Supermicro alarm continuous siren?

[Xplitz]

Hi guys! I just upgraded my FreeNAS to a used x8dte-f and sometimes it makes this continous alarm sound, and sometimes it stops, and goes on again. Any one recongize what does this alarm mean? From my self search it points out either powersupply is lacking power or cpu overheating but my cpu temps is okay, around 30deg celcius to 38 degrees. I have a EVGA 850 G2 psu also. I currently have 14 hard drives connected to it. Either of the two seems unlikely to cause the alarm.

Can someone please shed some light?

Here is the sound i recorded.
https://vimeo.com/274642547

Thank you
- Vincent

 

[joeschmuck]

I didn't hear any alarm in your recording. Can you describe the sound?

 

[DrKK]

I hear it very clearly.

That's not quite an alarm sound I associate with motherboards. But, that does remind me of PWM noise from bad fans. Can you rule out that the noise is coming from the fans?

 

[DrKK]

I didn't hear any alarm in your recording. Can you describe the sound?

So it's a good solid 20dB over ambient, about 2720 Hz. Seems mostly clean, hard to tell though, but seems only like a slightly harmonic distorted 2720 Hz. That's not what I'd pick for an alarm sound.

 

[joeschmuck]

When I listened to it to me it sounded like a bad ground connection on a microphone.

So it's a good solid 20dB over ambient, about 2720 Hz.

You must have a frequency counter/analyzer or something, or a keen ear.

I agree, that is not an alarm.

 

[Jailer]

When I listened to it to me it sounded like a bad ground connection on a microphone.

You must have a frequency counter/analyzer or something, or a keen ear.

I think it's an age/hearing loss thing. I just played it and heard nothing. Jr pipes up and says, "what's that sound?" I do have a significant hearing loss so that at least explains it for me.

 

[joeschmuck]

I think it's an age/hearing loss thing. I just played it and heard nothing. Jr pipes up and says, "what's that sound?" I do have a significant hearing loss so that at least explains it for me.

I have hearing loss in only one ear, apparently the one I use when the wife talks :D. But I do have one good ear. It's funny, the wife tells me to get a hearing aid but I tell her that when the birds chirp in the morning, all I need to do is turn my good ear to the pillow and I can't hear them anymore, it's a great thing! Well I try to see the positive in a not so great thing.

 

[Xplitz]

The noise isn't coming from the fans, what I did was take out the jumper that provides alarm sounds through the motherboard, so it doesn't produce any sounds now.

I really don't know what to do so at the meantime I took it out, it was really annoying hearing that sound out of nowhere ex. while watching something or sleeping.

- Vincent

 

[joeduffy]

Based on what I heard in the recording this sounds like coil whine. When the noise is happening is there high system load?. Does the noise fluctuate in frequency based on cpu load spikes?

 

[joeduffy]

Based on what I heard in the recording this sounds like coil whine. When the noise is happening is there high system load?. Does the noise fluctuate in frequency based on cpu load spikes?

To confirm my reasoning is that a continuous tone doesn't make sense as an alarm sound as it can be hard to pick out from background noise at a distance or in a noisy environment. In my experience most alarm noises aim to create wide spectrum noise e.g alternating between high and low tones or alternating on and off.

A test to see if this is truly an alarm would be to stick your finger over the piezo buzzer on your motherboard and see if the tone changes.

 

[DrKK]

I believe he said he disabled the alarm-related jumper, and the thing stopped.

 

[DrKK]

Does a low CR battery trigger an alarm? Is anything awry in "ipmitool sdr"?

 

[joeschmuck]

what I did was take out the jumper that provides alarm sounds through the motherboard, so it doesn't produce any sounds now.

Are you stating that you disconnected the internal speaker located on the JD1 header? That is not really good as now you can't hear if you have any other alarms such as a fan failure, like on the CPU, or High Temp alarm.

Please be specific on what you did to disable the alarm sound. If you did disable the speaker then I would advice you reconnect it. You also have the option to connect an external speaker, it is possible that the insternal speaker is faulty, however it isn't likely but it's worth a try. If this does not fix it then in all seriousness I'd try a different power supply first. Speaking of power supply, did you give up data on that item yet?

I agree that this is likely caused by a power issue. Is this a new board, can you exchange it for a new one? If it's not the power supply then it could be a capacitor on the motherboard. The capacitor could be broken off or just internally failed. There are all sorts of things that can cause electrical noise, could be an inductor or resistor as well, although the power supply or capacitor are likely better suspects.