Fan Controlling software and Setup

[R-TYPE]

Hi all, have been trying to read up on fan controllers and fan controlling software. I am building a water cooled system with one loop, 3 radiators, cooling a CPU block and two GPU card blocks. I am considering push pull on the radiators, therefore I could theoretically use up to 15 120mm fans in the setup - 6 on Radiator 1, 4 each on Radiators 2 and 3, 1 rear case fan.

I'd like to control each bank of fans on each radiator individually, ie control up to 4 fans on Radiator 1 separately to 4 fans on Radiator 2, for example. For each radiator set of fans these would need to be controlled at the same speed as one another (obviously, I assume).

I am going with 4-pin PWM fans. My motherboard is a z97x-FOC from gigabyte which at time of writing this email (no access to manual) has 2 3-pin fan heads and 2 4-pin fan heads, plus a CPU fan header (not used in a water cool setup?) plus one other header (cannot recall at the moment).

Would ideally like to control through software only, something like Speedfan

I have some fan splitter cables to allow more than two fans to plug into the two 4pin fan headers.

Can anyone who's done this before provide any tips, advice, tutorial or anecdote? Whilst I've found Speedfan tutorials, none of the ones I've found cover the above, and none of them talk about the actual setup of fans and cables in term of linking the fan heads to multiple sets of fans. What considerations do I need to give to powering these also? Direct from psu on molex?

Much appreciated!

 

[ErikN]

First, the 4-pin fan headers on motherboards that are not named CPU_FAN or CPU_OPT are in 99% of the cases NOT pwm headers, the 4th pin, which is usually the pwm signal outputs a constant 5 volts, which is telling any pwm fan attached there to always run at 100% speed.
Also, you are not going to be able to power 15 fans from the CPU_FAN header, there is not enough power output from the motherboard. There are hubs you can use, like this one:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-009-PT

But...
I also started out using only the motherboard fan headers but soon came to the conclusion that looking at cpu/gpu temps for fan control is quite useless in a custom WC loop. It is much better imo to attach a temp monitor to the loop and control the fan speeds from the fluid temperature.


If money is not an issue, get an aquacomputer aquaero 6. They are a quite pricey, but you can do everything with them. you can configure fan curves and whatnot either on the unit directly, or through software, once its saved you dont need the software running (but you can if you want to watch nice graphs and stuff).

 

[R-TYPE]

Thanks a lot ErikN. That Hub looks interesting.

Some splitter cables also have a molex power connection on them, I had presumed this was to get round the fact that a mobo fan header cannot power that many fans. Is that the case?

If I went with a hub, I presume that from one of the channels I would be connecting multiple fans, but all would run at same speed? Ie, they would not be individually addressable? Each channel would therefore drive a series of fans on one rad? Apologies am not sure how PWM works, never used it before.

I had thought on my mobo the 4-pin was stipulated as a PWM dan header, though might be wrong on this given what you said above.

Otherwise, there's this version of the product you mentioned:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=WC-011-AQ&groupid=701&catid=2331&subcat=189

...which doesn't require to be mounted in a drive bay (I don't need this function). What do you think of this?

 

[ErikN]

Thanks a lot ErikN. That Hub looks interesting.

Some splitter cables also have a molex power connection on them, I had presumed this was to get round the fact that a mobo fan header cannot power that many fans. Is that the case?

Correct

If I went with a hub, I presume that from one of the channels I would be connecting multiple fans, but all would run at same speed? Ie, they would not be individually addressable? Each channel would therefore drive a series of fans on one rad? Apologies am not sure how PWM works, never used it before.

Yeah thats how I do it, one channel per rad essentially.
And its not really a PWM thing, voltage control and PWM control achieve the same thing, which is controlling the speed of the fans. you an also voltage control a pwm fan (but not the other way around), though if a fan has a PWM header, thats the recommended way of doing it.

I had thought on my mobo the 4-pin was stipulated as a PWM dan header, though might be wrong on this given what you said above.

Ya, you could have real PWM headers there, but make sure they are not a "fake" PWM header

Otherwise, there's this version of the product you mentioned:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=WC-011-AQ&groupid=701&catid=2331&subcat=189

...which doesn't require to be mounted in a drive bay (I don't need this function). What do you think of this?

I think the aquareo 5 is voltage control only, or you are only able to PWM control one (of four) fan headers. The aquareo 6 have PWM optioon on all four fan headers.

 

[R-TYPE]

Yeah having dug a little deeper, aquaero 5 has 1 4pin PWM header, aquaero 6 has 4 4pin PWM headers. Aquaero 6 not available in LT form as far as I can see, however.

Also had a look at the water temp plugs from people like bitspower and XSPC, and these seem fairly easy to work with.

Assume I just use y-splitter cables to hook up the multiple fans from the fan header on the hub or fan controller card?

 

[ErikN]

Yeah,

I use a fan splitter board from Modmytools (unavailable here on ocuk), but that is essentially just a 1-4 4pin splitter.

Just make sure the fan speed signal (pin3, usually yellow or blue) is only connected to one of the fans, otherwise the speed signal will be useless. Most splitters marketed toward fan operation is usually already built like that though.