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Forum Discussion
ReadyNas 214 new system fan / fan control
The fan in my RN214 is too lound once it gets going, so I took a chance at replacing it with a Noctua NF-A9. It usually works fine, the resported RPM in the dashboard is typically a bit lower than t...
FYI, the min_fan_speed_override file does work on my RN102 (running 6.10.9). The stock fan was running about 800 rpm without the override. I set it to 1500, and the speed went to that. It also changed the speed to 1000 when I set it there.
BTW, if you want to see the speed from ssh, you can install lm-sensors.
StephenB min_fan_speed_override does indeed work on the RN214 also, so at least I can prevent the stall failure.
I decided to measure what the NAS was doing, it's quite odd in that it typically runs the stock fan at very low volts, ~2.8V I measured, which is not good for the Noctua NF-A9 at all. That fan starts at ~4.4V, but I contacted Noctua support and they provided me two different responses to the same ticket:
- 1st response "The NF-A9 PWMs' starting voltage is 4.4V at 435 RPM."
- The next day a different person, 2nd response "NF-A9 PWM is 7V to 13.2V, its startup voltage is also 7V"
From my lab power supply, I confirmed my NF-A9 actually starts at 4.3V, but is unstable, at 4.4V it runs well.
I plotted the various output volts from the ReadyNAS 214 with the different system fan settings, having captured volts/fan RPM/temperatures, now I can make more sense of what's happening.
I found:
- If RPM zero detected, the RN214 ramps voltage to 12V to attempt to get the fan started again.
- RN214 drives the stock fan (Delta Electronics AFB0912HH ) at max 3250 (reported in dashboard) RPM, which is at ~8.5V. This is the max RPM in the datasheet, hence that makes sense, however it means the RN never drives the stock fan at max blow - which is at 12V. At 8.5V, my PC reported 2350 RPM, which seems correct as the rest of the V/RPM wer quite linear in the PC.
- The RN214 reports the fan RPM incorrectly. After reading the voltages and reported RPM's, I hooked up both fans to a PC to capture the RPM, but controlled the voltage separately with my lab PSU. I found that the PC reported RPM's inline with the datasheets, the ReadyNAS was plain wrong at the RPM reporting on both stock and Noctua fans.
- My NF-A9 fan stalls below 4.3V, and sometimes fails to restart - it stops and remains stopped, even when voltage increased. I observed this initially when controlled by my NAS, and then also when I controlled voltage with my lab PSU. Noctua support that the fan should restart, and I observe the RN indeed drives the volts to 12V, so my fan could in fact be faulty.
- The RN drives the NF-A9 at 12V which achieves a real 2000 RPM, when it determines the need for max fan blow. The RPM is reported at 2850 - below the max RPM of the stock fan, which I assume allows it to reach the max 12V voltage, i.e. RN has two limits: max 12V, max 3250 RPM.
- Perversely, the above behaviour means the RN drives both fans to similar-ish 'real' RPM, so that's probably why I observed very little differences in operating temperatures - more investigation needed/ongoing.
I am still playing with this, testing airflow, or better said, temperatures across the drives/CPU to determine if my replacement fan will actually work out. Fans do sometimes go wrong, so this might help others keep their NAS going a bit longer đ. I'll share what I find.
Hi aks-2 , any update to your investigation here?
I tried installing a Noctua NF-A9 FLX 3-pin fan, and had similar results as your A9-PWM version. The system would usually start, and run OK on any setting (as I recall), but then abruptly fail out of nowhere. If you found a setting that worked in SSH-land, please advise.
I also tried a 4-pin PWM fan, a Thermalright TL-9015W that runs at higher max RPM, thinking the issue might be RPM detection. In the garage, with the back panel removed but connected to the 3-pin header on the NAS, on power-up the fan spun up nicely. However, after I then reassembled the unit, brought it back inside, reconnected power and ETH, the unit won't spin up the fan at all. It's as if the fan settings got modified somehow, perplexing.
Anyway I'd like to run the Noctua with confidence. I could set it on Cool permanently but I fear the fan might still shut down in the middle of the night, during a backup or whatever. I don't want to cook my drives.
You'll see in another thread that I had a different disaster with my RN214, causing data corruption, that 'distracted' me for a while đ!
Due to the issues running the Noctua, I reverted to the stock fan, whilst dealing with the corruption issue.
Let me check my notes for any more info I can offer. As far as I remember, the RN lowers the voltage too much, causing the fan to stall. Once stalled, the Noctua does not restart, even with 12V - although Noctua informed me that it should, so my fan must be a faulty example. They offered to send a replacement, but I did not take them up on that (yet).
I will check my notes and share anything else I can think of.
Why are you changing your fan, did the original fail?
The NAS has a setting to avoid frying your drives, so it will shut down before that if the temps get too high. Review your settings to enable: System / Settings / Alerts - tick "shut down system when the disk temperature exceeds safe levels" - but, I don't know what safe actually means here.
Thanks aks-2 - in my case, no fan failures, just noisy.
I generated the minimum fan speed override command that StephenB listed in your thread, except I set the min speed to 1500 instead of 1000.
So far, with about 24 hours run-time, it has worked. An hour ago, I swapped out the existing drives for 4 new HDD's, which caused the OS to go back to factory defaults. In this state, the fan failed (again). So I quickly added back in the override command, set the speed to Cool, rebooted, and it's working fine again. I also have alerts turned on - if the fan stops I'll get a notification so I can deal with it. Thanks again for all the data you shared, really helped to get closer to understanding the issue. The RPM reading is around 1580 (max speed for this fan is 1600). Per your notes, I can't be sure the fan is actually spinning at that rate. But I'm watching the CPU and drive temps, so far they're OK. Not as cool as the Delta fan on "Cool" setting though.
Also purchased a BeQuiet! Pure Wings 2 92mm fan, will give that one a try for grins.
# echo 1000 > /etc/frontview/min_fan_speed_override # systemctl restart readynasd
Also purchased a BeQuiet! Pure Wings 2 92mm fan, will give that one a try for grins.
How did the BeQuiet work out?
And the Noctua too, still working ok?
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