Morning all, I've decided I want to incorporate a fan controller into my new machine, which is pretty much the July premium player build. I've never dealt with them before, but assume I plug the PSU into the fan controller, and the fans power plugs into the fan controller too? Can anyone suggest a good controller? Cooler Master ATCS 840 XFX Black Edition P1-750B-NLG9 Asus P6X58D-E DDR3 Motherboard 2.8Ghz Intel Core i7 930 @ 4Ghz AK-CCX-4002HP Venom CPU Cooler 6Gb Corsair XMS3 DDR3 RAM XFX ATI Radeon HD 5870 Corsair F120 2 x Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB Sony AD-7260S-0B 24x DVD RW Asus Xonar DX Razer Lycosa Mirror Special Edition Gaming Keyboard Many thanks for any help.
With fan controllers there isn't really much between them, other then number of fans, so almost anything will do. And yeah, most will take a molex input from your PSU, and output to 3 or 4 3pin fan connectors.
I just got a NZXT in my Cosmos build, controls 5 fans with 5 temps and works great! Sometimes I think it runs the fans a bit low, and if you set the target temp lower it beeps to tell you it has reached it. Otherwise is GREAT!
Loads of extra wires, thats the only downside to them. Put one in my sons new build and with the case I chose for him its a nightmare to hide them all, already had the fan controller that I pulled from my daughters pc because it didnt play nice with her led fans (made them flash) other wise I would have just let the mbo take care of fan speeds.
I have this one which was easy to set up and looks great: Voila: You can also link multiple fans to each of the 4 dials on the controller using fan splitter cables (eg 2x front fans to one, 2x top, 2x rear, 3x radiator etc) and it has 4 temperature probes to put anywhere inside or out of your case. There's also another version with brushed aluminium instead of clear plastic:
I'd recommend Scythe too. Generally: reasonable price and do the job, while looking nice. I picked up the Scythe Kaze Server myself.
Another plus for Scythe. I have one of their cheap basic ones - 3.5" drive bay, four knobs, no temperature controls or displays. It works real nice, and included four 3-pin fan connection extension cords so all of the fans reached it neatly.
That's my one, nice but one time I found that at the levels I set it to sometimes my fans would judder instead of spinning, they needed a little extra juice before they'd fully start up. Also don't get this if you have people round that you know would be tempted to touch your fan controller, this baby does have an off posistion that WILL turn the fans off so I'd recommend not having your CPU fan attached.
My mates always do that, because it's 'funny'. They don't find it so funny when I'm hitting them with things...
If anyone even mentions my fan controller I shout "DON'T TOUCH IT!" They get it pretty much instantly. It's not even like it's funny in the slightest and people don't find it funny when they turn it low enough for the alarm to go off. It's certainly a loud alarm.
My Scythe Kaze doesn't go low enough to turn any of the fans off, but I guess every fan varies. I do have my CPU fan on it. I also have the auto-shutdown enabled in the BIOS if the cpu gets too hot.
I use an Aerocool Touch 1000, since my case has a door on the front I can't have big knobs sticking out of it or it wouldn't close
I have a NZXT Sentry 2. Its quite bling-ish, and I'd say is very good at auto regulating fanspeed, but harder than it should be to turn up or down individual fans because of the lack of physical knobs.
I've got the original dual-bay Sentry - love the big screen but HATE the thermal probe system. I hope and pray for a fan controller that takes its temperature information from the motherboard/GPU/HDD temperature sensors as appropriate.
Ditto, so many annoying wires floating around the case, plus its hard to get a good reading as the temp will vary depending where the probes are placed.
