Fan advice for hp ml110 g7 mobo

[pjamedia]

I have transplanted a HP ProLiant ML110 G7 mobo in an Antec P800 case. Ended up having to use the HP fans, as the mobo wouldn't boot without them connected - the bios reported fan failures. The problem is, the HP fans are too small for the case - and very noisy! So looking at buying new 120mm fans which I can connect to the mobo connectors. The connectors look like this:

6 pins (2 rows of 3) with just 5 pins in use - and 2 of these are bridged with ground/-ve/black cable.

Anyone have any ideas of 120mm fans which would be compatible? Or modifiable?

Thanks, Paul

 

[Tealc]

Looking at the colours I'd guess they'd be black for 0v, yellow for 12v, green for Tach, blue for PWM. The motherboard probably requires the tach wire to be connected and providing a signal above a threshold.

This guess is confirmed by the Intel spec for PWM connection, even though in this case HP have used a proprietary connector they may have followed Intel spec. They are also the colours of my Akasa PWM splitter.

4.1.6 Fan Connector Pinout and Wiring Colors
Table 1 Connector Pinout
Pin Function Wire Color
1 GND Black
2 12 V Yellow
3 Sense Green
4 Control Blue

What I would try is just bunging a standard fan on there by cutting those wires somewhere where you could solder them back up afterwards if it doesn't work.

Can't figure out why it needs two blacks though.

 

[ubersonic]

Can I ask why your doing this out of interest? surely moving the servers internals to new housings has voided the warranty, and from a professional pov the Proliant case is much better than an Antec 800, so it seems like your trying to convert the server to be a desktop or gaming rig, in which case why not use a normal motherboard? :S

 

[pjamedia]

Tealc, Awesome advice. I will give your suggestion a go.

Ubersonic, I am doing this as I wanted to beef up my old system, which was being stressed to death - The ml110 g7 was very cheap £400 - £150 cash back. I don't care about the warranty. I need a lot of storage for my photography business, and the 110 case is tiny so wouldn't house it. I also didn't have bundles of cash to buy the bits required to create external storage array and connect this up. I was looking at the HP SAS expander to do this - (maybe a future project!). The P800 case I already have modified with 2 x 4 hot swap disk caddies, plus 4 disks fitted internally. It now has the ML110 control panel grafted into the facia (as the mobo switch connectors were non standard also) Also, has the HP ambient temperature sensor fitted in the front panel of the antec case.

I run esxi 5u1 on this, so having the HP board, although does not come under the VMWare approved hardware list, does run esxi nicely. It also runs with 32GB of ram (even though HP only suggest 16GB being max), which helps as my needs grow. Presently running 4 windows 2008 R2 VMs and Centos64. 12 drives installed all connected to 3Ware battery backed RAID controller - 8 of these (2 RAID5 arrays) are raw device mapped to one of my VMs (the file server). The rest (as a 3rd RAID5 array) are the esxi datastore. It boots esxi from USB flash drive. I also have external storage for backup purposes connected to my backup VM using iSCSI (Thecus 5200b Pro with 5x2TB Hitachi drives).

Cheers, Paul

 

[pjamedia]

Well I replaced both case fans with Akasa Apache Black PWM 120mm fans, soldering the bespoke HP connectors onto the Akasa cables, and sealing with heat shrink. Now on POST I get a 1611-Fan 1 failure, and a 1611-Fan 3 Failure, even though both fans are spinning. For some reason the BIOS doesn't like these fans, and won't boot - it just shuts down after the error. Occasionally, it just gives the failure error on just one of the 2 fans, and not both, and as to which one, that can vary also. Seems really random. When I had replaced the first of the 2 fans, I did see the same error, but after a few attempts, it no longer reported the fault and continued to boot, so I decided to replace the second fan also, and now see the issues reported above.

Its obviously temperamental as to which fans it likes - so a bit stuck at the moment!

Incidentally, I did manage to replace the 3rd case fan also which forces air over the lower drive bay and onto the PSU, but I connected this to a different header type on the system board (of which there are 4 unused) - this is a straight 6-pin connector (apparently an Intel spec connector for PWM with hot-swap). I had to re-arrange the cables in the PWM 4 pin plug to suit the pinouts of the system board. This fan seems to spin just fine.

Cheers, Paul

 

[bremen1874]

Servers are almost always fussy about their fans. You normally either get a failed boot as you describe, or all of the fans running flat out which rather defeats the object.

The server's BMC is probably getting upset by either lower RPMs than it expects, or a lower current draw. Find the specs for the OEM fans and then try to find something that's at least a reasonable match (current draw and rpm range) in the size required.

 

[remixme]

Sorry to resurrect this thread, but I have a very similar issue.

I want to replace Fan3 on this machine as it has a very annoying noise profile that tends to vary with even a tiny percentage change in fan speed.

I was wondering if the OP or anyone else had any more luck for this?

I think trying to replace the fan with one of a similar profile is going to be very difficult as its a bit of a monster. Any suggestions?

Delta Electronics
PFB0812GHE
perating Input Voltage Range 7V to 13.2V
Noise Level 55.5dB
Speed (Nominal) 6100rpm
Power Rating 10.2W
Product Length (mm) 80mm
Line Current 850mA

Failing that, I'm going to try the route of emulating the fan RPM signal using a 555 timer in order to get it to boot without a fan, such that I can use whatever fan I want as a replacement. Somebody had success with this on another forum in a different scenario.

 

[Tealc]

Or you could turn the fan alarm off? Is that possible.

Emulating the fan tach signal is easy enough but remember that the tach square wave is sent twice per revolution so you'll need to double up on your timer calculation to keep the motherboard happy.

 

[remixme]

Or you could turn the fan alarm off? Is that possible.

Not as far as I can tell...
Loads of people were complaining on HP forums a few months back about the same thing with no solution.

Without Fan3 connected, machine boots up, goes "insufficient cooling solution" and turns off again.

 

[hamp]

I want to replace Fan3 on this machine as it has a very annoying noise profile that tends to vary with even a tiny percentage change in fan speed.

I was wondering if the OP or anyone else had any more luck for this?

I think trying to replace the fan with one of a similar profile is going to be very difficult as its a bit of a monster. Any suggestions?

Delta Electronics
PFB0812GHE
perating Input Voltage Range 7V to 13.2V
Noise Level 55.5dB
Speed (Nominal) 6100rpm
Power Rating 10.2W
Product Length (mm) 80mm
Line Current 850mA

Failing that, I'm going to try the route of emulating the fan RPM signal using a 555 timer in order to get it to boot without a fan, such that I can use whatever fan I want as a replacement. Somebody had success with this on another forum in a different scenario.

Any success with this? I also need to replace the fans because of the noice - should I buy new fans with molex connector instead of replacing existing?

 

[ubersonic]

Any success with this? I also need to replace the fans because of the noice - should I buy new fans with molex connector instead of replacing existing?

Wouldn't work:

Without Fan3 connected, machine boots up, goes "insufficient cooling solution" and turns off again.

 

[hamp]

Wouldn't work:

I only removed the fan blades (not the fans) and plan to add one or two new silent fans. I guess I should connect them to the PSU. I can't stand the noice so I have to do something...

 

[hamp]

I replaced my fans with Be Quiet! Shadow Wings and now it is pretty silent. The green cable is an alarm signal that has to be 0V. Yellow = 12V and blue = PWM.

Niclas

 

[Tgy]

Any additional details

Your post is quite interesting.
What drive did you use from bequiet ? Your link seems dead.

How did you connect it ? Cut wire and connect to the old connector streight ?

Anything else ?

My server is not going through this airplane takeoff cycle but it is too noisy for me.

Tanguy

 

[Tgy]

Moved my post upward

 

[hamp]

Your post is quite interesting.
What drive did you use from bequiet ? Your link seems dead.

How did you connect it ? Cut wire and connect to the old connector streight ?

Anything else ?

My server is not going through this airplane takeoff cycle but it is too noisy for me.

Tanguy

I used 2 x "be quiet! ShadowWings 92mm PWM" and 1 x "be quiet! ShadowWings 80mm PWM". I reused the old fan connector with 6-pins.
"The green cable is an alarm signal that has to be 0V. Yellow = 12V and blue = PWM." I connected the green cable to 0V and of course PWM and 12V and then everything works.

Niclas

 

[Tgy]

Pb again! see post upward

 

[Tgy]

I replaced my fans with Be Quiet! Shadow Wings and now it is pretty silent. The green cable is an alarm signal that has to be 0V. Yellow = 12V and blue = PWM.

Niclas

Your post is quite interesting.
What drive did you use from bequiet ? Your link seems dead.

How did you connect it ? Cut wire and connect to the old connector streight ?

Anything else ?


Tanguy

 

[Tgy]

I used 2 x "be quiet! ShadowWings 92mm PWM" and 1 x "be quiet! ShadowWings 80mm PWM". I reused the old fan connector with 6-pins.
"The green cable is an alarm signal that has to be 0V. Yellow = 12V and blue = PWM." I connected the green cable to 0V and of course PWM and 12V and then everything works.

Niclas

Niclas,

Many thanks for your reply.
I have found local distributor for these fans. They are quite cheap!

I want to make sure I get it right as kids of 4. These fans do not have the same connector as the HP. Right ?
Thus I'll need to cut the wire to the conector of both old and new fans and wire the old conenctor to the new fan using the color matching you discribed.

Tgy

 

[beavis]

Sorry to drag this old post back up...

I used 2 x "be quiet! ShadowWings 92mm PWM" and 1 x "be quiet! ShadowWings 80mm PWM". I reused the old fan connector with 6-pins.
"The green cable is an alarm signal that has to be 0V. Yellow = 12V and blue = PWM." I connected the green cable to 0V and of course PWM and 12V and then everything works.

Niclas

Hello Niclas,

Can you confirm the wire colours, this is what I found for the G6 and it's different

Black = ground
Orange = open-collector tachometer
Red = +12 VDC
Yellow = open-collector, low-pass/high-fail, trip-point (speed) and locked rotor alarm
Blue = ground
Green = pulse-width modulated speed control