Dell PowerEdge T320 Technical Manual

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Contents

30 PowerEdge T320 Technical GuideThermal designThe thermal design of the PowerEdge T320 reflects the following: Multiple sensors are monitored for thermal feedback control: The PowerEdge T320dynamically controls system cooling fan speed based on responses from componenttemperature sensors, including processors, hard disk drives, DIMMs, storage cards and the inletambient temperature. Thermal control detects and responds to hardware configuration. Thermalmanagement adjusts cooling according to what the system really needs, draws lower fan powerand generates lower acoustical noise levels than servers without such controls. Environmental specifications: The optimized thermal management makes the T320 reliableunder a wide range of operating environments as shown in the environmental specifications inTable 27. Many configurations are also compliant under expanded operating temperatureenvironments, but a few are not.Acoustical designThe acoustical design of the PowerEdge T320 reflects the following: Quiet library acoustics: The PowerEdge T320 is quiet enough for an office setting whenminimally configured and for the office under the desk with a typical configuration. Adherence to Dell’s high sound quality standards: Sound quality is different from sound powerlevel and sound pressure level in that it describes how humans respond to annoyances in sound,like whistles, hums and so on. One of the sound quality metrics in the Dell specification isprominence ratio of a tone, which is listed in Table 18. Configurable for low acoustics: The following are configuration considerations you shouldmake if acoustics are important to you:- Storage devices:> Because hard drive noise scales with spindle speed, the quietest option for rotationalstorage media is a 7200-rpm SATA drive. The loudest option is a 15k SAS drive.> Solid-state drives are even quieter than rotational drives because they have no soundassociated with spinning.> Noise levels increase with the quantity of hard drives; using fewer hard drives has alower acoustical output.- Impact of cards:> Quantity of PCIe cards: When more than two PCIe cards are installed, the system fanspeed/noise level is higher.> Types of PCIe cards: The fan speed/noise level will be higher if a GPU and PERC H710are installed.- System profile settings in BIOS and thermal settings in iDRAC7: Performance Per Watt isthe quietest option. Other options such as Performance Optimized or DenseConfiguration require higher fan speeds, which produce higher acoustic levels.- Hot spare feature of power supply unit: In system default setting, the hot spare feature isdisabled; acoustical output from the power supplies is lowest in this setting. If the featureis enabled and the system power loading is low, the power supply fan speed, hence noisewill be higher.- RAID setup with PERC H310: A system configured as non-RAID has a higher noise levelthan a system configured as RAID. With non-RAID, the temperature of the hard disk drivesis not monitored, which causes the fan speed to be higher to ensure sufficient coolingresulting in higher noise level.