F5-422 Fans not turning on

Topics about hardware platform, power, memory, UPS, network adapter
User avatar
kevmic
Posts: 13
Joined: 29 Jan 2023, 18:52

Re: F5-422 Fans not turning on

Post by kevmic »

While I was waiting for Support to respond by email, I did some digging around on the forums to find any other users reporting heat related issues... and also decided to do a little investigating on my own.

Through the BIOS, I set the fan mode to always on. When I power up unit the fans turned on immediately. If you pause the system by entering setup they will run indefinitely. On an uninterrupted boot they run for about 5 seconds until the kernel is loaded and starts initialising stuff. Then the fans turn off, and they remain off. If I leave the system just sitting idle the temperatures slowly climb (as reported above with screenshots). Even when the device temperature is in the "orange" category in the GUI and the disks reach 50C, the fans still do not start.

This is exactly the same behaviour another user is reporting...
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4062&p=23733#p23733
(although my install was the default TOS 5.0.176-00227 downloaded on first installation of a brand new unit)

Digging around more on the forums I can see many heat related issues reported with observations that the fans are not running. This has been going on for quite some time.

Some highlights... Although search for "fans" and there are plenty more:
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2605&start=30#p14763
viewtopic.php?f=71&t=1889
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=2970
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=827#p5899

It appears we are all suffering symptoms of the same issue. In short, the problem is in your software. Your temperature control / fan control logic is faulty. My fans only ran partially during a full synchronisation and, as mentioned above in the starting posts of this thread, the speed reporting is faulty.

I've spoken with Amazon who are sympathetic, but can not guarantee their returns department will agree to a full refund. I risk losing 50% (35,000 JPY, 270 USD) if I can't prove this unit is defective.

With all the above evidence and long history of issues, I fully expect your technical team to state there is no hardware fault with my brand new device (which I agree with). And I have no confidence in your temperature control logic in the current, or any future, software release.

And finally, having said all that, apart from this rather critical issue, I like the unit. It is my ideal spec and fully metal enclosure which is one of my must-have requirements for added heat dissipation.

So I am committed to it now, and will solve the issue myself.

As this is quite clearly a software fault, there is no point trying to workaround this through my own system calls. For fun, and a little probing, it didn't take long to be able to manipulate the front LEDs. With a bit more effort would find the fan drivers. But, this is not the way to solve the problem. Whatever state I put the fans in will be overridden soon enough by the next fan command from TOS.

(And thank you to justsimon for some other fan related posts which stopped me from even trying to figure out your non-standard PWM mechanism).

So it's better to detach the fans entirely from the OS and control them myself.

As a proof of concept, I went for the simple solution of full speed 100% of the time. This is what I wanted all along anyway.

This is quite easy to do. Again from some of justsimon previous threads I could see that at least the pin layout is standard on the 4 pin fan connectors.

Its a simple case of removing the fan housing, as you would do if you were adding a memory module
(Separate grumble about this. Stop advertising the unit as 4GB on-board when it's really 2+2).
20230203_100730.jpg
Then just pop out Pin 4, Speed Signal. This is a little fiddly so be patient. Need to use a thin sharp tool to press down the little spring at the top of the pin and slide it out. If done right, it should not need much force.
20230203_100747.jpg
Reconnected it all up... And hooray! Finally I have the fans running at full speed, all the time. Which is all I ever wanted.

Lets compare two screenshots:

Unit running at idle for 14 hours in default configuration:
Screenshot_20230131_161424.jpg
Unit running at idle for 13 hours in modified configuration:
Screenshot_20230203_064700.jpg

Thats how it should be running. Personally, the fan noise is not a problem for me.

The next step will be to do this properly. I already have a Raspberry Pi with a few sensors near my equipment to monitor environmental temperature, humidity, vibration, etc. Sometime in the next few weeks I will move the fan control to the Pi also. I still want 100% full speed 24/7, but this will allow me to monitor the speeds and trigger a shutdown should one of the fans fail.

It's a shame I have to do this, but as I have zero confidence in the software's fan control, it takes away all future worries. I'll post this setup when I'm done, as it will be useful for anyone else who may want to take control of the fans and then configure it to their liking for speed vs. noise compromise.


@TerraMaster Dev Team:
Please make sure to update your fan control options in the next release.

1) Replace "Smart Fan" with "Sporadic".
2) Remove "Low", "Medium" and "Full", because they do fk all.
User avatar
TMroy
TerraMaster Team
Posts: 2578
Joined: 10 Mar 2020, 14:04
China

Re: F5-422 Fans not turning on

Post by TMroy »

{L_BUTTON_AT}kevmic
For sure, we feel sorry for your experience.
The proofs you provided were very old cases that happened almost two years ago, they are out of date. Something did happen before about the fan control, but this issue has been optimized for a long time. We did not find the same issue inside our lab during our verification. This may be just a specific case that may be related to the hardware instead of the software. Until now, there is no other user reporting fan control issues.

Let me check with the tech team, they need to respond to your email, and try a remote session and find the real cause for such an issue.
To contact our team, please send email to following addresses, remember to replace (at) with @:
Support team: support(at)terra-master.com (for technical support only)
Service team: service(at)terra-master.com (for purchasing, return, replacement, RMA service)
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