm so the server will still be loud.  The only way to reduce the fan speed is to trick the sensor electrically.

[Radium_Angel]

33 minutes ago, Falconevo said:

The old Dell units run hot and the fans are designed for data center rack usage so they will always be at 3000+ RPM unless you modify the fan resistance. Water cooling won't fix the fan speed below the minimum rpm so the server will still be loud.  The only way to reduce the fan speed is to trick the sensor electrically.

It's a tower server not a rack but the fault about stating that is mine.

and I know about the fan mod, but the skills are beyond me because it requires modifications to not only the fans but the BIOS as well to suppress the PWM error(s)

 

The fans don't run at full volume all the time, they can be quite quiet from time to time, I was hoping that by cooling the CPUs to a lower temp than the stock heatsinks do, I'd be able to keep the fans running lower, as they would be getting lower thermal readings from the CPU, but perhaps not. This is why I ask questions, because I was unsure

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

It's not a primary box, just a play toy more than anything.

When you power it up, as with all servers, it does go "whoosh" and I thought about trying to quiet it down somehow.

There is a modification that can be done on the physical fans themselves with a resistor to slow them down, but then the BIOS goes stupid, so there's a modification for the BIOS, but it's beyond my ability to do (it involves actual programming) so my thought was dump the huge heatsinks, and replace them with dual watercooling blocks (or two individual AIO units) but I've not found anyone online whose ever tried that before...

Ive done this mod on my 2950, works fine, really not that hard.

 

 

But really, Id just upgrade to a r710. Better features on the cpu, much less power usage, much less noise, you can hold much more ram. A r710 is going to be cheaper than watercooling it and better.

[JohnDongus]

I would just get a cheap low profile AIO and a drill and do what you gotta do. as longas the block has the surface area to cover the cpu. I like that kind of stuff. (let me know if you need a bracket made)

[Radium_Angel]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Ive done this mod on my 2950, works fine, really not that hard.

Plus the BIOS mod to suppress the error message?

 

42 minutes ago, JohnDongus said:

I like that kind of stuff. (let me know if you need a bracket made)

A Socket 771 bracket? Would it depend on the AIO used, or would they be universal?

[JohnDongus]

4 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Plus the BIOS mod to suppress the error message?

 

A Socket 771 bracket? Would it depend on the AIO used, or would they be universal?

A socket 771, it would depend on the aio used.

[Electronics Wizardy]

16 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Plus the BIOS mod to suppress the error message?

 

A Socket 771 bracket? Would it depend on the AIO used, or would they be universal?

yep fully working mod

 

a normal water block might not work. IDK if its a normal mount in there and space is very limited.

 

Why not just get a newer server?

[Radium_Angel]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

yep fully working mod

 

a normal water block might not work. IDK if its a normal mount in there and space is very limited.

 

Why not just get a newer server?

As I said up above:

That's no fun 

I have plenty of systems with way better specs, the challenge here was always to take something like this server, and push it well beyond what they engineers had designed it to do. LIke adding a modern video card, wireless, SSD chassis, blu-ray, etc.

It's the challenge that makes it fun. Doing these sorts of things with modern hardware is all plug and play, and presents no challenge whatsoever. 

 

But since you have done this sort of thing, mind walking me through the steps?

[JohnDongus]

23 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

As I said up above:

That's no fun 

I have plenty of systems with way better specs, the challenge here was always to take something like this server, and push it well beyond what they engineers had designed it to do. LIke adding a modern video card, wireless, SSD chassis, blu-ray, etc.

It's the challenge that makes it fun. Doing these sorts of things with modern hardware is all plug and play, and presents no challenge whatsoever. 

 

But since you have done this sort of thing, mind walking me through the steps?

I know what you mean, do it cause you can. Idk about the graphics card thing. I doubt you'll get much gaming done with it. Rendering maybe. Take a picture of the Mobo and gimmi spec's.

[Electronics Wizardy]

51 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

But since you have done this sort of thing, mind walking me through the steps?

It was a while a go, but solder reistors onto the fans. Did you solder the reistors? If you don't have too big of a reistor the bios won't even care. But I modded my bios, didn't need to though.

[Radium_Angel]

4 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

It was a while a go, but solder reistors onto the fans. Did you solder the reistors? If you don't have too big of a reistor the bios won't even care. But I modded my bios, didn't need to though.

Still got a copy of said modded BIOS?

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Radium_Angel said:

Still got a copy of said modded BIOS?

 

Yea, but I can't easily give it to you.

 

Just mod the fans though above the min fan level. It will show this in the drac.

[Radium_Angel]

4 hours ago, JohnDongus said:

I know what you mean, do it cause you can. Idk about the graphics card thing. I doubt you'll get much gaming done with it. Rendering maybe. Take a picture of the Mobo and gimmi spec's.

I got the GFX card in, that was a piece of cake (granted, x8 PCIe gen 1 slot, but it still works well)

GTX 660, gaming is fine on it (I'm not much of a gamer to begin with, so I don't need to play SOTA games. In addition, it's running Ubuntu 14.04LTS, so games for it are limited anyway. But I am playing around with Steam Play and so far that's been a mixed bag, some simple games crash/won't play, some complex ones run fine...got figure)

[leadeater]

18 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

and replace them with dual watercooling blocks (or two individual AIO units) but I've not found anyone online whose ever tried that before...

I've got a pair of Corsair H55's on one of my L5630 servers, works fine and a lot easier than trying to do anything custom. This is only an option on larger servers though, anything 1U or 2U is highly custom or find another way to make it quieter, usually find another way is done.

 

[NelizMastr]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

I've got a pair of Corsair H55's on one of my L5630 servers, works fine and a lot easier than trying to do anything custom. This is only an option on larger servers though, anything 1U or 2U is highly custom or find another way to make it quieter, usually find another way is done.

I'd almost be tempted to try that on a ML150 G6 I picked up for €30 a few weeks ago (shits and giggles and whatnot). Lol.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, NelizMastr said:

I'd almost be tempted to try that on a ML150 G6 I picked up for €30 a few weeks ago (shits and giggles and whatnot). Lol.

Hell of a lot quieter that's for sure, the dual PSU fans are still a bit whiny but really not bad on this server compared to most, just a sort of louder normal PSU.