I have a Dell Poweredge 840 and the moment it boots up it's fans are roaring full bore regardless of how little usage there is on it – idle speed is 100%. I am running windows server 2003 r2. The processor is a Intel(R) Celeron(R) D CPU 3.06GHz [x86 Family 15 Model 6 Stepping 5]. I have been digging through the documentation on power management, but this server doesn't seem to have any (aside from the monitor and the drives). Does Dell have some power manager app for stepping this model (I can't find one)? Can any of you give me any tips to save power on this thing?
I know business owners are not supposed to care about tree hugger things like power usage but I do.
Thanks in advance
Edit:
I messed around with powercfg and it appears that hard disk and processor throttle power management are not supported (only monitor turn off). Can this be? Forgive me but it seems like my windows 98 system had better power management than this. I am wondering if there is a consumer version bios that is available for this board – even a hacked version.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Best Answer
If you are concerned about the fan speed (and noise) consider this. On my Poweredge 2500, the only way I've found to control the fan speed is to adjust the temperature thresholds. If the maximum temperature is too close to the current reading, the fan spins faster trying to cool it off. When you raise the maximum temperature, the fan relaxes. So check to see if your thresholds are set too low.
Of course, if your thresholds aren't set too low, then you have a separate issue regarding cooling.