Memory Fan Error Message — Press F1 To Continue

[DBrunnenmeyer]

Our community radio station has a number of xs8400 workstations for editing and in-studio/on-air use. They are very satisfactory for this application as the demands on them are no excessive and there's no real incentive to go to the expense of upgrading all of them with another round of identical but newer workstations, except ...

Several of them have experienced issues with the fans over the memory bank. One got so noisy that it had to be replaced with one "robbed" from another workstation. The fan noise was unacceptable in an on-air studio.

The replacement fans were off-the-shelf fans or a similar nature EXCEPT they don't support the requirement to "report" to the motherboard that they are OK. Even though the replacement fans are running, if the PC is rebooted, the operator has to press F1 to boot into the OS. Now this doesn't sound like an insurmountable task to perform, sooner or later one of our many volunteer DJs will panic and fail to perform the obvious prompt, causing the show to "not go on."

Our engineer and his assistant scoured the web looking for a way around this. (Why they didn't try to order replacement fans from HP is beyond my ability to explain, but that's another story.) What they claim they did find is a suggestion that one can bypass this prompt for pressing F1 in the system setup, presumably in the F10 screen. But they tell me that the BIOS doesn't offer that capability. The System Information screen says the BIOS is 786D5 v02.38 . So here are my questions:

1. Is there a version of BIOS that permits bypassing the F1 prompt due to memory fan failure indications?

2. FWIW, we're still running Windows 7 Pro / 64-bit on these machines but would like to upgrade them to Windows 10 for consistency. (Some already are upgraded.)

Since we have six or sever of these workstations in service and they have worked perfectly so far, please don't suggest that we go out and replace all of them. It's much easier to have a matched set than to go over budget trying to get a new batch of HP workstations....though it may come to that some day in the (hopefully) distant future.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

"D2B"  ... aka Dennis

[DBrunnenmeyer]

Sorry ... They are xw8400 workstations.

[DBrunnenmeyer]

Sorry again. One of my questions didn't make it in the posting: 

3. Are "proper" fans available from HP or another supplier—ones that supply the desired affirmation to the motherboard that they're OK?

[DGroves]

the hp 5 pin performance and stock 4 pin cpu fans can still be bought on ebay rather cheaply, same for the case/memory fans are normal 4 pin PWM fans with a HP OEM number 4710KL-04W-B56

all of the fans can also be sourced by using google and entering the fan model number, this will give you a very close match but not a exact match as the HP ones are tuned by HP for the workstations and are OEM only. regardless the retail close match ones will work but will have a slightly different fan curve which is why the oem model is preferred

https://www.amazon.com/Generic-4710KL-04W-B56-NT747-0-72A-4Wire/dp/B01N4NKWCK

https://www.google.com/search?q=4710KL-04W-B56&rlz=1C1SQJL_enUS909US909&oq=4710KL-04W-B56&aqs=chrome...

if your getting a press "F1" msg then the fans are either 3 pin instead of 4 for the case/memory or you have a high power cpu using the double tall cooler which uses a 5pin fan and you have installed a 4 pin fan that lacks the jumper wire from pin one to five

[SDH]

You indicate your need is for the fan over the memory.  Most HP fans have been carefully chosen to interact with the on-motherboard global fan control firmware.  The HP fans virtually always are PWM fans with the PWM wiring using the standard PWM order.  The fan plug ends HP uses may not be the standard type with 3 ridges built in (one each side, and 1 offset between.  Sometimes their plug ends have 5 or even more holes for special purposes such as adding a ground jumper from pin 1 to pin 5 in the case of "Performance" fans. 

It is best to put in a duplicate from HP, and you can see the HP part number usually on the fan label, on the side of the fan the air is blowing towards.  HP also often has the OEM source add a small alphanumeric subtype modifier to that label.  Thus, you may need to remove a fan to see that label clearly.  The little modifier code has to do with such things as the type of plug end present, unusual length of wiring, etc.  I have learned how to extract the plug end from a bad fan and shift it over to a new/good used fan if needed.

I can't recall the size of the xw8400 memory cooling fan.... that will be obvious to you.  You probably know that there is some fan speed control at one spot in the HP BIOS.... the default is that being set to its lowest.

Another thing to know is that HP may use the exact same fan with different HP part numbers in different workstations.  Thus it is sometimes of value to look at the OEM source codes also on the label and search for those too.

There are ways to add in a resistor in the +12VDC line for the PWM wiring to drop the RPMs some.  There have been a few fans HP used that were running too fast... I've used the Noctua LNA and ULNA 4-wire adapters to drop those speeds some.  As far as Noctua fans go they tend to run slow and are excellent in quality but when the HP PWM "braking" effect is added to them they tend to then run too slow.  HP has tended to design for use of fans rated to run quite fast, and then use the PWM braking to slow them down to what HP feels is needed.... they have lots of RPM headroom that way, and also install fans with excellent long-lived bearings.