COOLERMASTER CM690 ADVANCE FAN CONTROL question

Jakus · 12 Feb 2011 at 12:11

Front fan on the advance is I believe a 140mm with a switchable blue led.
I have powered the fan from the motherboard header but do not have "Fan speed control".

Now, the fan has a 3 wire clear cable to the 3 pin fan header, a black and red goes up to the LED switch.

I've not buzzed it through but I would have thought the black and red simply link to power the LED ? (so irrelevant to speed control)

I don't understand why I can not slow the fan down ? Anyone played with these fans ?

I'm being totally lazy as by the time I've typed this I could have pulled the PC apart and tested the fan on the bench...but I just painstakingly put the thing together

cjkennedy · 12 Feb 2011 at 13:33

if the clear cable is hooked up to the mobo then you should be able to control the speed from your bios or whatever as the cable has the 3rd pin for speed monitoring and all.

if its not working then thats pretty weird, you could solder a resistor on

but yeah you are right that black and red wire just goes to the switch to turn the leds off and on

Kosmiche · 12 Feb 2011 at 14:28

Shot in the dark but have you tried it with speedfan? Its a simple fan speed tool and temperature sensor.

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

Jakus · 12 Feb 2011 at 14:33

cjkennedy said:
if the clear cable is hooked up to the mobo then you should be able to control the speed from your bios or whatever as the cable has the 3rd pin for speed monitoring and all.

if its not working then thats pretty weird, you could solder a resistor on

but yeah you are right that black and red wire just goes to the switch to turn the leds off and on

Thanks, yes so it's basically as I thought, do we know for sure the fans with led's are controllable ? ..I can't really see the LED stopping anything except if You go too low voltage wise they may not illuminate

Jakus · 12 Feb 2011 at 14:39

Eames said:
Shot in the dark but have you tried it with speedfan? Its a simple fan speed tool and temperature sensor.

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

Mobo bios picks up and adjusts 2 other coolermaster case fans and 140mm cpu fan ok, It senses front case fan speed but can not slow it down.
speedfan must work through the bios so I don't imagine it will help.

basic question is really are led fans voltage controllable ?

cjkennedy · 12 Feb 2011 at 15:21

Yeah you shouldnt have any problems adjusting the voltage, the leds will likely dim as the voltage drops

Ravenger · 12 Feb 2011 at 15:35

I added a cheap fan controller to my CM690 II Advanced instead of mucking about with speedfan or bios fan control settings. The case is almost silent now, and still keeps everything nice and cool. Dialling down the fan with the LED does dim the LED somewhat.

Jakus · 12 Feb 2011 at 15:55

cjkennedy said:
Yeah you shouldnt have any problems adjusting the voltage, the leds will likely dim as the voltage drops

Cheers, Pal as I figured

I'll let You know what the problem was when i sort it.

Jakus · 12 Feb 2011 at 16:08

Ravenger said:
I added a cheap fan controller to my CM690 II Advanced instead of mucking about with speedfan or bios fan control settings. The case is almost silent now, and still keeps everything nice and cool. Dialling down the fan with the LED does dim the LED somewhat.

For My PC's I have always used Lian-li Ali cases, but I built a high end system for a customer with the "lite" version and besides the ATI 4950 it was pretty dam quiet, and besides the quick release idea for DVD and fiddly harddrive grommets it impressed me as a good case.
The Advance has larger front fan etc.. which maybe is not so quiet. Really the thing is quiet but You are more critical of Your own kit

cjkennedy · 12 Feb 2011 at 16:20

i have the advanced and i find it very quiet, larger fans are usually able to push more cfm with less noise because they can spin slower, but yeah its an awesome case for the money

Jakus · 12 Feb 2011 at 18:19

LOL....

Found this, not My board but prompted Me to RTFM..
If you want to control CHA_FAN1 speed, the chassis fan must be 4-pin chassis fan.
Please kindly connect 4-pin chassis fan to CHA_FAN1 to try.

Thanks!

Have a nice day
ASRock TSD

See in all My excitement I plugged it (3pin) into a 4 pin PWM, I don't really see why the 4 pin sockets can't have voltage and pwm control, it's only modulating the 12v line, suppose the fan needs a constant 12v also .

Out of interest to others the 140mm fans are not as smooth and quiet as the 120's
Looks like I need to find a nice 140mm PWM for the front as it needs to be as slow as possible to limit the amount of dust intake !
Bit of a shame really as the motherboard can auto control the front fan but lowest target temp is 45C and under load only the cpu just about gets to that so I don't think it would have worked as I wanted anyway !
Right , plan B