Cooling the Dell Perc H200

Today I’m writing down some advice on cooling a Dell Perc H200 card as this would have saved me some time if this post popped up on Google search when I was looking for it myself.

I have a custom-built server at home that I use for various tasks, one of which is serving as a NAS with TrueNAS. Since my motherboard didn’t have enough SATA ports, I added a Dell Perc H200 RAID controller.

This is a PCI Express card that provides additional SATA ports and is often seen as a reliable option, at least more reliable than M2 to SATA adapters. Let me show you how I cooled it.

You can often get this card for cheap as decommissioned hardware from data centers. I got mine from Serverzaak.nl , preflashed with the proper firmware (“IT mode”) for use with ZFS (since the default “RAID mode” is not compatible with ZFS). In the servers for which this card was originally designed, it was cooled by powerful server’s fans. However, in my home server, in a Jonsbo N3 , there is not enough airflow to keep the card cool, especially when it is under load.

The card has a small heatsink. So I decided to add a fan to it. I bought a Noctua A4x10 PWM fan. If you have a bit more space, you could also get a Noctua A4x20 PWM, which is a bit thicker and has a higher airflow. The A4x10 PWM is only 10mm thick, so it fits nicely on the card without obstructing my second PCIe slot.

To make sure it stays in place, I used a set of pliers to bend the 4 outer corners of the heatsink slightly towards each other. This way, you can use screws to attach the fan to the heatsink. I used 4x16mm screws which I found in my local hardware store.

You can see the result in the pictures below.

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