Control of FAN Speeds from FreeNAS

[mka]

Hello,

I'm using an Intel S1200RPS mainboard on a FreeNAS server and noticed, while the CPU fans quickly reduce their speed/rpm after booting windows (with the same board), they stay at topspeed when using FreeNAS. I've added into the BIOS to power down fan speed as much as possible (silent operation) but the mainboard won't unless booting up Windows; the fans are three 4PIN PWM Fans 120mm, 1xCPU, 2xSYS (HDD bay).

Is it possible to control the fan speeds somehow from within FreeNAS? Very low speed would suffice since the system is remaining quiet cool even without a fan. But I do want low or (better) smart adjusted fan speed.

Thank you! :)

 

[jyavenard]

short answer: no

Even reading fan speed from FreeBSD is virtually impossible with any new recent hardware. There used to be a tool in the ports: mbmon that would let you read fan speed, but FreeBSD support for accessing external super I/O stopped connected to an intel chipset with ICH7.

On linux, the lmsensors kernel module and tools like pwmcontrol let you control the speed fan intelligently...

If you intend to keep using FreeNAS/FreeBSD, the only option at this stage is to get something like this:
http://www.camera2000.com/en/speed-controller-by-pwm-for-computer-pc-cooling-fan-4pin-3pin.html

this lets you control the voltage fed to pwm fans. So you can still have the motherboard controls the fan, but they will run at a lower speed (e.g. 75% of the speed required, 50% of the speed etc...)

If you don't care about fans speed changing according to the temperature, and just want to have them run at a given speed, there are plenty of (cheap) pwm controllers...

I'm like you, I wanted to achieve just that, but ended up ordering the solution above.

 

[mka]

Thanks... I will do that!

 

[Rand]

Just recently found a solution for using this board with a non intel chassis and still have *some* control over fans and noise, even if not directly from the OS:
Update the appropriate 'other' chassis settings in the spr file provided by intel (part of the firmware update package). Adjust those to match your actual fan speeds and the board will throttle the pwm fans. The default values are quite useless as they assume 25k RPM fans...

 

[jyavenard]

Just recently found a solution for using this board with a non intel chassis and still have *some* control over fans and noise, even if not directly from the OS:
Update the appropriate 'other' chassis settings in the spr file provided by intel (part of the firmware update package). Adjust those to match your actual fan speeds and the board will throttle the pwm fans. The default values are quite useless as they assume 25k RPM fans...

Are we talking about the x10sl7-f supermicro board here?

What intel firmware update package?

Oops.. Wrong thread :)

Unfortunately, no such luck with supermicro board