Quieten loud Dell PowerEdge servers

We’ve had a couple of Dell PowerEdge servers that had fans that seemed to be running continuously – and were loud – out of the box, and they didn’t quieten down even after the array had completed its build and/or updates had been applied. There are a variety of suggestions  but the one we had most success with was via a change in the BIOS:

System BIOS | System Profile Settings | System profile set to “Performance per watt”.

Alternatively set a custom profile of “Performance” with C-States/C1E enabled.

The alternatives included using a non-low power CPU (bit late post-purchase) or adjusting the fan via iDRAC interface (Hardware | Fans | Setup | Thermal Profile).