XS724EM: Questions about fans/cooling

Question

I recently purchased an XS724EM to support the increasing number of multi-gig and 10G devices we have in our home. It's replacing a D-Link 1050-28X with 4x 10G SFP+ ports and the rest gigabit, so that's my point of comparison. About 20 of the ports are used on the switch, but only around 10 of those devices are powered on consistently throughout the day.

I've noticed that the XS724EM (rackmounted, well spaced) runs quite warm in this environment, yet only one of the fans is active. The other two fans aren't even spinning. The Fan LED on the front has a distinct green glow, although that's likely light spillover from the Power LED.

Can anyone verify that this is expected behavior? And if it isn't expected behavior, are there any recommended steps and caveats for fan replacement on this model?

As a side note, I'd like to mention that it's a shame that Netgear doesn't appear to offer sensor monitoring, manual fan control (like on ReadyNAS units) or easily viewable logs via the GUI on this device.

schumaku · Answer

All fans should be operational concurrently. Suspect a hardware.issue. Contact support via https://my.netgear.com/ - depending on your market, talk to your reseller about a DoA replacement.

nsne · Answer

Crap. I feared that was the case. I bought this on Amazon Warehouse; it was listed as just having some cosmetic damage. Even though the product is registered under my Netgear account, because of the purchase source, I have no official recourse with Netgear.

I'm going to try to open it up and fix the fans myself in the hope that it's just the fans themselves and nothing more fundamental. Before I tuck into the unit, are there any tutorials or replacement hardware that anyone would recommend?

schumaku · Answer

Amazon warehouse deals don't exclude warranty.

nsne · Answer

The plot thickens slightly. On rebooting the switch, all three fans do spin up briefly, but only the front one continues spinning once the switch is booted.&nbsp;What might explain that behavior?&nbsp;Good to know that Amazon Warehouse doesn't void the warranty, but that gives me conflicting info. I had to register the XM724EM to my own account via Netgear customer support because it had been previously registered to another customer, and they told me that it had no warranty.&nbsp;For now I've just propped up a simple USB fan on the "intake" side of the switch to help the known working fan move a little more hot air.

nsne · Answer

Okay, now I'm really confused. I went back over old threads on this forum, and this one from 2016 and this one from 2019 document a similar issue (@schumaku, you actually responded to the latter).&nbsp;In both cases, the users were seeing the fans on their&nbsp;GS748T spin up briefly during boot, then stop altogether, although all signs pointed toward normal fan operation (i.e., no error LEDs). The user in the 2019 thread confirmed this behavior across several different units. And this user also lamented getting conflicting info from Netgear support: Are the fans supposed to spin together continuously, or are they supposed to shut off by design in order to reduce noise? Bug or feature? No one seems to know for sure.&nbsp;Putting the tiny USB fan on the intake side of my XS724EM to push air through has dropped the exterior temperature of the unit from very warm to downright cool, so it seems like there's plenty of opportunity to reduce temperatures and maximize the device lifespan. This suggests that&nbsp;My unit is definitely running warmer than it should and something's wrong with cooling/temperature management in the hardware or firmware ORThe unit is designed to run warm and sacrifice cooling for the sake of lowering fan noiseAgain, it's a shame that Netgear's admin panel on these switches is so barebones that it doesn't allow for manual fan control or temperature monitoring. It would certainly help with troubleshooting in cases like this.

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XS724EM: Questions about fans/cooling

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