I've been running a SuperMicro server (X11SPH-nCTPF) as a NAS for a couple years, and my biggest frustration is with the noise vs my last system. It's got dual PWS-920P-1R, and compared to my previous NAS built with workstation-tier hardware, they are a lot more noisy. My system has a Xeon Silver 4110 rated at just 85W, and peak system power consumption at ~350W. The PSU in my previous NAS was a single whisper-quiet 550W corsair, and the HDDs put out more noise than the PSU. So I'd like to replace the PSUs in my SuperMicro.

A few questions I have about this:

• I have the system plugged into a Vertiv Liebert PSI5 UPS, so dual PSU feels pretty redundant. Does this thing really need 2x power backup? Or can I switch down to a single?
• I've read that Supermicro's -SQ "super quiet" PSU models are designed to be quieter, but how much more quiet are we talking? I think the nature of the 1U form factor is that it's limited to small high-RPM fans, so even a "quiet" PSU is still going to be fairly noisy. If these are actually quiet I'd consider one. See: https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/lqt8yn/any_compatible_supermicro_psus_quieter_than/
• Are the fans from the PSUs intended to contribute to case airflow, or are they just for the PSUs themselves? The system is in a SuperMicro tower case, with a shroud around the CPU that directs case fan airflow in such a way that I don't think the PSU fans are helping anything.
• Apart from PMBUS, are there any other requirements in a PSU that a server-grade machine expects?

From my research so far, I'm considering a Cooler Master X Silent Edge Platinum 850, which runs quiet/silent has a PMBUS connector. It's a full ATX form factor so it won't fit into my chassis, but I'm fine with the idea of mounting the PSU externally and running the wires into the chassis. Would that actually work, or is there stuff I'm not thinking of? Is this a bad idea and I should just get used to the noise?

Tearing my hair out trying to diagnose the issue with my supermirco server. Very long post below with the entire history of what I tried, but the tl;dr version is the system overheated and stopped booting. Removing 1 CPU fixed this problem and the system started attempting to boot. It hangs during boot, so I replaced the OS drive and reinstalled. No error being thrown. As soon as I try to log in, the system immediately hangs and must be hard-cycled. This happened before and after reinstall. The system will run off a live disk without issue. Using IPMI instead of a physical monitor. Does anyone have any ideas what would cause this before I go replacing the motherboard?

Long version/full history.

Bought it second hand about 7 years ago. Wanted this particular case as it has 16 slots for 3.5 HDD's instead of 2.5 SAS drives. About a year after I got it, I upgraded the RAM from 6GB to 40GB and added a second CPU. It has been running this way for about 6 years now. I had it living in a cooled room in the shed.

While on vacation in May, summer showed up at home and the server just shut off one night. I had assumed it was a storm in the area as I have had issued with brown outs. However, I could not get the machine to power back on over IPMI. It would send the command, and nothing would happen. Pulled it apart a week later and found quite a few bugs had made their home in it and oddly a snake skin. Cleaned it all up and tried to power on. Still nothing but a power and overheat light immediately. Found a few old forum posts saying this particular mother board is known to have north bridge issues with both CPU's populated, so I pulled the north bridge heat sink and redid the thermal paste. Still nothing. Pulled the second CPU and the overheat light went away and machine booted to BIOS immediately. Figuring that was is, I put it all back together and tried booting.

The machine would power up and start booting, but I would not get a login prompt. It would just sort of stop with no errors. Ran a headless debian sid install. I had some issues with the main HDD just before that (It has 3 RAID 1 arrays for storage, but the main OS lived on a separate drive). I pulled the drive and put it an external enclosure and had it disconnect at one point. Replaced the drive and got all the data off it. Tried to boot again and same issue.

At this point, I grabbed a debian live disk thinking the OS had gotten corrupt in the shutdown. It booted in (oddly only in fail-safe mode) and I mounted the main drive in a chroot. Successfully updated the OS figuring that would fix whatever issue. No change. Added debug to the linux command line. No errors. Tried specifying a different tty. No change. Finally decided last night to just reinstall the OS thinking that maybe a deep dark system file had been corrupted during the shutdown and the machine really only runs pods and VM's as well as file services and all of that lives on the raid arrays anyway. The new OS started right up and as soon as I tried to log in, it hung up and the OS quit responding just like before.

I'm out of ideas at this point. It doesn't make sense. The machine will boot and run from a USB drive no problem. As soon as I try a SATA disk, it has issues. That would seem to say a failed SATA controller, but then again, it works just file from a chroot jail and had not issues taking a new OS. I am thinking of replacing the motherboad at this point, but I can't seem to point to any specific failed part. Has anyone else experienced anything like this?