Dell POWEREDGE R710 - Manual (Page 18)

Dell™ PowerEdge™ R710 Technical Guidebook
18
h. acoustics
The acoustical design of the PowerEdge R710 reflects the following:
• Adherence to Dell’s high sound quality standards. Sound quality is different from sound power
level and sound pressure level in that it describes how humans respond to annoyances in sound,
like whistles, hums, etc. One of the sound quality metrics in the Dell specification is prominence
ratio of a tone, and this is listed in the table below.
• Office environment acoustics. Compare the values for LpA in the table below and note that
they are lower than ambient noise levels of typical office environments.
• Hardware configurations affect system noise levels. Dell’s advanced thermal control provides
for optimized cooling with varying hardware configurations. Most typical configurations will
perform as listed in the table below. However some less typical configurations and components
can result in higher noise levels. For example, a system configured with a PERC6/E card will be
approximately twice as loud (
~
9 dBA higher) in 23+/-2° C ambient.
• Noise ramp and descent at Bootup. Fan speeds hence noise levels ramp during the boot
process in order to add a layer of protection for component cooling in the case that the system
were not to boot properly.
PowerEdge R710 (2.5" and 3.5" chassis) with RK385 fans (quantity below), 2x 870-W FU096 Power
Supplies, 2.40 GHz Quad-Core E5530 CPUs (quantity below), 7x 2-GB DIMMs, 1x DVD Drive, Perc 6i
card, and 4x Hard Disk Drives (type below)
Acoustical dependence on quantities of fans, CPUs, and Hard Disk Drive type is not strong. The values
below represent therefore the performance for redundant (5x fans and 2x CPUs) as well as the
nonredundant (4x fans and 1x CPU) configurations. They also represent performance for 2.5" 10k SAS
XK112 as well as 3.5" 7.2k SATA NW340 Hard Disk Drives.
Condition in 23 + _ 2° C ambient LwA-UL, bels LpA, dBA Tones
Standby 3.1 18 No prominent tones
Idle 5.5 39 No prominent tones
Active Hard Disk Drives 5.5 39 No prominent tones
Stressed Processor 5.5 39 No prominent tones
Definitions
Standby: AC Power is connected to Power Supply Units but system is not turned on.
Idle: Reference ISO7779 (1999) definition 3.1.7; system is running in its OS but no other specific activity.
Active Hard Drives: An operating mode per ISO7779 (1999) definition 3.1.6; Section C.9 of ECMA-74
9th ed. (2005) is followed in exercising the hard disk drives.
Stressed Processor: An operating mode per ISO7779 (1999) definition 3.1.6; SPECPower set to 50%
loading is used.
LwA-UL: The upper limit sound power level (LwA) calculated per section 4.4.2 of ISO 9296 (1988) and
measured in accordance with ISO7779 (1999).
LpA: The average bystander position A-weighted sound pressure level calculated per section 4.3 of
ISO9296 (1988) and measured in accordance with ISO7779 (1999). The system is placed in a
rack with its bottom at 25-cm from the floor.
Tones: Criteria of D.5 and D.8 of ECMA-74 9th ed. (2005) are followed to determine if discrete tones are
prominent. The system is placed in a rack with its bottom at 75-cm from the floor. The acoustic
transducer is at front bystander position, ref ISO7779 (1999), Section 8.6.2.