ReadyNAS RN 104 Automatic FAN-Control

[RangeMethod]

Hi All,

I have a Big Problem with my New (2 Weeks old) ReadyNAS 104.
When i have a look at the WEB-UI under the Performance TAB i see the FAN is always running at only ~875 rpm.
After a fresh start, the FAN is about 11200-1400 rpm, that looks normal i think. But then after 10 Minutes, its again down at 875 rpm.
My Disk are permanently at 44C degrees, and my CPU ist all the Time at about 60-65C degrees.
It looks like that pwm is not working correctly, or not configured correctly.
PWM is working fine, i tried it with pwmconfig at Console Level.

Do you have any Ideas whre i can Check that?

Greetz Sebastian

[AndrewT1]

Hi ...

Why do you think this is a problem ??

Looks normal to me ...

Andrew

[RangeMethod]

Hi,

The Temperatures look a little bit to high to me, espacially the one from the Disks, i have another System, and there the Disks are permanently at about 31C degrees.
At the Moment its really hot here (Munich, Germany), and i thought, it should be at least go up a little with the FAN Speed, but i never heard it speed up since i have bought it.

Greetz Sebastian

[AndrewT1]

Hi..

Do you have the same model disk in both systems ?

My 104 is running at about the same temperature and fan speed as yours .. (both in the same room iMac CPU 64c HD 46c .., NAS104 CPU 63c HD 45c Fan 835 )

Andrew

[RangeMethod]

HI,

no, in my readynas i have 4 3TB WD RED Disks (5400rpm), and in my other System 4 Hitachi 2TB 24/7 Disks (7200rpm)
I would think that the faster Disks should get warmer than the WD Red Disks.

Sebastian

[AndrewT1]

Ok.

I'm Running 3 * 3T Seagate drive . Disk 1 = 44c , 2 = 48c , 3 =44c

Don't think temperature is a problem ..

Have you had any problems with your 104 locking up ?? , I have an open case with NTG but no making much progress..

Andrew

[RangeMethod]

Today we had 35C degrees and my Processor was at 70C Degrees and my disks at 47 for disk 1 and 4 and 51 for disk 2 and 3.
And the FAN was at 875rpm 😞
Thats not normal i think.
And personally i have my disks as cool as possible.

Greetz Sebastian

[RangeMethod]

Is there a Way to tune the built-in Fan Control?

Sebastian

[super_poussin]

You CAN try to install fancontrol and tune fan speed at your own risk

[evan2]

RangeMethod wrote:
Today we had 35C degrees and my Processor was at 70C Degrees and my disks at 47 for disk 1 and 4 and 51 for disk 2 and 3. And the FAN was at 875rpm 😞 Thats not normal i think. And personally i have my disks as cool as possible. Greetz Sebastian

FAN Speed will increase when disk temperature up to 48C Degrees,
for Seagate HDD, it add 5C Degrees, so if your system installed Seagate disk, FAN speed will increase when disk temperature up to 53C Degrees.

[RangeMethod]

super-poussin wrote:
You CAN try to install fancontrol and tune fan speed at your own risk

HI,

thanks for that, i tried it today, but im stuck at the point to start fancontrol at bootup. Everytime i had to start it manually after reboot.
How can this be done on the 104?

Thx Sebastian

[dishmagic66]

I was fiddling with this too on my RN104. Even when the cpu reaches 70 degrees, the fan runs at 800rpm.
Fancontol works, but i don't know how to get the temparature sensor in the config.
I can see that it is located in /sys/devices/platform/axp-temp.0# cat temp1_input gives the temperature.
Next step is to make it work with lm-sensors or fancontrol, but i am kind a stuck here.

regards

[dishmagic66]

New all time high record. the room where the nas is is about 23 degrees celcius and the ventilation is good.
45degrees for the center drives and 76 degrees for the cpu. This appears to much to me

[StephenB]

dishmagic66 - what drives are you using?

[dishmagic66]

I have 4 Seagate ST2000DM001 installed.
The high temperature occurs when moving large amount of data over Gbit lan to the nas and running Transmission at the nas at the same time.
When the nas is idling the cpu temp is about 55 degrees and the drives between 41 and 43 degrees. Again with 23 degrees room temperature.
To me the drive temperatures are not that shocking. but the cpu temp is, When playing with pwmconfig and the fan running at 1500 rpm then the cpu temp sinks below 50 under load and under 38 when idling.
Even when the fan is at 1000rpm during idle, the cpu temp stays around 45 degrees.

Regards

[StephenB]

I use WDC reds in my RN102. The room temp is similar to yours; the drives run ~35C and the CPU runs ~60C. The fan is ~800 rpm

[dishmagic66]

My guess is that Netgear still has to do some development to do on this matter.

[aVe2000]

same problem here. I didnt get fancontrol to work, too. It does not only depends on the not detected temp sensor but i am also not able to set the fan speed to a higher value at all. My cpu temp was above 75 degree also.

Support told me that the fan speed spins up > 85 degree. That sounds crazy to me. I did start a support question to the cpu manufacturer marvell regarding valid temperature values. If i get an answer i will let you know...and of course netgear also.

I dont know why this is so hard to change by the user.

Regards

[mdgm-ntgr]

NetGear would have decided when to spin up the fan based on extensive testing and information from Marvell etc. on safe temperatures for the hardware.

[aVe2000]

At least i got someone on the phone. This company is a marvell certified marvell system design company. So they design systems with marvell components. As the system spec is under NDA as i' read somewhere else, i cannot cite officially.
He says: there are at least two different specced socs. And, yes, one is specced for running at 85degree, another for running at 105 degree.

But, in his personal opinion, he says, the netgear design is very 'sporty', means: this is not typical and even if the soc will survive, all surrounded components will be affected, with an outcome of a shorter life time of this system.

[mdgm-ntgr]

Well as well as taking into account the CPU temp, the drive temps would be taken into account too, I think (assuming it is the same as with older models). So if the drives got over a certain temperature but the CPU was still < 85 degrees the fan should speed up anyway and if this still doesn't fix the issue the system should shutdown.

[StephenB]

I think a lot of users would like to set the fan more aggressively (keeping the equipment cooler, at the expense of more fan noise). It would be nice if that were an OS6 feature.

[moseleypj]

Have there been any developments on this? I've followed the guide on automatic fan control for legacy devices but it doesn't appear to work on the newer RN102/104. Whilst I can read in the fan speed with 'sensors' and the system temp. using 'cat temp1_input' it would appear fancontrol doesn't see the temperature... :evil:

[xeltros]

My RN104 is telling me FAN : 787 RPM, CPU : 53°c, HDD1 : 37°c, HDD2 : 41°c, HDD3 : 40°c, HDD4 : 37°c. He is sitting idle right now (not home) but I've never seen it going over 78°C.
I believe disks are quite tolerant to high temperature. I think I remember a google study saying that anything below 45°c is optimal to avoid disk failure, so 44°c is still good 😉 and even if it goes to 47-48 I don't think this will really matter. As for the SoC, I believe marvell took some margin when releasing the spec. I don't think we really risk anything with this (Netgear has a 3 year warranty on the hardware for the RN104 I recall). I believe if they were having any doubt they would have set the threshold 5°c lower and bump the fan speed by 50-100RPM just to be safe.

[moseleypj]

I knocked together a little bash script to try controlling the fan speeds. It's working for me in SSH at the moment but I haven't had chance to 'tune' it. It's below for those who're interested.

#!/bin/bash

## Variables ##
FANPWMPATH=/sys/devices/platform/mv64xxx_i2c.0/i2c-0/0-003e/pwm1
FANSPEEDPATH=/sys/devices/platform/mv64xxx_i2c.0/i2c-0/0-003e/fan1_input
CORETEMPPATH=/sys/devices/platform/axp-temp.0/temp1_input
MAXFAN=100   # Maximum operable speed
MINFAN=0     # Minimum operable speed
MINPWM=75    # PWM Limit
MAXPWM=255   # PWM Limit
MINTEMP=45   # Min temp -> Fan slowest
MAXTEMP=60   # Max temp -> Fan fastest
NEWSPEED=50  # Initial fan speed (%)

## Functions ##
function getReadings {
    FANPWM=$(cat $FANPWMPATH)
    FANSPEED=$(cat $FANSPEEDPATH)
    CORETEMP=$(cat $CORETEMPPATH)
}

function setFanSpeed {
    if [ $NEWSPEED -lt $MINFAN ]; then
        NEWSPEED=$MINFAN
    fi
    if [ $NEWSPEED -gt $MAXFAN ]; then
        NEWSPEED=$MAXFAN
    fi
    NEWPWM=$(expr $MAXPWM - $MINPWM)
    NEWPWM=$(expr $NEWPWM \* $NEWSPEED)
    NEWPWM=$(expr $NEWPWM / 100)
    NEWPWM=$(expr $NEWPWM + $MINPWM)

    echo $NEWPWM > /sys/devices/platform/mv64xxx_i2c.0/i2c-0/0-003e/pwm1
	}

function calcFanPercent {
    TEMPRAN=$(expr $MAXTEMP - $MINTEMP)
    TEMPREL=$(expr $CORETEMP - $MINTEMP)
    TEMPREL=$(expr $TEMPREL \* 100)
    TEMPPER=$(expr $TEMPREL / $TEMPRAN)
    NEWSPEED=$TEMPPER
}

###################################################################
echo "Automatically controlling fan speed..."
while true
do
    getReadings
    echo "Temp: $CORETEMP C    FAN: $NEWSPEED% [$FANSPEED RPM] [$FANPWM]"

    calcFanPercent
    setFanSpeed

    sleep 10
done
###################################################################