Do you use a fan controller?

X

xTrident

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 20, 2011
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Hopefully within a couple months I'll finally have the money saved to pull the trigger and get a water cooling kit. The good news about it being down the road a bit is I've been able to research a lot on what I should/shouldn't do, as well as check out the pictures of everyone's setup.

One thing I haven't seen much talked about is whether you guys use a fan controller for the fans on the rad or not? I've seen a mix of pictures with some using one and others not. Is there a general consensus of using or not using one? Personally I can say I'd rather let the PC decide how to run the fans.

Obvious... The other problem I have here is I simply don't know the process of hooking one up. Does the pump plug into the four-pin cpu fan connection? I guess I'm also curious as to what controls the speed of the pump when the cpu (in my case) will be under load and not?

I'm just looking for a little bit more information. I've watched a few how-to videos on youtube... None of which really covered the install process of how everything hooks up. I don't need a real long drawn out reply from anyone. Just a quick few notes.
 
Yeah, having a ton of ridiclious fans requires to use one. :D

Got a Lamptron Hummer and Fan-Atic for the Delta's and Nidec Ultra-Flo's, and a FC-9 for the smaller Sunon's myself.

I'd suggest any of the above, if not, one of the Sunbeam Rheobus controllers. These are much of the best controllers around.

As for the pump, some are PWM controlled while others have a switch on them. Plugging in the pump is as easy as... well, plugging the bare 4-pin's in. :D

You can get a HUMMER, plug it into this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/12-inch-4Pi...Fan_Heatsin_Brackets_Accs&hash=item43b186d907

Then take one end to the pump, and the other end to the board. Then you can run the pump at 7v or 5v, or monitor it from Everest.
 
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Depends on the pump, not all of them are variable.

I stick it in the cpu header mainly because the motherboard is set to shut down on CPU fan failure, so it has a kind of "safegaurd" if it fails. It's non variabel, but it makes no noise so I don't care. :D

But if you do that make sure you check the maximum Amps/Volts on your motherboard's fan header and check it against the pumps rating. If it goes above either you can either stick it on a fan controller with sufficient Amps, or go direct to molex.
 
I use my motherboard headers and fan splitters. Unless you absolutely need to control a pump, your fan headers are really all you need with Speedfan

This is assuming your mobo headers can supply a decent amount of amps/watts (mine does 1A per header)
 
Some Asus boards supply the most power per mobo header, some old Asus boards are good for 20-25W or something IIRC.

My Striker 2 Extreme can power a Delta blower that's at 3.3A. Not that I'd run it off the board.

The best thing about having a fan controller is the amount of power pulled to be reduced from the board so that the ATX connector works cooler. That is considering you have high speed fans, of course. With cheap $5 Rosewill fans you don't need no controller.
 
johnnydoe said:
Some Asus boards supply the most power per mobo header, some old Asus boards are good for 20-25W or something IIRC.

My Striker 2 Extreme can power a Delta blower that's at 3.3A or something. Not that I'd run it off the board.

The best thing about having a fan controller is the amount of power pulled to be reduced from the board so that the ATX connector works cooler. That is considering you have high speed fans, of course. With cheap $5 Rosewill fans you don't need no controller.
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you make good points

one thing i've noticed though is that the cheap fans are sometimes the ones that pull the most amperage

my swiftech helix 120's pull 0.16 amps whereas my AP-15's pull 0.083, almost half and yet push a fair amount more air (using the piece of paper test)

i'm able to run 6 AP-15's off a single header, and 4 Helix 120's off a second header.
 
What bearing is the Helix? Sleeve?

AP-15's are double ball bearing so yeah, that may be why.

Higher quality fans with lubricated bearings usually pull less power because the rotor revolutions easier on them.
 
johnnydoe said:
What bearing is the Helix? Sleeve?

AP-15's are double ball bearing so yeah, that may be why.

Higher quality fans with lubricated bearings usually pull less power because the rotor revolutions easier on them.
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I think swiftech calls them "Z-bearing" which I think are sleeve bearings
 
Probably. Might be a lubricated hack-job. Delta and Cooler Master somehow lubricate the rotor of their sleeve bearings on the low end, which are better than regular sleeve bearings but still not as good as ball bearings.
 
Thanks for the replies.

I think what I'll do if it works out this way, is use the motherboard cpu 4-pin fan header for the pump and a fan controller for the fans. I've done some reading in the forums here and I'm kind of hooked on the Corsair SP high performance fans. The general consensus seems to be that they're good fans.

I honestly don't know what kind of power my motherboard puts out of its fan headers. I'd have to check into that. I do have one or two of the fan headers with a 3-pin x2 splitter just to power my case fans via the motherboard. I'm also thinking on using the NZXT Sentry fan controller as well. It's gotten decent reviews on Newegg, and as long as it works I should be okay with it.

I don't plan on doing anything crazy with the whole setup. If the cpu runs any cooler with the water cooling I may try to bump the overclock just a little but more, but that's it. I'm also planning to run my GPU water cooled down the road. Maybe even with the 7970 considering the unbelievable amount of heat it dumps out. It really depends on how well water cooling the CPU goes first.
 
I used to use my Kaze Q12 controller but I hated constantly fiddling with the fan adjustments based on my temps, I just setup 3 profiles (360 rad, 240 rad, and exhaust) and have it start with windows. now whatever I'm doing, whether gaming or bitcoins or stability testing, speedfan automatically controls my fan speeds. i love not having to mess with them anymore.
 
I use a Fanatic from Lamptron. Great controller

Reality said:
you make good points

one thing i've noticed though is that the cheap fans are sometimes the ones that pull the most amperage

my swiftech helix 120's pull 0.16 amps whereas my AP-15's pull 0.083, almost half and yet push a fair amount more air (using the piece of paper test)

i'm able to run 6 AP-15's off a single header, and 4 Helix 120's off a second header.
Click to expand...

Um. No.

You're citing the spinning Amperage. Once any electric fan is spinning the power required to drive it drops massively...it is on spinup that all electric fans use their most power. AP15s like most fans their size (and RPM) require .3-.4A or ~4W on spinup. To run six off one header means you must have 2A fan headers.
 
The Fan-Atic is about as good as the best controller around but it can only run the fans at 7v or 5v, it doesn't have full zero to infinity RPM control.
 
I only used the power ratings on the fan. The headers are indeed 1A on the MVE, and I've yet to burn the header out yet. If this is true, I'll need to split these fans in half and use a third header
 
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