4 pins fans headers pinouts : Speed Control and VCC

[Guest]

Hi everyone,

 

I don't know if this post belongs to Motherboards or Air Cooling, so please move it to the proper subforum if I am in the wrong one.

 

Yesterday I was playing around with SpeedFan on my Gigabyte H87-D3H. I've had this motherboard for more than a year now and never bothered with fiddling with the fans. However, I decided to play around with the latest version of SpeedFan yesterday and found something quite interesting. My motherboard has 4x 4 pins fans headers :

 

CPU_FAN : Noctua NF-F12 PWM

SYS_FAN1 : Noctua NF-S12A PWM

SYS_FAN2 : Fractal Design GP-14 3 pins

SYS_FAN3 : Fractal Design GP-14 3 pins

 

Using SpeedFan, I see 3 PWM controllers/sensors. PWM 1 controls CPU_FAN, PWM 2 controls SYS_FAN1 and PWM 3 controls SYS_FAN2 and 3. This is the same as in the BIOS, where SYS_FAN2 and 3 are controlled together. Using SpeedFan, I can control properly PWM 1 with a % value. So PWM seems to work fine for the CPU_FAN header.

 

The other PWM fan capable that I have is connected to SYS_FAN1 and if I go lower than 40% in SpeedFan, the fan stops. This should not be the behavior of a PWM fan right ?

 

Same story goes for SYS_FAN2 and SYS_FAN3, but the fans connected to these headers are 3 pins only (so voltage control only). I believe this behavior is expected on these headers.

 

So the "issue" about SYS_FAN1 got me digging. Looking at the manual of my motherboard, I found the following :

 

 

According to the manual, SYS_FAN headers are using Speed Control on Pin #2 and VCC on Pin #4. I don't much about all this electric/schemas stuff. Can anyone explain to me if the SYS_FAN headers are compatible with PWM fans ? Or are they controlled by voltage like 3pins ? What is VCC ?

 

I thought that 4 pins always meant PWM and it does not seem to be the case according to my test with SpeedFan yesterday.

 

Thanks,

 

Neo.

[LogicalDrm]

Gigabyte doesn't support PWM on system fan headers. Only with CPU and CPU_OPT headers. The pins are ground, voltage/power, rpm sensor and the VCC which is Voltage Control C-something. I had PWM fan on one and it didn't just plain work. Not with BIOS settings and Speedfan was completely unsupported. MSI has done it more informative and just written "Not connected" to 4th pin.

 

I've pretty much bashed Gigabytes fan control software in past as its been rubbish. But now I'm running with it and seems like they've fixed the main issues. Which for me was settings not being saved after restart.

[Guest]

Gigabyte doesn't support PWM on system fan headers. Only with CPU and CPU_OPT headers. The pins are ground, voltage/power, rpm sensor and the VCC which is Voltage Control C-something. I had PWM fan on one and it didn't just plain work. Not with BIOS settings and Speedfan was completely unsupported. MSI has done it more informative and just written "Not connected" to 4th pin.

 

I've pretty much bashed Gigabytes fan control software in past as its been rubbish. But now I'm running with it and seems like they've fixed the main issues. Which for me was settings not being saved after restart.

 

Thanks. I always thought that 4 pins headers was PWM. I don't understand why they would do 4 pins headers with standard 3 pins voltage control. Couldn't they just make a 3 pins header...anyway.

 

I had the Gigabyte software SIV/EasyTune installed until last week. I didn't mess around much, but since the new version that came out in June, it was giving my BSOD error 124. Even reinstalling the previous version would still give me BSOD. I never used it anyway, so I uninstalled every software that is Gigabyte related. It was only giving me troubles anyway (not saving settings after restart like you and mess up my french keyboard).

 

SpeedFan does work, but I have to go into Advanced and modify the PWM settings to Software controlled. By default they are set to Guardian (or something like that) and SpeedFan can't control anything. Since you are confirming that SYS_FAN headers are voltage controlled only, I'll have to figure out what minimum and maximum I should set in SpeedFan for each controller.

 

Are there reasons to buy PWM fans for my SYS_FAN headers ? I wanted to get nice NF-A14 PWM fans for intake and exhaust, but I now believe it would be better to buy 3 pins/voltage controlled fans for these headers. I guess that voltage controlled fans can start at lower voltage than PWM fans, because they were designed for this.

[LogicalDrm]

@spookyneo, you could get PWM splitter with external power source (sata or molex) and use just CPU header. But then everything will run with CPU fan's speeds. As for BSOD, maybe updating BIOS will fix that. But SIV is still weaker to Speedfan.

[Guest]

@spookyneo, you could get PWM splitter with external power source (sata or molex) and use just CPU header. But then everything will run with CPU fan's speeds. As for BSOD, maybe updating BIOS will fix that. But SIV is still weaker to Speedfan.

 

I thought about the PWM splitter, but I really don't want to set everything at the same speed. As for the BSOD, it might be a result of different monitoring software that I had installed (AIDA64, Gigabyte SIV, MSI Afterburner). But since I removed Gigabyte softwares, everything is working fine. I'm already running the latest version of the BIOS. While I am not a fan of SpeedFan's UI, I dig the fans curves and conditions. Using SIV or the BIOS, the fans will ramp up according to the motherboard/system temperature. Using SpeedFan, I can ramp up the fans using any temp sensors, such as GPU or CPU. Much more powerful, because I would like to ramp up the fans as soon as the GPU rises.

 

I'll start looking at good 3 pins voltage controlled fans. I know some are better than others and I would like a 3 pins fan that can have a very low speed so I can't hear them. If I buy a PWM fan, I fear that if I set the voltage too low, it wouldn't even start.

[tomas710]

Hi everyone,

 

I don't know if this post belongs to Motherboards or Air Cooling, so please move it to the proper subforum if I am in the wrong one.

 

Yesterday I was playing around with SpeedFan on my Gigabyte H87-D3H. I've had this motherboard for more than a year now and never bothered with fiddling with the fans. However, I decided to play around with the latest version of SpeedFan yesterday and found something quite interesting. My motherboard has 4x 4 pins fans headers :

 

CPU_FAN : Noctua NF-F12 PWM

SYS_FAN1 : Noctua NF-S12A PWM

SYS_FAN2 : Fractal Design GP-14 3 pins

SYS_FAN3 : Fractal Design GP-14 3 pins

 

Using SpeedFan, I see 3 PWM controllers/sensors. PWM 1 controls CPU_FAN, PWM 2 controls SYS_FAN1 and PWM 3 controls SYS_FAN2 and 3. This is the same as in the BIOS, where SYS_FAN2 and 3 are controlled together. Using SpeedFan, I can control properly PWM 1 with a % value. So PWM seems to work fine for the CPU_FAN header.

 

The other PWM fan capable that I have is connected to SYS_FAN1 and if I go lower than 40% in SpeedFan, the fan stops. This should not be the behavior of a PWM fan right ?

 

Same story goes for SYS_FAN2 and SYS_FAN3, but the fans connected to these headers are 3 pins only (so voltage control only). I believe this behavior is expected on these headers.

 

So the "issue" about SYS_FAN1 got me digging. Looking at the manual of my motherboard, I found the following :

 

 

According to the manual, SYS_FAN headers are using Speed Control on Pin #2 and VCC on Pin #4. I don't much about all this electric/schemas stuff. Can anyone explain to me if the SYS_FAN headers are compatible with PWM fans ? Or are they controlled by voltage like 3pins ? What is VCC ?

 

I thought that 4 pins always meant PWM and it does not seem to be the case according to my test with SpeedFan yesterday.

 

Thanks,

 

Neo.

I have a maximus VI formula and it's the same, the only fan that starts under 30-40% is the CPU fan, like Linus said, the CPU fan is the least broken implementation of PWM on any given motherboard. In practice it doesn't cause me any trouble tho...but just saying, i got an ASUS mobo and the exact same thing happens, it's just how it is for now.

[tomas710]

I thought about the PWM splitter, but I really don't want to set everything at the same speed. As for the BSOD, it might be a result of different monitoring software that I had installed (AIDA64, Gigabyte SIV, MSI Afterburner). But since I removed Gigabyte softwares, everything is working fine. I'm already running the latest version of the BIOS. While I am not a fan of SpeedFan's UI, I dig the fans curves and conditions. Using SIV or the BIOS, the fans will ramp up according to the motherboard/system temperature. Using SpeedFan, I can ramp up the fans using any temp sensors, such as GPU or CPU. Much more powerful, because I would like to ramp up the fans as soon as the GPU rises.

 

I'll start looking at good 3 pins voltage controlled fans. I know some are better than others and I would like a 3 pins fan that can have a very low speed so I can't hear them. If I buy a PWM fan, I fear that if I set the voltage too low, it wouldn't even start.

A PWM fan connected to a 3 pin header or in this case a 4 pin header that doesn't really act like a PWM header will act as a 3 pin fan, however PWM is not necesary for a quiet system, I got 3 pin AP121s, have them going at 600 RPMs dead quiet, actually quieter than my PWM phanteks SP fans.

[LogicalDrm]

Small update on my part on this. I take back what I said about SIV being better. Its not. While it remembers my settings, it doesn't autostart with windows and so I need to manually start it. And no box to tick for autostart either. (Yes, I could have done it manually) But now I moved to Speedfan with guide I found. It works now, though I still need to work with curves. Man, that software is so ancient on UI side. And no good documentation either... I still don't know when custom profiles are really active and when its using some other automatic control.

[Guest]

Small update on my part on this. I take back what I said about SIV being better. Its not. While it remembers my settings, it doesn't autostart with windows and so I need to manually start it. And no box to tick for autostart either. (Yes, I could have done it manually) But now I moved to Speedfan with guide I found. It works now, though I still need to work with curves. Man, that software is so ancient on UI side. And no good documentation either... I still don't know when custom profiles are really active and when its using some other automatic control.

 

I wonder the same thing sometimes with Speedfan : Is it the BIOS or Speedfan controlling my fans right now...

 

While the features of Speedfan are very nice, I agree that the UI is looking like the '90s. Something that looks like more like SIV or GRID+ software would be nice for Speedfan 5.0 (if there will be any).

[LogicalDrm]

I wonder the same thing sometimes with Speedfan : Is it the BIOS or Speedfan controlling my fans right now...

 

While the features of Speedfan are very nice, I agree that the UI is looking like the '90s. Something that looks like more like SIV or GRID+ software would be nice for Speedfan 5.0 (if there will be any).

 

If you set chipset controls to software only (in Speedfan settings), it should control them all. However, what I wonder is when it uses my own curve and when it creates curve based on other triggers. Like increasement size and limits you have set to fan power. Used this thread as guide http://www.overclock.net/t/1397693/z87x-ud3-4-5-7-all-other-gbt-z87-including-th-club-discussion-issue-report-club/580