SGI: Hardware

Hi,

Saw a lot of posts about from 4 or so years ago about changing o300 fans for quieter alternatives.

Seems that the NMB equivalents that are listed are no longer used.

Anyone have any ideas on equivalents that are available to day?

gotta quieten these things down a bit they are driving me nuts.

Cheers

I replaced my fans in my O300s with these:
http://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-80mm-Bearing-Black/dp/B0009JZSKO/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1334833591&sr=8-3

Because the power connector for these fans does not match the proprietary O300 power connector on the motherboard, I simply wired them to the 4 pin molex power connector that is used to power the U160 drives. I disabled env because of this, but I setup a script to run env via the l1cmd to ensure everything is still within spec.

After doing the swap, I can barely hear my O300s being on.

You can get a pretty good idea of which fans you can use by running the L1 command "env" and looking at the fan "Warning RPM":
You can use that to select low noise fans with that have a minimum speed above that number.

BTW, some 'temperature controlled' fans won't start until a minimum preset temperature is reached, the O300's environmental monitoring will likely read that as a fan failure and as a result auto-shutdown the machine. Had similar issues with an O350 I added VPro graphics to for another nekochan member . I used Vantec TF6025 Thermoflow fans with that set up and had to switch one of those to a non-thermostatic fan to avoid L1 fan warning messages.

The fans Adrenaline used look sound like they'd work well. Those are are rated at 2400rpm - comfortably above the 2160 rpm level that would generate a fan failure message in the O300.

Since he's already done proof testing, you could probably go ahead and graft the new fans onto the original O300 connectors (and not have to worry about un-doing the splice job if the fans didn't work out). If you do wire the new fans into the original connectors, you might consider taking a few photos - I'm sure anyone else who finds themselves in a your shoes would really appreciate it.

Adrenaline wrote: I replaced my fans in my O300s with these: (link)

Thanks for the link, Jared.

Adrenaline wrote: Because the power connector for these fans does not match the proprietary O300 power connector on the motherboard, I simply wired them to the 4 pin molex power connector that is used to power the U160 drives. I disabled env because of this, but I setup a script to run env via the l1cmd to ensure everything is still within spec.

Nothing wrong with this, or with recycling the original connectors, but they may be available as Molex p/n 14-56-2034 (thanks to pierocks , and ignore the incorrect diagram on this Molex page ).

I have a bad FAN1 in my 001c02 brick, and if I can manage the expense I'm tempted to replace them all. Getting new connectors in a small enough quantity may be a challenge, though.

Mouser doesn't stock them, and minimum quantity is a roll of 1,920 @ US$0.773, or $1,484. Digikey doesn't have them in stock either... If I find a source, I'll share it here.

Adrenaline wrote: After doing the swap, I can barely hear my O300s being on.

That's the second biggest incentive, after the failed fan...

If you were curious about the "clean factor", I attached a picture. It's not pretty, but it's been working for 2 months now 24/7.

Thanks for the link and all the replies.

From the picture it appears that they are 3 pin which would be

Red +12V
Black 0V
Yellow tachometer

right?

So they could be spliced in are the colours/signals the same for the existing one, I can check but I have to wait to open my unit up.

Cheers

competentcompton wrote: So they could be spliced in are the colours/signals the same for the existing one, I can check but I have to wait to open my unit up.

Oh they've definitely been spliced in before, yes! I'm just tempted by the platonic ideal of a fresh new connector -- but believe me, I'll bodge things up if I can't get hold of the needed parts (or can't stomach the price)...

Here's evidence of such a splice job (scroll all the way to the bottom - from a Fuel, but odds are if I had the intestinal fortutide to do a little more searching I could confirm the wiring): viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9046

I looked at that and it seems to have the wires seriously crosed over.

Looking at the connector it would appear that the wiring colors match the pin definition for a standard 3 pin fan

from top down

yellow - tach
red - +12V
black - 0V

(took this from http://pcbheaven.com/wikipages/How_PC_Fans_Work/ )

but the wiring to the fan suggests that the pinout for the sgi mainboard connector is swapped over but why did they keep the colors the same (??)

ho hum. Love to do this but just want to be sure about the pin for the wiring splicing.

Cheers

what is the pin ordering of the

competentcompton wrote: I looked at that and it seems to have the wires seriously crosed over.

Hope I'm not misreading, but -- yes, the SGI pinout is known to be "unique." I thought that was covered pretty clearly in the old posts you mentioned...

I was just surprised that they so mixed up and that they didn't even chage the wiring color to what it should be.

I was wondering if the picture shown might hae been incorrect.

So is that wiring for the original NMB fan the standard wiring for a NMB fan or is it specific to SGI ?

Anyways I'll just buy some and play till I get it right.

Cheers

You have experience with SGI hardware and wonder why it's non-standard?

The header for the 3-pin fans used in the O350 also don't comply with the common standard. The SGI pinout for other IP35 stuff (the Fuel and the O350) is Pin 1 - 12VDC; Pin 2 - Tach; Pin 3 - Ground. If you want to double check that the O300 fan wiring is (or isn't) the same, use a DMM to check the pinout of the original fans before you pull them. Once you're satisfied you've got the correct sequence, then re-wire the connectors (and new fans) to match.

Since the O350 uses a standard 3-pin connector, I used a dental pick to release the the wires from the connector and reinserted them to match the SGI pinout.

If you're lucky the terminals on whatever fan you select will fit into that less common connector used in the O300. If they don't, you might be able to use the info in smj's molex link to find solder or crimp wiring terminals that will fit.

recondas wrote: You have experience with SGI hardware and wonder why it's non-standard?

Agreed ... but it does seem that messing around with commonly accepted electrical color codes is a little less than responsible

Yeah,

Messing around with colour codes is a bit much to swallow even for SGI non-standards.

I think what was throwing me was that I was labouring under the delusion that I had read that the NMB were plugin replacements. For some reason this threw me somewhat as I assumed that their pin out was the same (My mistake I guess )

I have ordered the fans and will look at the signals with a DMM/scope and splice them accordingly.
Once done I will post back with sucess/fail.

These fans are rated at 2400 +/-10% which puts their possible low RPM bang on the 2160 RPM L1 fail point.

Lets see what happens

cheesr

I've finally seen this enough times that I added a section to the O300 wiki page on fan replacement and connectors.

In digging up thread references and part numbers, I noticed that pierocks appears to have checked out and documented the color coding of O300 fan wiring in this reply .