E200 Fan Quieting
Runbook to quiet the Supermicro SYS-E200-8D 40 mm chassis fan on sa-edge-01 and sb-edge-01 using IPMI fan mode control, BMC threshold tuning, and an optional Noctua fan swap.
Applies to sa-edge-01 and sb-edge-01 — both Supermicro SYS-E200-8D (X10SDV board, Xeon D-1528). This runbook covers three escalating options for quieting the 40 mm chassis fan: setting Optimal IPMI fan mode (free and reversible), lowering BMC fan thresholds to accommodate a slower replacement fan, and swapping the stock fan for a Noctua NF-A4x20 PWM.
Background
The noise source is the single 40 mm chassis fan driven by the BMC at full RPM by default. Supermicro's default fan mode keeps the fan spinning fast, and the BMC forces all fans to 100% if any fan drops below its lower-critical RPM threshold — which a quiet replacement fan will trigger unless thresholds are lowered first.
Do not go fanless
The Xeon D-1528 SoC (35 W) and dual 10G PHYs run hot under firewall/WAN load. Keep airflow. After any change, watch temperatures for a day under normal load and keep the SoC/System sensor comfortably under ~80 °C.
Quieting Procedure
Set Optimal fan mode — free and reversible
Run on the Proxmox host. These commands communicate with the local BMC over KCS (no network IPMI required):
apt install -y ipmitool
modprobe ipmi_si ipmi_devintf # usually already loaded
ipmitool raw 0x30 0x45 0x00 # read mode: 0=Standard 1=Full 2=Optimal 4=HeavyIO
ipmitool raw 0x30 0x45 0x01 0x02 # set Optimal — idle low, ramp on tempOptimal mode alone usually drops idle from a jet whine to a hum.
Lower fan thresholds — required before swapping fans
A quiet fan spins below the stock lower-critical RPM. The BMC reads this as a fan failure and forces every fan to 100%. Lower the thresholds so the BMC accepts the slower speed:
ipmitool sensor thresh FAN1 lower 100 200 300 # lnr lcr lnc
ipmitool sensor list | grep FAN # confirmDo not set thresholds to zero
Setting lower-critical to 0 disables the BMC fan-failure alarm entirely. Keep non-zero values (100 200 300 as shown) so a genuinely failed fan still triggers an alarm.
Thresholds survive normal OS reboots but are wiped by a BMC cold reset or firmware reflash. Make them durable with a boot-time systemd unit:
cat >/etc/systemd/system/ipmi-fan.service <<'EOF'
[Unit]
Description=Set Supermicro fan mode and thresholds
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/ipmitool raw 0x30 0x45 0x01 0x02
ExecStart=/usr/bin/ipmitool sensor thresh FAN1 lower 100 200 300
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF
systemctl enable --now ipmi-fan.serviceReplace the fan — biggest improvement
Swap the stock 40 mm fan for a Noctua NF-A4x20 PWM (40×20 mm; fits the E200-8D chassis). The thicker NF-A4x10 also works. Connect the 4-pin PWM connector to the FAN1 header. The lowered thresholds from Step 2 are required — without them the BMC will detect the slower fan speed as a fault and ramp back to full.
Verify
ipmitool sensor list | grep -iE 'temp|fan'
sensors # apt install lm-sensorsIf Optimal mode plus the Noctua fan cannot hold the SoC under ~80 °C at normal load, raise the thresholds a notch or fall back to Standard mode:
ipmitool raw 0x30 0x45 0x01 0x00Related Pages
- IPMI / KVM — out-of-band access and KVM console for Supermicro hosts
- Per-Site Inventory — host hardware models and specifications
RAM & Storage Allocation
RAM pool distribution across Supermicro hosts and storage plans for Site A ZFS and Site B Ceph.
Switching & Cabling
Switch tier roles, VLAN carry rules, and cabling policy for Site A and Site B. Netgear 10 Gb core switches handle server and infrastructure traffic; access switches handle IPMI, APs, and user devices.