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3 pin radiator fan management advice

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niceguyjin

Registered
Joined
Apr 23, 2012
Location
Tokyo
So I've got a new water cooling kit going in right now, and I'm stuck on how I should manage the fans on the rad. It's a 240mm radiator, and I have 4 3pin fans I want to put on it. There are 2 or 3 other 3pin fans going into the case also.

Currently I have an ASRock P67 Extreme4 motherboard, which I've found through trial and error on my old air-cooling setup, to only effectively control 1x3pin fan either through AXTU (windows based BIOS contol software) or Speed Fan. (Other 3 pin fans were basically kept on 100%)

So I either use Y splitters for 4 fans on my rad from the 1 good mobo header (probably not a good idea?), or get a fan controller?

If a fan controller, I'd prefer something with a decent automatic control which would keep the fans quiet unless hot. I know the Auquero 5 is popular, but I can't justify dropping 16000yen ($200) on that. I looked at the Sunbeam Rheosmart 3 or 6, but it is never available and there are a lot of unhappy customers on newegg et al.

The Lamptron Touch looks OK (still expensive), or the Nesteq MaxZero would be ideal on price if unknown on real quality.

The Nesteq has 4 channels with attached Y spliiters to up to 8 fans and is rated at 4.8W per channel. Would I be OK attaching 2 1500 RPM fans to each channel if I'm planning to keep them at about 30-50% most of the time?

Also, where to people put heat sensors for managing radiator fans for a CPU loop? I guess most have 4pin PWM fans on the mobo? But if not?

Many thanks!
 
Auto control, hmm. You have 3 pin voltage controlled fans or PWM 4 pin fans?

Agreed on the Aquero, it's silly expensive.

4.8 watts isn't much at all. Fans show the nominal wattage/current, startup current can be double + more.

Reality check. Do you 'need' auto fan control? Is it a remote application?

Can't you just turn them up when needed?

Lastly, I run a big enough rad setup so all fans all the time are set to low RPM's, silent.

Sorry about the cost of stuff, but you want automation your gonna pay.
 
Well I've decided to go with the Scythe Kaze Server (KS01). I'll run the 4 rad fans off that, and the case fans off the Fractal Design 3 fan controller which I forgot about that came with the case.

I'll just run the case fans as low as possible, and the have 2 rad fans on semi auto (user defined minimum RPMs), and 2 rad fans on full auto (off until a user defined temp limit is met). Should be good as none of the fans are high powered and I'll only be running 1 fan per channel on the Scythe.
 
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