help with choosing a fan controller

I have an antec 1100 case with a MSI motherboard with only 4 fan headers on it. Well I went ahead and installed fans in the optional slots so now have a total of 10 fans in my rig. What I am looking for is a six channel controller with an automatic fan control. I could make a five channel work. I have corsairfans with the 4 pin connectors. What I want is to be able to have a fan channel on stand by with the fans off and if the temp hits a point the fans will kick on. If that is not an option the being able to manually adjust them will work as long as the adjustment can be done quickly. 2 of the fans I am going to leave motherboard control which is the 2 fans on the radiator for the H80.

Please help

What you need is a wiring harness that passes through the speed control ("PWM") signal but gets power from a connection to the PSU.

It's called a PWM splitter with PSU power. Gelid make a nice 4-way. Two can be daisy-chained to power & control 7 fans.
http://www.gelidsolutions.com/products/index.php?lid=2&cid=11&id=63

With all PWM case fans everything in system can be PWM speed controlled. All fans idle quietly until system starts working and than speed up as additional cooling / airflow is needed.

I have two systems using them and many others have done the same. I've written a little tutorial about it. Let me know if you want it.

the fan headers on my mother board are 3 pin I noticed this after I bought all the fans. The motherboard is a 990FXA-GD80

There should be a white 4-pin CPU-fan header near top edge of mobo just to the left of top of RAM slots. And that header is PWM.

Correct. That is the only PWM header I can find on the MB

Plug PWM splitter to it and Splitter power to PSU and 4 fans are controlled with RPM reading from one. Add a second PWM splitter and you have control of 7 fans.

There are also adapters that plug into GPU PWM header to allow GPU PWM signal to control additional PWM fan.

wont that pull to many amps off of one motherboard header

No. That's the advantage of using PWM splitter with PSU power. The fan power comes directly for PSU. Motherboard is only supplying PWM signal.
Gelid PWM splitter. 4x fan sockets, 1x fan plug to mobo, and 1x molex to PSU
Only 1 fan socket has rpm lead. The fan plug only has rpm lead and PWM leads. molex supplies 12v and ground.


Swiftech make an 8-way PWM hub with molex or Sata socket for PSU
http://www.swiftech.com/8-WayPWMsplitter.aspx
http://www.swiftech.com/8-WayPWMsplitter-sata.aspx

the corsair sp120's dont have a molex PSU connector just the PWM

That is very true, but the fan sockets on the PWM splitter are wired to the molex plug for the 12v power AND also has rpm and PWM leads to the fan plug that plugs into mobo fan header for the rpm and PWM signal.

Here's how it works in pictures.

I looked into that and I still will not be able to have fans on stanby. Ie having the fans compleatly off until a set temp is reached then the fans kick on for the added cooling. I looked into speedfan and I am not able to control the fans with that weather. So far all I found was being able o turn the fans as low as forty percent but no lower.

My search for a fan controller continues

Wouldn't fans running very slow be okay?

I can think of only one "fan controller" which can do a "kick-in" from standstill at a certain temp and that's the Aquacomputer aquaero

Maybe the mCubed/t-Balancer can do this also...

It has to do with the way the chip is designed/thing is programmed... most rely on the presence of an RPM signal to "detect" a fan being "plugged in". If RPM is 0 , then there is nothing to control (or "boot-up")... which is why most (PWM) circuits are limited to an absolute minimum "speed" like 25%. Otherwise it requires some logic to switch power on to each connector then wait x cycles to "see" if there an indicator "something" is attached, then sustain power & start regulating.

It's the "is there some load attached?" mechanism... something with "no load" is considered "not there".

More complex logic uses different detection & control shemes; which explains why a $9.98 fan controller can do less compared to a $250,- controller


edit: thsi sounded better in my head before i wrote it down :$

I like them both I have also been reading that it is not good to use a controller for the applaction I want. From my understanding is that having the fans off or on a low setting is one of the main reasons for a controller to fail.