I don't want this to come off as being unappreciative. I know what it's like to try to help someone who is having a problem and to get rebuffed. But I really want to avoid people wasting their valuable time or feeling like their efforts are unappreciated.
So please keep the following in mind....
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1. I haven't reached out to the forum and asked for help. I am merely reporting my experience and that of another individual with the Aquaero 6 and Swiftech D5 PWM pumps.
2. My cooling system is completely functional. I have PWM pump control with the pumps connected to my motherboard CPU fan headers using the Asus AI Suite 3 software. It uses a control curve (though with not nearly as many control points as the Aquaero).
3. My system is now (and has been for the last 3 weeks) a production workstation and it is running production workloads. It runs 24/7. This means the door is pretty much closed on testing every theory that might come along. To obtain good access to the Aquaero and my motherboard fan headers I have to shut down my system, unhook everything, pull the system out and set it up on a work bench. My rig weighs about 75 pounds. I plan do one more test using a PWM controlled fan with the Aquaero 6 Pro, and depending on that result it may be the last time that I do any further testing of the Aquaero 6 PWM control function.
4. I am a IT Systems Engineer with an electrical engineering background and have 30 years of professional technical experience. My priorities might not be the same as a devoted water cooling hobbyist who can probably invest much more time into tinkering, testing, and reconfiguring than I can. My background doesn't mean I know everything (far from it). But I do have an excellent grasp of good diagnostic and troubleshooting practice. For that reason and item 3 above, I plan to stick to the course I have already laid out unless new relevant information develops that demands a change in approach.
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Until it can be established as fact that other D5 PWM pumps are electrically identical to the Swiftech D5 PWM pump, we cannot assume that they are. Indeed, we cannot even make inferences about how the Swiftech pump will work based on the results with any other pump (D5 or not). This is why I am primarily interested in cases of successful PWM pump control specifically with the Swiftech D5 PWM pump. I already know of two failure cases with this combination but not of any success stories. And in both of the failure cases, the pumps worked correctly under PWM control when connected to the motherboard CPU fan headers. A credible hypothesis must account for all of these observances and not just some of them. That is not to say that the issue is with the Aquaero or the pumps. There is not enough information available to be drawing any conclusions. Most of the responses to the thread I referenced earlier on the Aquacomputer English forum are simply not relevant to the situation at hand. For example, one person reported good results with the Swiftech D5 PWM pump and the Aquaero 5 Pro. That's good to hear, but not germane to the specific scenario being discussed. The same thing goes for the MCP35X2 and the Aquaero 6. Again, good news, but we cannot infer anything from it with the Swiftech D5 PWM pump and Aquaero 6. So the suggestions being made, while well meaning, aren't likely to lead to a solution.
If the PWM fan test passes then I will operate under the belief that there is an incompatibility specifically between the Aquaero 6 and the Swiftech D5 PWM pumps that does not manifest itself with other PWM pumps. If the fan test fails then that would indicate that there is something wrong with my specific Aquaero 6 unit. I will pass my test results along to Aquacomputer when I have them and ask them to advise me. I don't know when I will do the fan test. I hope to get to it in a week or so.
). Here is the line item from my Performance-PCs invoice...
