Intel® RAID Controllers Airflow Requirements and Thermal Operating Limits

Documentation

Maintenance & Performance

000030762

06/03/2021

Most Intel® RAID Controllers are designed to operate at a maximum internal chassis temperature of 55° Celsius, with a minimum airflow requirement of 200 linear feet per minute (LFM). This ensures the internal RAID-on-Chip (ROC) IC will operate at less than 105° Celsius.

Refer to the hardware user guide for detailed operating limits (thermal and atmospheric) of your Intel RAID Controller.

If for any reason, there is an overheating on the Intel RAID Controller:

  • You may see the following (or similar) warning message on the event log of the Intel RAID Controller:
    • WARNING:Controller temperature threshold exceeded. This may indicate inadequate system cooling. Switching to low performance mode
  • When ROC reaches 110° Celsius, controller will throttle until ROC temperature goes down below 105° Celsius.
  • When ROC reaches 116° Celsius, controller will continue to throttle. After 10 seconds of operating, the cache is flushed, pending I/O are completed, and all I/O will stop except through the UART debugging interface.

If the overheating is constantly happening:

  • Ensure the Intel RAID Controller is installed in a PCIe* slot that meets the minimum airflow requirements. Refer to the Technical Product Specification (TPS) of the Intel® Server System for airflow information of the PCIe/riser slots.
  • Ensure all other thermal and atmospheric operating limits for your Intel RAID Controller are met.
  • Increase the system fan speed of the Intel Server System:
    1. During power on, press F2 to enter BIOS.
    2. Navigate to Advanced -> System Acoustic and Performance Configuration.
    3. Change the value of either of the following settings:
      • Set Fan Profile -> Performance
      • Fan PWM Offset -> 1~100 (higher value for faster fan speed)
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