Release Notes

PCIe cooling strategy in PowerEdge servers
6 PCIe Card Cooling with Dell EMC PowerEdge Servers
2 PCIe cooling strategy in PowerEdge servers
PowerEdge servers identify the device and provide customized cooling for each Dell EMC-designed or
qualified PCIe adapter card. Many customers choose to use their own cards and those cards are also known
as third-party cards. Dell EMC has designed the logic to detect these third-party PCIe adapters and provide a
default cooling response that is based on an estimate of the cooling requirements for the card.
At a high level, PowerEdge servers handle PCIe card cooling depending on whether the cards are Dell
EMC-qualified or sourced from a third party.
2.1 PCIe airflow settings in iDRAC9
Given the increasing power consumption and heat advanced PCIe adapters produce, PowerEdge engineers
developed an innovative solution for PCIe adapter cooling that gives users a slot-by-slot view of airflow
delivered, and the capability to customize the delivery of airflow for their custom PCIe cards. This new
solution is called PCIe Airflow Settings.
PCIe Airflow Setting in iDRAC represents the PCIe cooling setup, slot-by-slot, for the server. See the
following figure for a visual representation of the slot’s maximum LFM capability.
Visual representation of the slot-by-slot max LFM capability for each PCIe slot
See next figure for an example snapshot from the iDRAC UI and how it represents PCIe cooling status.