"Intelligent" Fan Controllers?

[TheDustyHeatsink]

Hello everyone! This is my first post on the linustechtips forums.

 

The first time I saw use of an "intelligent" fan controller was actually in Linus' old rig build video. I would love something similar for controlling the 6 odd case fans I have planned for my rigs cooling over-hall. I do have something planned involving a raspberry pi however I was curious as to whether there are any modern PCI cards for controlling fans using software. With actual descent software. Maybe even allowing the use of fanspeed-temperature graphs like on Afterburner etc.

 

Can anyone enlighten me?

[Rheinwasser]

dont get a pcie fan controller.

use your mainboard or buy something like an bitfenix recon.

 

also, welcome to the forums!

[Enderman]

Welcome

AI Suite 2 is great for controlling fans

[JAKEBAB]

theres an aquaero which is like linus's mcubed tbalancer but i dont know if its any good but your best bet is getting maybe like an nzxt grid and plugging it into your motherboard and using ai suite or something equivalent from another board manufacturer to control it.

[The_Strict_Nein]

Make a Raspberry Pi one with temp sensors. You may need a seperate module that can provide 12V though, the Pi can only provide 5

[KamiKatze]

The Bitfenix Recon is a good fan controller for the money. You can manually control the fans or let them run depending on the temperature of the thermal sensor, that's plugged to the corresponding channel. However you can't set custom fan curves to go along with the thermal sensors and it's really annoying me. On warm days, it can happen that my GPU gets hot and the fans run at 9V while idle, which is unneccessary. But it has to get warm enough, so that it runs at 12V if my GPU is under load.

 

So a good placement for the thermal sensor is key for using the Recon.

 

I would recommend finding a fan controller that allows you to set up fan curves. Normaly they are the ones which take up 2 5.25" bays. I couldn't fit one, so i didn't get one. But from the retro perspective, i wish i could set fan curves depending on the temperature of the thermal sensors.

[TheDustyHeatsink]

The Bitfenix Recon is a good fan controller for the money. You can manually control the fans or let them run depending on the temperature of the thermal sensor, that's plugged to the corresponding channel. However you can't set custom fan curves to go along with the thermal sensors and it's really annoying me. On warm days, it can happen that my GPU gets hot and the fans run at 9V while idle, which is unneccessary. But it has to get warm enough, so that it runs at 12V if my GPU is under load.

 

So a good placement for the thermal sensor is key for using the Recon.

 

I would recommend finding a fan controller that allows you to set up fan curves. Normaly they are the ones which take up 2 5.25" bays. I couldn't fit one, so i didn't get one. But from the retro perspective, i wish i could set fan curves depending on the temperature of the thermal sensors.

 

Thanks for the advice everyone! The Recon does look very good apart from not allowing graphs to be set up. I also can't fit a dual 5.25" controller, so I think the recon is what I will get. Still going to make a raspberry pi controller just for the hell of it though 

[KamiKatze]

Thanks for the advice everyone! The Recon does look very good apart from not allowing graphs to be set up. I also can't fit a dual 5.25" controller, so I think the recon is what I will get. Still going to make a raspberry pi controller just for the hell of it though 

 

Please also be aware that the automatic voltage regulation works only if you plug a thermal sensor into the corresponding channel that the fan is plugged into. So you may need some fan splitters and some places to stick the sensors.