Fans For Rads

[BugFreak]

Power to the fans is not from the PSU by default. Phanteks explicitly says do not use the 4pin molex connector on the fan hub unless your motherboard is having trouble driving the fans.

I have 8 fans on mine right now (2 front 140mm intake, rear 140mm exhaust, 5 120mm rad fans)

It's my understanding that if you use the molex connector, you lose PWM control from the motherboard.

I'm currently having to use the molex plug because it could not power my fans properly just from the motherboard. I have 9 fans on mine; 2 are fans that came with the case and 7 are Yate Loon D12SH running at about 600rpm or so. Without the molex my fans would randomly not start or stop spinning. I have both the molex and the motherboard plug in use and from what I can tell there is still speed control from the motherboard but so far it isn't getting hot enough to max the fans out.

I assumed the molex was just an additional power source so I have not tried it alone but I would think you are right because there is no control module on the hub. It would just divide the single molex to the fans plugged in. It still needs the motherboard controlling the power output.

 

[mtdewcowboy]

Here is some info from their forums

I got a short message from Phanteks about PWM hub being packaged a week ago so hopefully will be in stock in 2-4 weeks... He also said he's still waiting for PWM hub specifications but has "been told that the PWM can only hold 30W max." I'm assuming that's PWM hub can run up to 30w max. Split 11 ways (control header probably has lower rating) that would be approx 2.7 on Fan 1 header (control header) and 5.4w on the other 5 headers (using 11 fan maximum from manual)... but 3x PH-F140SP (1.8w spec) fans on each of the 5 headers plus one on control header is 28.8w. As to waht actual start-up load is and how close 30w is to letting the smoke out of the wires... well, I would still like to see PWM hub specs of what each header is rated at.


I too have 8 fans connected to the hub
My fans are the 3pin Phanteks 140mm fans 5 led 3 standard all attached to the PWM Hub
The sensor cable from the hub is attached to CPU_1 on MSI Z87 G45 Gaming motherboard
The other 6 headers are attached to fans w/2 Y split
Aux Power to Hub is connected via the Y split molex from the case lighting feed.

The hub is controlling all fans as expected. I can augment the default PWM profile through bios and software supplied from MSI.
Default idle is a bit low for me which fluctuates between 500-542 rpm or 25% as indicated in bios.
Software you must activate a profile every restart so I hard set for convenience in bios to 50% which results in approx 800 rpm
During 100% load of Prime95 the fans ramp up to approx 1234 rpm as reported by Aida64 or HWInfo64.
Not sure why, if you connected this way, it's not working for you.

 

[m0r7if3r]

Max AMP depends on the AWG of the hubs molex wires (assuming the board circuits are not hair-thin traces).
IF traces & wires are "solid" enough, then the limit is the max amps/watts you can put on the PSU rail. However, take into account the extra "pull" at power-up... so dont max out to the specs of the hub+wires.

Actually, this would be a lot easier to work out if the manufacturer of this hub would indicate somewhere the max watts or amps.

I can pretty much guarantee that the incoming connection is not the limitation unless they got some REALLY expensive PCBs fabricated. I can't really tell what's on the board, but I'd bet on a component on the board failing first...or a PCB trace if they're particularly cheap...heck, the PSU would hit OCP before the wires even came CLOSE to failing.