Question re Arctic PWM fans

Storrm · 1 Jan 2008 at 17:32

Hi all,

I'm about to upgrade my rig. I've got an all aluminium Coolermaster case which I love and won't replace it. It can house 2x80mm at the front, an 80mm blowhole and a 120mm rear exhaust. Unfortunetly my current cooling solution is pretty crap and I'd like to upgrade it to something more active.

I've been reading about the Arctic PWM fans and from what I'm able to understand, it looks as though if I get 5 of the PWM models (inc the CPU) then my mobo should be able to control the fan speeds automatically based on temps. Am I correct? If so, I'm thinking about getting an ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP, Q6600+Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro & a Corsair HX 520W PSU. Would this setup plus the addition of 3x80mm + 1x120mm PWM fans work ok? I don't really understand much about 3-wire vs 4-wire fans so any help or suggestions for a cool'n'quiet rig would be appreciated.

Matt.

YZFAndy · 1 Jan 2008 at 17:41

The first fan plugs into the cpu 4 pin head on main board then the other fans plug into one another in a chain. The board will have PWM control and should do what you want.

Storrm · 1 Jan 2008 at 20:31

Cheers Andy. Sounds like that's what I'll do then. Do you know if the fans come with long leads or are they purchased separately?

Kelt · 2 Jan 2008 at 15:56

Storrm said:
Hi all,

I'm about to upgrade my rig. I've got an all aluminium Coolermaster case which I love and won't replace it. It can house 2x80mm at the front, an 80mm blowhole and a 120mm rear exhaust. Unfortunetly my current cooling solution is pretty crap and I'd like to upgrade it to something more active.

I've been reading about the Arctic PWM fans and from what I'm able to understand, it looks as though if I get 5 of the PWM models (inc the CPU) then my mobo should be able to control the fan speeds automatically based on temps. Am I correct? If so, I'm thinking about getting an ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP, Q6600+Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro & a Corsair HX 520W PSU. Would this setup plus the addition of 3x80mm + 1x120mm PWM fans work ok? I don't really understand much about 3-wire vs 4-wire fans so any help or suggestions for a cool'n'quiet rig would be appreciated.

Matt.

Get the OCZ Vendetta instead, much better than the Freezer 7.

WJA96 · 2 Jan 2008 at 17:00

The cables are about 15" long, but the link bit is only about 3" long, so you do end up with a bit of a rats nest of cabling.

I use these almost exclusively now, and they work exceptionally well. They are very quiet at low RPM which is where they operate most of the time, but when they really spin up they move a huge amount of air and they are certainly not anything like silent.

Gigabyte motherboards usually have several 4-pin headers nowadays and I find they all work very well together.

Storrm · 19 Jan 2008 at 12:13

WJA96 said:
The cables are about 15" long, but the link bit is only about 3" long, so you do end up with a bit of a rats nest of cabling.

I use these almost exclusively now, and they work exceptionally well. They are very quiet at low RPM which is where they operate most of the time, but when they really spin up they move a huge amount of air and they are certainly not anything like silent.

Gigabyte motherboards usually have several 4-pin headers nowadays and I find they all work very well together.

So do u use the headers on the mobo or still daisy-chain them? My current board has 3 headers (1xCPU, 1xFront, 1xRear). I was thinking about running my two front 80mm's off a split cable from the front header and my two rear fans the same off the rear header, leaving the CPU on its own fan socket. Would the mobo headers provide enough power to drive two fans each? Where would I get the y-cables to split them??

WJA96 · 19 Jan 2008 at 15:50

Storrm said:
So do u use the headers on the mobo or still daisy-chain them? My current board has 3 headers (1xCPU, 1xFront, 1xRear). I was thinking about running my two front 80mm's off a split cable from the front header and my two rear fans the same off the rear header, leaving the CPU on its own fan socket. Would the mobo headers provide enough power to drive two fans each? Where would I get the y-cables to split them??

If I can, I link the fans together - so I have 3 daisychained off the CPU header for the PA120.2 radiator and two daisychained off the system 4-pin header for the front and rear case fans.

The daisychain is built in to the fan cable, you don't need to buy a y-splitter.