Does such a thing as this cable exist that anyone knows of. A 3 pin fan extension with a pass through for an RPM sensor, such as would allow me to control all of my fans from a fan controller but allow certain fans (rear, front, side maybe) to pass their RPM readings to the motherboard? Wife's new computer is being built in Enermax Fulmo Basic case, we're filling it with a total of 10 fans (2 side, 2 top, 3 front, 2 bottom, 1 rear) and the P8P67 Pro has only 3 case fan headers max. I had thought to add a fan controller with 4 ports and split each port into a zone front, side, top/rear, and bottom while allowing the CPU fans to be controlled by the motherboard, but I would still like to pass the RPM sensor feeds to the motherboard. Alternatively, I might just run the fans of the motherboard, but I feel as though running 4 fans off one motherboard port might be a bit much. I would run rear (1) and top (2) off the rear port, the front (3) off the front port, and the bottom (2) and side (2) off the power supply port. I also don't know if the power supply port is a controlled, variable port, which might make it moot.
A soldering iron, small prototype PCB and some 3 pin fan headers and sockets and it's easy to make that splitter. I've made lots of multiple fan headers over the years.
That's the idea. I just want to still have RPM reported to the motherboard. I've figured out a solution, I found a Y cable that is backwards here, quite by accident (I ordered it for another project thinking that it split 1 header to 2 fans). It's quite simple to remove the power pins from one of the two plugs. Just a shame it's not sleeved. I've been thinking on this. The case supports 3x 120mm front fans, but only with 1 5.25" drive (optical drive), leaving no room for a fan controller. It leaves me wondering, each fan is rated 300mA, I wonder how many I could run per header and be safe. If the power fan header is speed controlled, I could run side and bottom fans (4) off that, front (3) off the front case fan header, rear and top (3) off the rear header, and CPU (2) off CPU and still only be at 3.6A total. 1.2A off the power fan header, 900mA off front and rear, and 600mA off CPU. Eh... I just read the manual, looks like 1A max per header and the power fan is not controlled. So much for that idea... Guess I should scrap the idea of having 3x120mm front fans.
Even with Y adapters, you can report only 1 fan speed per 1 fan header. You can't mix multipler RPM reports cables from multiple fans in one header.
3 x front fans go on one mobo header which is speed controlled. Sometimes sys1. The others can go on CPU fan header. If you had a more energy efficient fan u could run up to 5 on 1 header. That's what I have for my case fans. 5 fans on 1 header.
I see, does anyone still make some PCI card fan controller that you could set by software? I remember there used to be a few like that. Something like that could be a way to go.
No soldering iron required. Just an extra 3-pin fan plug. All you need to do is pke a needle in to release the sensor pin form the plug and stick that into the spare in the same position. Then take the 2 pins to your controller and the 1-pin to the mb.
I mean there used to be cheap ones, not high end ones geared towards water set ups. What was it Theta I think? I believe there was some similar one also, but can't remember it.
