45°C really critical? How to increase/auto-adapt fan speed?

[TheWoo]

I own a FreeNAS, based on

• 6 pcs. 5 TB WD Blue 5,400 rpm drives
• a FRACTAL-DESIGN Node 304 Mini-ITX case
• a Corsair CS550M PSU
• an EKL Alpenföhn Brocken ECO fan
  
• an ASRock E3C226D2I Motherboard
• 16 MB RAM
• i3-4370 CPU @ 3.80GHz

The system is NOT running 24/7, but only turned on for a couple of hours when serving as Plex mothership or doing a backup from my Macs. While being tech-savvy, I have only very basic UNIX skills, so I'm happy that I got the system up and running in first place and have been able to manage the FreeNAS according to my needs (that server is my first self-assembled PC ever; I'm a Mac guy since 1989). This FreeNAS is working virtually flawlessly since 2015, and I've successfully replaced/upgraded the drives to larger capacities twice. Been on 9.10, and upgraded to 11.0 last night.

My problem is that I occasionally get critical temperature alerts with multiple drives reaching 45°C. So far no drive has died, but I'd love to prevent this from happening (again: it does NOT run 24/7, thus the cheaper HDDs).

Air vents have plenty of headroom in any direction.

Sorry for asking, but: How can I make the fans being (more) adaptive, automatically increase speed when it gets hot? Or do I need an extra fan? But where to mount that? See images below.

Also, what about the disk settings, Advanced Power Management & Acoustic Level (see below screenshot). Leave those disabled?

Or is does it makes sense to simply increase the alert threshold to 50°C? If so, where to do that?

 

[Spearfoot]

I own a FreeNAS, based on

• 6 pcs. 5 TB WD Blue 5,400 rpm drives
• a FRACTAL-DESIGN Node 304 Mini-ITX case
• a Corsair CS550M PSU
• an EKL Alpenföhn Brocken ECO fan
  
• an ASRock E3C226D2I Motherboard
• 16 MB RAM
• i3-4370 CPU @ 3.80GHz

The system is NOT running 24/7, but only turned on for a couple of hours when serving as Plex mothership or doing a backup from my Macs. While being tech-savvy, I have only very basic UNIX skills, so I'm happy that I'm able to manage the FreeNAS according to my needs (that server is my first self-assembled PC ever; I'm a Mac guy since 1989). This FreeNAS is working virtually flawlessly since 2015, and I've successfully replaced/upgraded the drives to larger capacities twice. Been on 9.10, and upgraded to 11.0 last night.

My problem is that I occasionally get critical temperature alerts with multiple drives reaching 45°C. So far no drive has did, but I'd love to prevent this from happening (again: it does NOT run 24/7, thus the cheaper HDDs).

Air vents have plenty of head room in any direction.

Sorry for asking, but: How can make the fans being (more) adaptive, automatically increase speed when it gets hot? Or do I need an extra fan? But where to mount that? See images below.

Also, what about the disk settings, Advanced Power Management & Acoustic Level (see below screenshot). Leave those disabled?

There are fan scripts here on the forum, but most (all?) seem to be Supermicro-oriented.

Do you have chassis fans installed in all available locations? How do you have the fan settings configured in the BIOS? You may simply have to run them at full speed and/or replace the fans with models that move more air.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Use the fan controller that came with your case and set it on low or medium. That should be plenty to cool the HDDs. I used the same case for my freenas build and now use it as a gaming PC case.

How are the fans hooked up right now and what is ambient temperature?

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[Stux]

There are IPMI fan duty commands available for that board, so if you wanted to, you could do the leg work to adapt on of the fan scripts to your board. You would also need a PWM fan if you don't have one already.

 

[Ericloewe]

...

Why is the server on your kitchen counter?

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

It was thirsty.

 

[TheWoo]

Oh, boy! From now on you can officially call me STUPID: One of the two front fans was disconnected and not moving (you can tell from the picture below, because there is no dust on the filter). How embarrassing... Must have accidentally happened during a HDD upgrade. Reconnected, cleaned the filters and everything’s back to normal and healthy (38°-39°C on each drive).

@Ericloewe: Why the kitchen counter? Simply because it's the highest and most robust desktop/table I have at home. You also must admit that it looks quite sexy in that environment... ;P

 

[Ericloewe]

You also must admit that it looks quite sexy in that environment... ;P

Sure, I've seen much worse, but why is there a packet of milk on the stove?

 

[TheWoo]

Sure, I've seen much worse, but why is there a packet of milk on the stove?

Size reference only. Seriously. I was showing off the beauty to a friend in that picture.

 

[Ericloewe]

That's certainly a better explanation than any of my thoughts.

 

[TheWoo]

@Ericloewe Like? :)

 

[Ericloewe]

Subliminal marketing by the dairy industry.

 

[TheWoo]

Subliminal marketing by the dairy industry.

Not a bad idea in a presumably first and foremost Coke-drinking and Pizza-eating community... :p

 

[tvsjr]

Cleaning up those cables would also promote good airflow. You have a bit of a wiring mess going on.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Cleaning up those cables would also promote good airflow. You have a bit of a wiring mess going on.

Cabling have little to no affect on cooling. It's mostly just to look pretty.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[JackShine]

It IS all about cable and air flow.

Now WD aren’t making those rubbish GREEN drives.

HDDs are running hot.

Just bought a WD-6TB-BLACK, for my main PC, idles at 50 C

But u have to keep the NAS cool.



WOW 10 X WD-6TB-BLACK

 

[Ericloewe]

Now WD aren’t making those rubbish GREEN drives.

New Blues are the exact same thing as old Greens.

 

[diedrichg]

I'd personally put a fan on the CPU tower pushing to the back