Controlling Fan Speed

D

djfunz

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 2, 2007
Messages
161
Hello everyone,

I've finally decided to do something about my fan noise. I have a custom looped rig cooling my processor and my two GPUs in SLI. I have the following fans that really need to be turned down while performing idle tasks:


x3 120mm fans cooling my radiator up top
x1 140mm fan blowing air out the back
x1 140mm fan blowing air up from the bottom where the PSU is
x1 140mm fan blowing air where the HDD bays are

So x6 fans in total and as you can imagine, they are all blowing at 100% and are pretty noisy.

I have the Asus P9X79 Deluxe board and because I really pride my rig for having very nice cable management, I've opted to use x2 4-Pin Molex to 4 x 3-Pin Fan Connector Cables that are routed through grommets keeping everything nice and hidden. As a result, none of them are connected to the MB PWM fan connectors. Six cables running to the board would be a mess.

I've heard that the Asus's Fan Xpert+ is a nice option, but I'm running Windows 10 x64 so that won't work. Is there a fan hub that anyone can recommend where I can connect all six fans to and connect to one PWM fan connector on the MB? I don't need them to be individually adjustable. Just something where all six adjust when a certain temperature is reached.
 
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I've been playing with the NZXT Grid+ V2. It's alright.

Speedfan is what you want. It's complicated but worth it if you have the time.
 
Thanks for the tips guys. I'm going to go with the Swiftech splitter and Speedfan. Based on reviews, it seems like the software is kinda buggy on the NZXT Grid+ V2 and the fans are difficult to remove.


Edit:

It appears that the GELID 120mm and 140mm Gamer Fans I purchased a few years ago aren't PWM fans. They have to be manually adjusted using a voltage regulator. Guess I'll be hunting for new fans as well.
 
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djfunz said:
Thanks for the tips guys. I'm going to go with the Swiftech splitter and Speedfan. Based on reviews, it seems like the software is kinda buggy on the NZXT Grid+ V2 and the fans are difficult to remove.


Edit:

It appears that the GELID 120mm and 140mm Gamer Fans I purchased a few years ago aren't PWM fans. They have to be manually adjusted using a voltage regulator. Guess I'll be hunting for new fans as well.
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manually adjust how, like a knob, switch or resistors? if they are three pin they will still work.
 
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Thank you for bringing this to my attention pendragon. As a result, I decided to do some more research regarding fan pins and their function. I came across this very helpful article if people are curious in the future.

Fan speed control how-to, 2-pin vs.3-pin vs. 4-pin

What I understood is the following:

Since my 3 pin fan header doesn't have a 4th pin (for PWM purposes), I'm relying on the 2nd pin for PWM by modulating the DC supply voltage with a PWM signal so that the supply to the fan is not constant DC, but a DC voltage that turns on and off rapidly with varying "% On Time". I'm assuming that Speedfan takes care of this. So, in order for me to use the Swiftech cable splitter, I'm going to have to connect it to the CPU fan header, and change my settings for the header in BIOS to "Voltage Control Mode". Am I missing anything here?
 
nope sounds right. here's a good vid on speedfan if you haven't used it bofore:


you can also set it up so that fans are controlled by the temp of either the cpu or gpu loads. that way no matter what you're doing, running either cpu or gpu intensive programs or games, the fans will ramp up. set "method" to "MAX" and it will adjust based on which ever is hotter. like this:
speedfan.png
 
I'm running Windows 10 and Fan Xpert 2 (for my Z77 board) works fine. It's not supposed to, but I installed in WIndows 7 compatibility mode without any issues. It starts on boot-up automatically and spins the fans up and down according to custom curves. Works great, machine is silent at idle as all fans except one power off.
 
If you're looking for a relatively simple controller that will run up to six 3-pin fans controlled by a single pwm line from the MB, check out the Sunbeam Rheosmart. It's not very fancy, but it does pretty much what you were looking for in the OP for ~$30. It "converts" a PWM control line to voltage control for 3-pin fans. I've used it for a few years now and am satisfied with it.

Single PWM signal from board controls all 6 fans in auto or you can individually switch each fan into manual control mode. You feed power to it with a dedicated 4-pin molex so there is no load on your MB fan headers.
 
Unfortunately it's not working. I connected the cable splitter to the CPU_FAN header and enabled CPU Q-Fan Control in BIOS. I followed the video trying all of the available settings and the speeds do not change. Any ideas? Do I need a specific fan connected to the red port on splitter? Am I missing a setting in BIOS? On the drop-down menu in speedfan, there's no software controlled option as depicted in the video.

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the qfan is the bios fan control(bios speedfan) I think and you should have it set to voltage/pwm, I think. what options does it have there?
the red connector(ch1) is for sending info the the mobo and you need one fan there for it to detect rmp. it looks like the fans are connected fine.
I think its just that bios setting that you will need to play with.
 
I've tried all the Q-Fan Control settings and there's no 'Voltage', 'PWM', or 'DC' settings to choose from. Just 'Enabled' and 'Disabled'. I've tried changing the fan profile to "Silent' and 'Manual' with no change to the speeds or the availability of a 'Software Controlled' option in Speedfan.
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what happens when you disable it? they may go full blast but you might be able to adjust it after. do any of the headers have any other options? it doesn't really matter what head you have them connected to. oh, is your bios up to date?

edit: try manual heck just try them all. but...
just did a quick google and others using are asus aisuite to get past the bios control. speedfan might not like that board. keep playing with it.
 
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My initial configuration had it disabled. I've done a couple of searches and they align with what you found; Speedfan's possible incompatibility with this particular board. When doing a search of over 900 boards on Speedfan's database, the P9X79 was not there. Kind of telling I suppose. AI Suite is not going to be compatible with Windows 10. I think at this point, the amount of time invested has rendered this experiment a failure. I've ordered the NZXT Grid+ V2 and it should arrive on Sunday. Let's hope their software has better compatibility than Speedfan.
 
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i'd try aisuite anyways. one of the post I found said to get version 2.16 from the pro version of your boards support page. it might work fine under w10...
did you try all the headers and different settings? I had to play with mine, change headers and disconnect fans to determine what was what. took a couple hours of switching shit around but in the end was worth it.
 
I received the NZXT Grid+ V2 and proceeded to connect everything, and install CAM. After fumbling around the GUI for a few minutes, it appeared that CAM detected only 2 of the 5 fans. This was odd considering that all 5 fans were spinning. Once I started adjusting the voltage on each port, some fans lowered their speed and some didn't. I started switching ports completely at random and they started slowing down. Even though all the ports were set to 20%, some were still spinning at 100%. I kept playing port musical chairs and eventually was able to get all 5 fans at 20%.

I did a hard reset (switched PSU power switch off) while I drained and filled my loop for another project and had to repeat the whole fan process again. Port musical chairs and struggling to find the right combination to make all fans spins at 20%. Kind of a pain to be honest, but it's the best solution I have at the moment. CAM is definitely buggy as some have said, but at least it seems to be working at the moment.
 
djfunz said:
I received the NZXT Grid+ V2 and proceeded to connect everything, and install CAM. After fumbling around the GUI for a few minutes, it appeared that CAM detected only 2 of the 5 fans. This was odd considering that all 5 fans were spinning. Once I started adjusting the voltage on each port, some fans lowered their speed and some didn't. I started switching ports completely at random and they started slowing down. Even though all the ports were set to 20%, some were still spinning at 100%. I kept playing port musical chairs and eventually was able to get all 5 fans at 20%.

I did a hard reset (switched PSU power switch off) while I drained and filled my loop for another project and had to repeat the whole fan process again. Port musical chairs and struggling to find the right combination to make all fans spins at 20%. Kind of a pain to be honest, but it's the best solution I have at the moment. CAM is definitely buggy as some have said, but at least it seems to be working at the moment.
Click to expand...

Basically 4-pin fans always run at 12V and fan speed is controlled by a signal. 3-pin fans rely on voltage to adjust speed.

In the bios QFAN is akin to 4-Pin mode. When you turn it off it switches to 3-Pin mode. For Speedfan you need to turn QFAN off on my ASUS motherboard.

CAM is alright like I said. One thing I'd do is turn on Hysteresis in the options menu. This is new and should keep the fans from going up and down and up and up and down and up and down every second. Basically it smooths out an average over the last so many seconds. What I ended up doing since Hysteresis was missing for a long time is making a custom profile that monitors the GPU. Fans are all set to 50% below 40C and some (Front Intake and Video Card Radiator) ramp up to 75% for 40C+. This keeps things quiet.

CAM is a stupidly expensive solution for a simple problem. It also doesn't work as great as I'd like it to. But until I have the time to really get Speedfan dialed in it works. One thing that I do like about CAM is that it's not powered by the motherboard. For some fan headers you don't want more than 1 or 2 fans depending on the amperage they pull. My fans pull a lot of amperage so I can't put more than 1 fan per header and I have way more fans than that.

Solutions like the Swiftech Splitter are powered but not actively controlled so they won't work for what we're doing unless you were to use multiples and by then you might as while get a CAM V2+.

Glad your issue is on the way to being sorted out djfunz!
 
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