Loud Dell R410 fans and how to fix them.

Ever find one of those issues where you’ve read what feels like, 100+ articles, threads and walkthroughs on how to keep the noise down on the jet-turbines that live inside your R410 – Only to find out nothing works?

Then do I have a solution for you!

What we’re going to do is setup IPMI and run a quick script over cron to keep your server quiet.

Login to your DRAC and go to the IPMI settings. (iDRAC Settings -> Network/Security -> Network, then scroll to the bottom). Enable it and hit apply.

Next up we need something to call it from, I used my zabbix/ansible server as it’s always online anyway.

Install ipmitool on it, apt install ipmitool

Create a new folder for your scripts, I just used a folder within root.

mkdir /root/ipmi/ and create your script nano whatever.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# IPMI SETTINGS:
# Modify to suit your needs.
IPMIHOST=1.1.1.1
IPMIUSER=root
IPMIPW=yourpassword

echo "Setting fan speeds to 4k RPM"
ipmitool -I lanplus -H $IPMIHOST -U $IPMIUSER -P $IPMIPW raw 0x30 0x30 0x01 0x00
ipmitool -I lanplus -H $IPMIHOST -U $IPMIUSER -P $IPMIPW raw 0x30 0x30 0x02 0xff 0x1a

Edit the IP along with the DRAC password. The first line beginning with ipmitool enables manual fan control, the second line sets it to its new speed. This works for 4k rpm for both R710s and R410s which is all I’ve tested on. Please do your research on the correct hex that you want to use beforehand!

Some examples are;

3000 RPM: raw 0x30 0x30 0x02 0xff 0x10
2160 RPM: raw 0x30 0x30 0x02 0xff 0x0a
2160 RPM: raw 0x30 0x30 0x02 0xff 0x09

Afterwards, monitor it for a bit and if you’re happy with it, set it up in a crontab to fire every 5 minutes to keep it in line.

*/5 * * * * /root/ipmi/whatever.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

Enjoy your new quieter homelab!

As a sidenote, my Dells were at 12-14k RPM because of expansion cards being used, this brought it from a high pitched whine to a nice hum!