Which fan controller should I buy?

[thedoofman]

G'day team

 

I recently had to build a new rig, my last one of 6 years died a valiant death right before an assignment (eugh). Dropped a bunch on:

• Ryzen 7 1700X
• AsRock X370 Gaming X
• Corsair 460X Crystal RGB
• 16GB 3000MHz Corsair Vengeance DDR4
• Cooler Master Master Liquid 120 AIO

New GPU is on the cards for later on, for now I've got a 760 in there that's chugging along well. The case is great, looks fab, pain in the ass for cable management in the back.

 

The mistake I made is that the three case fans are 3-pin and there are four of them. There are headers for 3 case fans on the mobo but only one of them supports DC control. I don't want to have the other two on full as it's noisy AF - so can this problem be solved with a fan controller? If so, what can I buy that will allow me to control the 3-pin case fans? Like, is there something that can convert PWM control to DC?

 

If it helps I'm Aus based so something I can get from a local supplier would be awesome.

 

Cheers!

[just_dave]

The cannot change their mode to DC?

MSI and Asus can.

Gaming X is not the best mobo

[thedoofman]

11 hours ago, dave_k said:

The cannot change their mode to DC?

MSI and Asus can.

Gaming X is not the best mobo

As i wrote, you can change one of them to DC but the remaining two are PWM only. 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

You can get voltage-based fan controllers, there are a ton of them, and you can probably find one in the used market. The problem is that you have a bay-less case, so there would be nowhere to put them.

You could then go the fancy route and get something like Corsair Link, which requires no physical access, but is controlled through software instead. I believe it supports both PWM and DC, but I would double check before pulling the trigger on anything.

It's also absurdly expensive for what it is, but again, the second hand market can be your friend with that  

[just_dave]

7 hours ago, thedoofman said:

As i wrote, you can change one of them to DC but the remaining two are PWM only. 

Maybe NZXT Grid V2 would suit your needs

[thedoofman]

1 minute ago, CUDA_Cores said:

my rule with fans: If you're asking to get a fan controller, you have too many fans IMO. 

 

You really only need one or two intake fans and an exhaust fan. My X99 rig with an OCed 5820K and OCed GTX 970 only need three case fans running at only 400RPM. You don't need that many fans. You can even get away with just an intake and exaust fan if you want. 

Ultimately you're not wrong, the only reason I'm going down this path is purely for aesthetics. The RGB fans came with the case, so it'd be good to get them working - but in the end I might either replace them with PWM compatible fans or stick a fan controller in the case.

[thedoofman]

1 minute ago, CUDA_Cores said:

Asrock can do DC mode too. I know this because I used to have an X99 mobo from them where the fans could be turned completely off at idle. It was great for a silence freak like me because then the fans dont spin. 

It can, yeah - but not on all of the fan headers on the mobo - just the one. Hence the need for a controller!

[thedoofman]

1 hour ago, CUDA_Cores said:

If you just want your fans to run at a fixed speed and just doing this for aesthetics, run your fans off your power supplies 5v rail. This is generally the minimum voltage the fans start with anyway and they generally run at a few hundred RPM at this speed. 

 

Most people buy fan controllers and never change the dials. At that point you might as well just run fans off a fixed voltage. 

Definitely not after something at a fixed speed - noise is a factor here. Right now I've got two of them simply not plugged in, but I'd like to have them active, at likely a very low speed. All I'm looking for is something that I can stick somewhere in the case and control either via hardware or software the speed of the 3-pin fans plugged into it; as two of my fan headers don't support DC mode.