Service Action to Prevent PSU Failures in ReadyNAS NV/NV+

So, after about an hour, the temps start to creep up, as does the fan. Board temp is now 32.5, four hard drive (seagate 500gb) temps from 39-44, and fan speed 2500rpm. I have not even accessed the unit in the last hour, other than for a few uses of the printer.

Are my readings normal?

My NV is outside the affected serial numbers - my serial is lower than the lowest affected serial number. Still, as I had swapped my PSU for a fanless job I decided to reverse the main fan and saw my temps increase by 4-5 degrees. Not good.

I've now reverted back to "s.uck" mode and temps have reduced to normal with the main fan spinning between 2100 and 2200 rpm. I installed the RPM override addon as the Enhance_NV_Thermal_Characteristics addon didn't work, and set a minimum rpm of 2300 and rebooted (twice) however the fan is now spinning at 2205 rpm and not 2300 rpm. I've recalibrated several times and it makes no difference. As a test I set the minimum rpm to 2500 and the fan speed briefly changed to 2142 rpm before stabilising at 2205 rpm again.

Confused - does this addon actually work?

Milhouse wrote:

My NV is outside the affected serial numbers - my serial is lower than the lowest affected serial number. Still, as I had swapped my PSU for a fanless job I decided to reverse the main fan and saw my temps increase by 4-5 degrees. Not good. I've now reverted back to "s.uck" mode and temps have reduced to normal with the main fan spinning between 2100 and 2200 rpm. I installed the RPM override addon as the Enhance_NV_Thermal_Characteristics addon didn't work, and set a minimum rpm of 2300 and rebooted (twice) however the fan is now spinning at 2205 rpm and not 2300 rpm. I've recalibrated several times and it makes no difference. As a test I set the minimum rpm to 2500 and the fan speed briefly changed to 2142 rpm before stabilising at 2205 rpm again. Confused - does this addon actually work?

Your rev A NV won't take the add-on. Instead you can use the EnableFanMinRPMOverride add-on from the Wiki Add-on page. This will allow you to specify the min RPM in the Power Management tab.

Check the bottom of your NV to make sure there's no blockage of the air holes.

bondisdead wrote:
So, after about an hour, the temps start to creep up, as does the fan. Board temp is now 32.5, four hard drive (seagate 500gb) temps from 39-44, and fan speed 2500rpm. I have not even accessed the unit in the last hour, other than for a few uses of the printer. Are my readings normal?

The fan speed should be lower. Go ahead and send in your logs (see my sig) and I'll take a look to see what's going on. Attn yoh-dah.

yoh-dah wrote:
Your rev A NV won't take the add-on. Instead you can use the EnableFanMinRPMOverride add-on from the Wiki Add-on page. This will allow you to specify the min RPM in the Power Management tab.

As per my post - this is installed.

yoh-dah wrote:
Check the bottom of your NV to make sure there's no blockage of the air holes.

Holes are clear.

Health page still shows fan spinning at 2205 rpm when the minimum speed is 2300. Whatever value I use for the minimum rpm, it makes no difference.

I've read the 3 major threads I've found in the forums on premature power supply failures and have opted for the bump in fan speed increase. Zippy chance I was going to s.uck unfiltered air through the unit. Even with my Ready NAS NV+ located 50 inches above the ground in my relatively clean office, after only 3 months of use the front filter is covered with a fairly substantial layer of fine, dense dust. I'm guessing some dust still gets into the case, but I can just imagine how bad it would be inside the case after a year of use with no filter!

Having said that, I'm disappointed with the increase in noise. I bought the NV+ specifically because of its reduced noise characteristics. When I got it a few months ago I was surprised at how, relatively speaking, loud the unit was at 1600rpms. For something described as "Server-rated power supply with noise-killer design for quieter operation" I had expected something just above dead silent. Maybe that was wishful thinking, but it definitely wasn't the case - mostly due to the hum of the drives. Now add the hum of the fan at 2100rpm, and the NV+ is competing with my (soon to be replaced, 9 fan) Mac G5.

Frankly, its an audible relief when I power everything down in the evening. I was hoping with the new Intel Macs and their reduced cooling requirements, I'd finally get a fairly noiseless work environment, but that won't be the case now with the NV+ humming along.

I will say that I very much appreciate Infrant's efforts to keep their customers aware of what's going on though. Having worked as a Unix system administrator at various large scale operations centers, this kind of follow up is much appreciated. But, as someone else mentioned in one of these threads, it works well for the computer geek who likes to fiddle with settings and such. For the general consumer though, this is the equivalent of one of the big automakers asking their customers to fix a recall problem themselves. A better solution for them would have been a true recall, or, more practically speaking, an over the net upgrade.

Anyway, my 2 cents after spending a couple of frustrating hours indoors during a beautiful, springtime, Saturday afternoon fiddling with this upgrade.

I agree with the previous post: I am both grateful for the hard work done to provide solutions and communicate them and frustrated at the results.

I reversed my drive but the disk temps are 42-44 degrees (I have 4 X 500 GB drives, not the enterprise drives, either. The fan isn't spinning faster than 1700 rpm except on boot-up. DOES THIS SEEM NORMAL? Thanks.

I too am horrified at the prospect of reversing this fix and going to the high fan speed with its higher noise levels. I just spent a lot of time and some money quieting my new pc. The only solution for me will be to run a gigabit wired network through my house, locating the NV+ far away (in the cool basement). Given my thick plaster walls, this is going to cost some money also.

At the moment, using the scheduler to turn the NV+ on and off only when backing up is working well, but that won't last once I try to to back up multiple computers every day and stream music on demand (which was the plan).

One observation: with the fan reversed, I saw no difference in drive temp with the front door open or closed (my attempt at modeling the removal of the dust cloth grill before actually removing it). Since my fan never spins very fast , maybe I would only notice the benefits of decreased resistance in the airflow path if it ran at 2400 rpm.

Question: Do I need one of the software fixes to bump up the fan speed, no matter which way the fan is pointing?

One question: is there any chance that using any acoustic damping material at strategic places in the case will cut down on noise?

Another question: is there any possibility of a replacement door with a built in fan, so we can push air in and pull it out? Even with an external power supply, this seems to me it could cut down on the rpm per fan and decrease noise (in my fantasy world, anyway). I have a bunch of silent 120 mm fans that would love to take up residence in the front of the NV+.

And maybe finally: removing the dust filter for the reversed fan method is irrelevant to dust if the fan is now blowing in from the back, but wouldn't we want a dust filter at the back, in between the fan and the components?

Thanks!

I installed the EnableFanMinRPMOverride add-on and set it to 2100 rpm.
After a recalibration the fan speed is around 2200 rpm but it emits a slight clicking hum wich is a bit annoying as I have the NV+ on my desk.
The clicking disappears if I set a minimum speed below 2000 rpm (1900-1800 rpm).

The temperature didn't fall that much. Just a 0.5 degree lower both on board and on disks (before the fan speed was about 1700-1800 rpm).

I have two disk tray still unused as there are only two drives in my unit.
Do you think removing them could help psu dissipation?

Thank you

muri wrote:

I installed the EnableFanMinRPMOverride add-on and set it to 2100 rpm. After a recalibration the fan speed is around 2200 rpm but it emits a slight clicking hum wich is a bit annoying as I have the NV+ on my desk. The clicking disappears if I set a minimum speed below 2000 rpm (1900-1800 rpm). The temperature didn't fall that much. Just a 0.5 degree lower both on board and on disks (before the fan speed was about 1700-1800 rpm). I have two disk tray still unused as there are only two drives in my unit. Do you think removing them could help psu dissipation? Thank you

I'm not sure where the clicking could come from -- are you able to tell by putting your ear close to the unit? Keep in mind that the fan speed up is meant to increase the ventilation of the PSU head -- not necessarily to reduce the disk and board temp. The board is at the top of the chassis, so the board temp will not reflect the temp of the PSU. And your disk temps are probably running at the low range already.

Clicking will be produced by the fan due to the PWM nature of speed control.

"The stator motion is a square wave that is switched on and off before and after the peak torque position. This motion causes a small amount of undulation in motor torque, producing an audible noise caused by the lower frequency commutation operation. Each small torque causes a minute contracting of the entire fan structure and results in an audible clicking noise while the fan is operating."

Some fans are designed to eliminate clicking by moving out of the human audible range of hearing.