Dell PowerEdge R730xd - Initial System Setup and Configuration; System Setup and iDRAC Configuration

40 PowerEdge R730 and R730xd Technical Guide
Thermal and acoustics
The R730 and R730xd thermal management delivers high performance through optimized cooling
of components at the lowest fan speeds across a wide range of ambient temperatures from 10°C to
35°C (50°F to 95°F) and to extended ambient temperature ranges. These optimizations result in
lower fan power consumption for lower total system power and data center power consumption.
Thermal design
The thermal design of the PowerEdge R730 and R730xd reflects the following:
 Optimized thermal design: The system layout is architected for optimum thermal design. System
component placement and layout are designed to provide maximum airflow coverage to critical
components with minimal expense of fan power.
 Comprehensive thermal management: The thermal control system regulates the system fan
speeds based on feedback from system component temperature sensors, as well as for system
inventory and subsystem power draw. Temperature monitoring includes components such as
processors, DIMMs, chipset, system inlet air temperature, hard disk drives, NDC and GPU.
 Open and closed loop fan speed control: Open loop fan control uses system configuration to
determine fan speed based on system inlet air temperature. Closed loop thermal control uses
temperature feedback to dynamically adjust fan speeds based on system activity and cooling
requirements.
 User-configurable settings: With the understanding and realization that every customer has a
unique set of circumstances or expectations from the system, in this generation of servers, we
have introduced limited user-configurable settings in the iDRAC8 BIOS setup screen. For more
information, see the Dell PowerEdge R730 and R730xd Owner’s Manual on
Dell.com/Support/Manuals and “Advanced Thermal Control: Optimizing across Environments
and Power Goals” on Dell.com.
 Cooling redundancy: The R730 and R730xd allow N+1 fan redundancy, allowing continuous
operation with one fan failure in the system.
Acoustical design
Dell focuses on sound quality in addition to sound power level and sound pressure level. Sound
quality describes how disturbing or pleasing a sound is interpreted, and Dell references a number of
psychacoustical metrics and thresholds in delivering to it. Tone prominence is one such metric.
Sound power and sound pressure levels increase with greater populations or higher utilization, while
sound quality remains good even as the frequency content changes. A reference for comparison to
sound pressure levels for familiar noise sources is given in Table 23. An extensive description of Dell
Enterprise acoustical design and metrics is available in the Dell Enterprise Acoustics white paper.