Specifications

29 PowerEdge M420 Technical Guide
Thermal control also detects and responds to hardware configuration. Thermal management
adjusts cooling according to what the system really needs, and draws lower fan power draw and
generates lower acoustical noise levels than those without such controls.
 Environmental specifications: The optimized thermal management makes the PowerEdge
M420 reliable under a wide range of operating environments as shown in Table 22. When
operating above 30°C ambient, performance impacts may be seen. For more information see
the Dell PowerEdge M420 Systems Owner's Manual on Support.Dell.com/Manuals.
The acoustical performance of the PowerEdge M420 is reflected in Table 15.
Four sleeves, each containing four typically
1
configured M420 blades, were installed in the M1000e
host chassis; all blades had the same configuration and same airflow impedance. Remaining blade
slots were filled with blanks of same impedance as blades. Acoustical measurements were made in
23 ± 2 °C ambient.
The M420 is built for high density and high performance. The great power density of the M420
means that small increases in utilization require large increases in fan speed hence large increases in
loudness. This means that loudness with M420s increases significantly with utilization; in fact, more
so than other Dell blade products.
Configuration
(23 ± 2°C ambient)
CPUs
Drives
DIMMs
PCI cards
Operating
mode
L
WA
-UL
2
(bels)
L
pA
3
(dBA)
Typical
1
2 x 95W
1 x uSATA
SSD
6
1 mezzanine
card
Operating
4
8.9
71
Idle
5
7.9
63
1
Typical configuration means 2x 95W CPUs, x 2GB DIMMs, 1x Mezzanine card, and 1x uSATA SSD.
2
L
WA
-UL is the upper limit sound power levels (L
WA
) calculated per section 4.4.1 of ISO 9296 (1988) and measured in
accordance to ISO 7779 (2010).
3
L
pA
is the average A-weighted sound pressure level from the four bystander positions calculated per section 4.3 of
ISO 9296 (1988) and measured in accordance with ISO 7779 (2010). The system is placed in a half rack enclosure (base
of system is 25 cm above reflective floor).
4
Operating is a mode per ISO 7779 (2010) definition 3.1.6. Blade stressing applications vary widely thus also do respective
operating acoustical values; the values are given above as a likely range, for example, “likely greater than or equal to,”
(≥). SPECPower™ at 50% utilization is the benchmark used for the lower bound here.
5
Idle: Reference ISO 7779 (2010) definition 3.1.7; system is running in its operating system but no other specific activity;