[powerstation-owners] PowerStation Fans

[Pat Wall]

On Tue, 26 Jan 2010 02:12:17 +0100
Stefan Nürnberger <nuernbe at TU-Cottbus.DE> wrote:

> > Hi All
> >
> > I have a PowerStation running YDL 6.2 that overall I must say I am
> > very happy with. If I could make it a bit quieter I would be even
> > happier still ;-)
> >
> > The fan noise is fairly loud on light desktop operation (e.g.
> > browsing, emailing etc). Periodically and very suddenly the fans
> > can spin up to maximum speed even if the PowerStation is idle and
> > will usually return to normal speed within about 30 seconds. Is
> > this type of fan activity normal for the PowerStation? - perhaps
> > other users could confirm.
> >
> 
> Yes that's the normal behavior for the PowerStation.
> 
> >  From reading the mailing list archives I see that the issue of
> > noise levels has come up from time to time but there appears to be
> > no solution. I was just wondering if anyone has ever found a way of
> > controlling the fans?
> >
> 
> AFAIK the fans are controlled by the BMC. Communication with the BMC 
> should be possible through IPMI. I was able to obtain readings from 
> different temperature sensors this way, but did not find any fan
> control mechanism. I also think that it would not be very advisable
> to operate the CPUs at a higher temperature. The better approach
> would be to utilize the power management features of the processors.
> Unfortunately there was no cpufreq driver for the 970MP last time I
> checked. There was only some basic support for the 970FX in the linux
> kernel. It would be nice if someone could look into that. There is no
> need for the processors to run at full power when the system is idle.
> IIRC the 970MP has about 15 different power modes. Switching off
> unused cores completely would also be nice.
> 
> Unfortunately I have seen no work in that direction so far. I was 
> wondering if there were some YDL kernel patches that are not in
> mainline.
> 
> Greetings
> Stefan
>

Hi Stefan

Many thanks for your reply and for your very interesting findings on
how the fans are controlled :-) 

All the best


Pat