Best fan controller

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foxnews

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 9, 2006
Messages
378
I bought the Vantec VANTEC NXP-301 to quiet 6 fans. it turned out to be a piece of crap. sometime all the fans ran at full speed randomly. sometime all the fans did not run at all, which is scary.

well, I am searching for another fan controller. Here are the two choices:
1- VANTEC NXP-205-BK

2. ZALMAN ZM-MFC1

anyone got experience with these controllers, which would be the better choice? or any other controller? I lost my trust in Vantec but the one above got alot of reivews from newegg.
 
I've had great success with the Vantec NXP-205 ... used it to control fans in my old super-tower Antec 1080AMG beasty.

Recommended.
 
JaYp146 said:
I've had great success with the Vantec NXP-205 ... used it to control fans in my old super-tower Antec 1080AMG beasty.

Recommended.
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how long have you been using it? does it act weird like those issue I described on the first post?
 
hybrid.09 said:
I've had the Vantec, nice.

Read reviews, Vantec is cheaper too.
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like I mentioned above I got the Vantec 305 because I prefer 5" bay. It failed and lost my trust in Vantec. is yours reliable?
 
I've had the Vantec for 2 years now and it's worked without a hitch.
 
i've had the coolermaster aerogate 3 running for about a year and no probs the only thing is their kinda hard to find now but if you do they are worth a look
 
Just go with the nice and simple Sunbeam one (has been rebranded many different times). It is the one that just has 4 knobs with LED's next to them. Works perfectly and is less than 10$, cant be beat.
 
I used to have the Zalman until I reworked my fans to be automatically controlled. It was an excellent controller, the only thing I didn't like about it was the leds were REALLY bright and the faceplate didn't really go with my case.
 
Erasmus354 said:
Just go with the nice and simple Sunbeam one (has been rebranded many different times). It is the one that just has 4 knobs with LED's next to them. Works perfectly and is less than 10$, cant be beat.
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the problem with the Sunbeam is that you can turn fans off by accident. it is kind of dangerous. the Zalman got the min 6v and it is safer. it is guarantee that your fans always run.
 
scrawnypaleguy said:
I used to have the Zalman until I reworked my fans to be automatically controlled.
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automatically controlled? by temp? what controller is that
 
I've been running the vantec for a couple months. My only complaint is that I wish the voltage would go lower. I would have gotten a sunbeam, but I didn't have any space in a 5.25" at the time.

That said, it's been running great...looks great. The leds are not that bright, which is good. If you sleep with your computer in your room (I do), it might bother you (does me), but if you're creative (I am) you can find a way to mask the light...I usually hang a shirt in front of it from the top of my case. No erratic behavior, and it does quiet down the 3 fans I have on there (all 120 mm, 2 case, 1 cpu). Don't expect silence.
 
I'm buying one of these two soon:
Scythe Kama Meter:
sckm-300led-geen.jpg

sckm-1000-400.jpg


Scythe IGuard:
ig300s.jpg

ig300whbk.jpg


I don't believe that either of them goes below 6.5 volts though.
 
foxnews said:
the problem with the Sunbeam is that you can turn fans off by accident. it is kind of dangerous. the Zalman got the min 6v and it is safer. it is guarantee that your fans always run.
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You can drive into oncoming traffic by accident as well, but I guess that is besides the point :)

Just got the Sunbeam and so far pretty happy with it. Have it running straight for the last 20 hours leak checking (I made changes) and so far it seems very solid. It's rated as 20watts per channel and I am making use of that limit. I have 3 fans all hooked in parallel on one channel and 2 fans per channel on the other three, so 9 fans all on the one fan controller (channel 1 has 3 fans, channel 2-4 has 2 fans each). Each knob has a bulb besides it. At ~ 0-7 volts, the bulb glows red. At ~7-12 volts it glows blue. You can turn a channel completely off. Some fan controllers you cannot do this. Some fans only start up at a certain voltage. Think the ones I have don't actaully start spinning until I get to around 4-5 volts, after it starts spinning, I can even take the voltage back down a little..like maybe ~3-4v. Think if I go below 3, the fans stops spinning. Some of the same fans I have hooked up on the same channel don't all spin up at the same time...this is not the fan controller...thats just variance in the fan itself. Anyway, if the light is glowing blue, the fans are diffinently spinning, ..at least with my fans. Not sure if there are any fans out there that won't start spinning at 7 volts.


Running these Yate loon 70CFM fans. Rated at 33db at 12volts. You can turn the fan controller till it lights up blue, then turn it back down till it just turns red...if you were wanting to run it below 7volts, but honestly, these fans are quite even above 7volts and at 12volts it puts out plenty of air flow and is still pretty quite.
 
Erasmus354 said:
Just go with the nice and simple Sunbeam one (has been rebranded many different times). It is the one that just has 4 knobs with LED's next to them. Works perfectly and is less than 10$, cant be beat.
Click to expand...

I had the Vantec 305 for $12 and it is a piece of crap. I thought I have to spend more for a good quality controller.

is this Sunbeam reliable or has good quality?

thanks
 
the Zalman has ony 7W max per channel. the Sunbeam has 20W max per channel.
that is a big difference. is the Sunbeam overrated? anyone tested this 20W rating for a period of usage?
 
Is this the SunBeam you guys talking about?
 
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foxnews said:
Is this the SunBeam you guys talking about?
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Yes that is the sunbeam controller. You can find it for around that same price at a number of online dealers. If I remember I got mine at www.jab-tech.net

It is a very good fan controller, nice quality. The reason why it is good is because it is very simple. It is just a rheobus, no fancy microcontrollers or anything. Just simple direct control of the voltage going to the fans. It also has much more wattage per channel (as mentioned earlier) than almost any other fan controller out there.
 
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scrawnypaleguy said:
Dude where can you find those Scythe controllers? Those look awesome!
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The Kama meter can be obtained from one place in Oregon. The IGuard has to be shipped from Japan. Kama Meter is $38 and I've read a German sight that says voltage only goes to 6.5. I dug hard to find reviews on the IGuard (only from Japan), and found nothing of reviews, I did find 1 spec that seemed to indicate voltage was 7.3-12.8 on that one. IGuard is about $35 plus overseas shipping. I'm undecided on which to get. the Kama meter is less than 6 months old while the IGuard is just over a year old.
 
Erasmus354 said:
Yes that is the sunbeam controller. You can find it for around that same price at a number of online dealers. If I remember I got mine at www.jab-tech.net

It is a very good fan controller, nice quality. The reason why it is good is because it is very simple. It is just a rheobus, no fancy microcontrollers or anything. Just simple direct control of the voltage going to the fans. It also has much more wattage per channel (as mentioned earlier) than almost any other fan controller out there.
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I can still use the RPM sensor with this controller, connecting to the Motherboard?
 
If you want the best fan controller, the only real option is the T-Balancer bigNG. It provides both PWM & Analog control, lots of monitoring, good software with plugin support for popular displays, shutdown features, etc. You can't go wrong with it!
 
foxnews said:
the Zalman has ony 7W max per channel. the Sunbeam has 20W max per channel.
that is a big difference. is the Sunbeam overrated? anyone tested this 20W rating for a period of usage?
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7w...20w..depends what you wanted out of it. My D12SL-12 draws about .3A, so at 12 volts it burns about 3.6watts. A 7w per channel controller can deal with that , but if you were to hook up two of those fans in parallel then hook it into the controller, you'd be kinda close to possibly burning up your fan controller. Something like this bigg ass fan and you'd fry just about every fan controller out there. 12v, 2.25a :eek:

I thought about putting my water pumps on the fan controller, since they are rated as 18watts and the fan controller can take as much as 20watts (probably more if you cool it better), but some people actually took readings and found the pump is anywhere from 18w to 22w.

The Sunbeam I have comes with little heatsinks on em, many controllers do not. Some people who had fan controllers burn out on them even though they ran it at the rated wattage probably had the controllers mounted with no air-flow and after some time and dust collection, they overheated. Luckily, I have a fan blowing on all my drive area for other reasons anyway.
 
Erasmus354 said:
The reason why it is good is because it is very simple. It is just a rheobus, no fancy microcontrollers or anything. Just simple direct control of the voltage going to the fans.
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Actually, this isn't entirely correct... Please refer to my post in the OC Forums (below--to be verified with an O-Scope later this month).

Petra said:
Hey everyone!

After spending this morning and some time on Saturday playing around with numerous Sanyo Denki 109R1212H1011 fans, a Sunbeam Rheobus, a DMM, and a bunch of resistors, I figured that I should share what I observed as it doesn't seem to be readily available information.

First, the Sunbeam Rheobus... I'll admit, it's an excellent little fan controller (heck, I use one myself on my main rig) but it does tend to have problems with some fans when used within certain ranges (it varies depending on the fan). When used within these ranges, a fan will usually emit a knocking or clicking noise. I'm fairly certain that the knocking is the result of the PWM (kinda--I'll explain that in a moment) signal from the Rheobus messing with the fan's timing circuitry. After all, these are brushless fans which rely on their onboard timing circuitry to handle all of the pole-switching for the electric motor (rather than relying on brushes and a split-ring communicator). My hypothesis is that the signal from the fan controller causes the fan's timing circuits to incorrectly pole-switch, thus, causing the fan to knock at a somewhat steady rate.

Okay, so it is PWM or not? Well, yes (and no). There are two ICs in the middle of the Rheobus's PCB... The two ICs are Texas Instruments model # LM324N quad op-amps. From the looks of the PCB layout, they're combining the op-amps in each of the circuits with capacitors and resistors to, effectively, turn them into oscillators. These, in turn, take the functional place of standard timing ICs (like the ones which were used in this guide to building your own PWM fan controller that Skeith posted)...and the only reason for any kind of timing circuit to even exist within this fan controller would be to allow for PWM. Though, in all technicality, it's not really PWM because the oscillators generate a sine-wave rather than a square wave; however, the end result is basically the same after it runs through the rest of the circuit.

So, yes, on to the fans... When connected to the Sunbeam Rheobus, the starting voltage for the Sanyo Denki 109R1212H1011 fans is right around 5v* or so and, once started, they will run down to about 3.8v* or so. I found that from approximately 4.1-4.2v* and below, the fans start knocking. This knocking takes a little bit of time to even out and become more regular; however, it is very easy to notice when you have two of them running and they begin to knock in and out of phase with each other (especially when running off the same controller channel). Anything above that and they seem to work just fine--which is likely why MVC didn't notice any knocking at 4.59v*.

However, when using standard resistors in series, the fans do not develop the knock that the Rheobus seems to induce. When started by hand, they will run down to about 3.3v before they begin making substantially more bearing/stator noise and they begin to screech/squeal. It took about 142 ohms of resistance for the fans to reach this point of increased noise (this was found by using several 33 ohm and 10 ohm resistors in series, slowly increasing the resistance from 33 ohms to 142 ohms). Now, if I happened to have a 100 ohm potentiometer sitting around, I could provide more information (as it would make finding starting voltage and such less tedious, assuming that it differs at all from the starting voltage observed with the Rheobus)...but I don't.

From this testing, it's pretty safe to assume that this is normal behavior for these Sanyo Denki fans (though, I'm still going to take a look at/test Brando's fans as soon as they come back and compare them with a few Sanyo Denki fans that we received from each of our three sources to make sure that his aren't defective). Interestingly, it doesn't seem that the Rheobus causes the S-Flex SFF21F fans to knock at all through their entire operational range.

Anyway, I figured that I'd share what I found just because someone might find the above information useful at some point.

Enjoy

*Quick note on voltages when using a PWM fan controller, for those who don't already know... Adjusting the fan controller does not change the actual voltage being applied to the fan, it only changes the full power "pulsing" that's being sent to the fan. When measured, this pulsing results in an apparent voltage as, generally speaking, multimeters don't refresh fast enough to show you what's actually going on--that would require an oscilloscope.

**Extra note: If anyone happens to find anything wrong with the above information, then please send me a PM so I can look into it and make corrections. Thanks!
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FYI, in case anyone else is searching for a Kama-meter, I'd like it to be known that putting two 120mm LED fans on any single channel on that fan controller will fry it. It's a real shame that such a nice controller can't even handle two fans per channel.
 
Nicepants42 said:
FYI, in case anyone else is searching for a Kama-meter, I'd like it to be known that putting two 120mm LED fans on any single channel on that fan controller will fry it. It's a real shame that such a nice controller can't even handle two fans per channel.
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Which fans?

This is SUCH a cool bay device. I MUST have it.
 
Nicepants42 said:
FYI, in case anyone else is searching for a Kama-meter, I'd like it to be known that putting two 120mm LED fans on any single channel on that fan controller will fry it. It's a real shame that such a nice controller can't even handle two fans per channel.
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Mine fried too, but I shouldn't have put denki's on them. They need to use better transistors instead of those lame T092 transistors and place T220 on each channel. That's the problem. Cheap manufacturing. I've now got the Scythe Iguard, Again, it has cheap t-092's on it, but I completely switched the fans now from denki's to Yate loons which pull much less.

I found It's ok if you run these fan controllers wide open and all fans at full blast. The burning up of the transistors occurs when you restrict the throttle and those parts then start getting real hot.
 
Arcygenical said:
Which fans?

This is SUCH a cool bay device. I MUST have it.
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I had two of these on each of two channels, two 92mm fans on the third channel, and one Rosewill 120mm + one 80mm LED fan on the last channel.

I agree that the device is very good aesthetically, and I wish that there was some way I could use it, but failing at the most fundamental level of controlling fans is a huge deal breaker. It doesn't look so cool when it won't power up.

What I don't get is that it's so versatile, and it seems like it'd be lauded by enthusiasts all over because it can literally have a place in every case - but then it dies when you try to control more than 4 fans. The wasted potential here totally blows my mind.

Anyone know if it's possible to desolder / resolder new transistors in order to allow this unit to handle ~20W per channel? If the thing's already fried, would replacing these allow it to operate again? I'd perform the replacement if I knew how - the aesthetics are that good.
 
Nicepants42 said:
I had two of these on each of two channels, two 92mm fans on the third channel, and one Rosewill 120mm + one 80mm LED fan on the last channel.

I agree that the device is very good aesthetically, and I wish that there was some way I could use it, but failing at the most fundamental level of controlling fans is a huge deal breaker. It doesn't look so cool when it won't power up.

What I don't get is that it's so versatile, and it seems like it'd be lauded by enthusiasts all over because it can literally have a place in every case - but then it dies when you try to control more than 4 fans. The wasted potential here totally blows my mind.

Anyone know if it's possible to desolder / resolder new transistors in order to allow this unit to handle ~20W per channel? If the thing's already fried, would replacing these allow it to operate again? I'd perform the replacement if I knew how - the aesthetics are that good.
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Looks as if it can't even handle .4amps/channel. That should be roughly 5watts/channel.

Yes, you can replace the blown transistors, IIRC there were mosfets on that Kama Meter, I think they were in the little retangular things encased in plastic. Those would be either mosfets or transistors with casing type TO-220. You would have to look up the part code, usually the middle or top line and google it, find the datasheet and what the continuous current is, the base to emitter voltage and base to collector voltage (it's worded slightly different of to-220's), and thermal dissapation in watts and match them as closely as you can through a place like Mouser.com. You would have to make sure that you got the order of the 3 legs on the transistor the same (ie, e,c,b = emitter, collector, base) and match that order to the new part.

I did this and it worked with 2 different parts recently. Now my Superflower/akasa fan controller is running fine. I can tell you that those 220 transistors will run around 60-105c when they are running the channel at the low fan output setting. So you want something that will handle at least above that. As far as getting more watts per channel you would probably need to change to a mosfet. I asked my brother about this and he basically said if your specs arn't exactly the same as the original burnt parts than you would get different curves on voltages, drop-off would be different, etc. I have no idea how this would affect the fan output. But I can say that my Superflow/akasa model orginally had a 220 transistor rated for 40a continuous/40v/30v and I replaced it with a 48a continuous 30v/16v and its made a perfect substitue for that blown channel.

Personally, I hated the way I had to look direcly in front of the kama meter to read it. Not viewable past 45 degrees from straight on. I liked the VFD on the Iguard of which my girlfriend will be bringing me another when she comes from Japan in 2 weeks. I decided not to take any risks this time and bouth new Yate loons rated for a maxiumum of .3a, 3watts each to be put on each channel as opposed to the Sanyo Denki's that were blowing out my fan controllers and were rated .52 amps and 6.25 watts.

The ironic thing is that the cheapest fan controller I used turned out to be the most reliable and even Sanyo denki's could not blow it out and had the largest window of rpm choices, but the damn thing is 'F'ugly. > http://www.svc.com/ald-v03-us.html
 
Well, I've got a Sunbeam rheobus on the way that'll take 20W per channel, and I figure that'll tide me over until I can either fix the Kama Meter or something better comes along.

I might start harassing you for circuitry calculations though, depending on the response I get from Performance-PCs and/or Scythe-USA. Scythe's tech support is, so far, utter crap.
 
I have 2 of the Vantec 205's.

I Love them. There are very good. I have had them for 2 years. Never had one problem with them. Each one is controlling 6 fans.

They are 18W per channel with heatsinks., and unless you have tornado, you can put 2-3 fans on each pot. I have 2 fans on each pot(3), in both of my systems.

THey are controlling 5 Scythe F S-flexes 120's and the fan on the zalman 9700.

They have controlled Yate loons, cre airs, adda's, logysis, and vantec fans over the 2 years.

Great controller.
 
well right now im using my MB to control my fans i just have 2 120mm 1 Cpu 110mm and 1 blower 120mm fan do i really need a fan controller?
 
Does anyone know of any other good, black, fan controllers? Most of the ones I've seen aren't black. 3 1/2 bay ones would be best!
 
ive been using the Vantec 205 for a couple days now. and quite frankly im a bit disappointed. mainly it's not getting my fans as quite as id hoped!

with speedfan im able to slow my two antec blue led 120mm, and zalman 9700led to barely audible level (800rpm for the antecs, and 1200rpm for the zalman). but with the Vantec 205, it's noticeably louder, although i havent had a chance to check the rpm difference. and for some reason, i cant seem to slow the scythe s-flex 120mm down much at all using the vantec 205. :(

but i'll still say the vantec 205 does look pretty. matches my TT Armor nicely..
 
its only a 7v-12v change... you needed a 5v-12v change to get down to the quiet you want with that tornado...

I have it on my s-flexes, and it changes them great.. i notice a large difference from low to high, but i have the f-flexes.... the 63 CFM ones..... i would imagine the less CFM fan, the less you will notice the change with the 205.
 
Somebody mentioned the T-Balancer bigNG earlier. If you REALLY want to control your fans get this controller. It's software based and has no pretty lights but can handle more than any other controller on the market. It will run a 12v pump with no problem. I run three 120mm .32a fans on one channel without issue.

It's pricey but it's the best fan controller I've ever used.
 
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