How can I control my fans with this setup?

[DatPei]

Hi guys, all my fans are 3 pins, i have a 8-way phobya splitter (supports PWM), so my question is, is it still possible to control the fans that are connected to the fan splitter? For example, I have 6 fans for my rad, and they are all connected to the spliiter, I would like to control them all at the same time.

[W-L]

9 hours ago, DatPei said:

Hi guys, all my fans are 3 pins, i have a 8-way phobya splitter (supports PWM), so my question is, is it still possible to control the fans that are connected to the fan splitter? For example, I have 6 fans for my rad, and they are all connected to the spliiter, I would like to control them all at the same time.

If thery are 3 pin fans they won't work on that controller since it's PWM based and uses external 12V power. you will need fan splitters on a couple of motherboard headers or a control hub like the NZXT Grid+ V2 to do something like that.

[DatPei]

2 hours ago, W-L said:

If thery are 3 pin fans they won't work on that controller since it's PWM based and uses external 12V power. you will need fan splitters on a couple of motherboard headers or a control hub like the NZXT Grid+ V2 to do something like that.

Oh I see, that's very unfortunate!  What if I buy a molex to 3 pins and connect it to that spliiter, instead of using the PWM+molex power cable that came with it, would that work?

[DatPei]

2 hours ago, W-L said:

If thery are 3 pin fans they won't work on that controller since it's PWM based and uses external 12V power. you will need fan splitters on a couple of motherboard headers or a control hub like the NZXT Grid+ V2 to do something like that.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I also have a fan controller (as a bay) that has 4 channels, each channel is said to support up to 10V. If that might be something that could help out in any workaround?

[W-L]

10 minutes ago, DatPei said:

Oh I see, that's very unfortunate!  What if I buy a molex to 3 pins and connect it to that spliiter, instead of using the PWM+molex power cable that came with it, would that work?

That poetnially can work but then your running 6 fans off of one header which can overload it, a good rule of thumb is to not have more than 3-4 fans per header. As for the bay fan controller that is a good option if you don't mind manually setting fan speeds, I assume that is 10W per channel so it would be capable of a total of 40W of fans. 

[DatPei]

35 minutes ago, W-L said:

That poetnially can work but then your running 6 fans off of one header which can overload it, a good rule of thumb is to not have more than 3-4 fans per header. As for the bay fan controller that is a good option if you don't mind manually setting fan speeds, I assume that is 10W per channel so it would be capable of a total of 40W of fans. 

Oh yeah, sorry correction it was 10W per channel I was meant to say. So What do you think if I buy a female-female connector and link the fan controller to the fan spliiter, and so I might be able to use the knob on the fan controller to adjust the (6x) fans that are connected to the splitter? Doable?

[W-L]

2 minutes ago, DatPei said:

Oh yeah, sorry correction it was 10W per channel I was meant to say. So What do you think if I buy a female-female connector and link the fan controller to the fan spliiter, and so I might be able to use the knob on the fan controller to adjust the (6x) fans that are connected to the splitter? Doable?

You could do that if you made or got a custom cable to do voltage control via 3 pins and leave the 4th PWM pin unoccupied on the splitter. At 10 watts per channel though it would still be best to not have more than 3-4 fans per header on the controller as a mobo fan header is approx 10-12W itself. 

 

You may be better off having two groups off that fan controller if you want manual fan controls in the system.

[DatPei]

9 minutes ago, W-L said:

You could do that if you made or got a custom cable to do voltage control via 3 pins and leave the 4th PWM pin unoccupied on the splitter. At 10 watts per channel though it would still be best to not have more than 3-4 fans per header on the controller as a mobo fan header is approx 10-12W itself. 

 

You may be better off having two groups off that fan controller if you want manual fan controls in the system.

Alright, I guess I will considering getting 2 of those NZXT grid hub then. Thanks a lot for helping out!

[W-L]

13 minutes ago, DatPei said:

Alright, I guess I will considering getting 2 of those NZXT grid hub then. Thanks a lot for helping out!

Just to mention the NZXT Grid+ V2 is capable of controlling 6 fans all individually and a total of 8 using some splitters they provide. 

[DatPei]

7 hours ago, W-L said:

Just to mention the NZXT Grid+ V2 is capable of controlling 6 fans all individually and a total of 8 using some splitters they provide. 

I see. Frankly I don't really need to control them individually, since all 6 fans are on radiator, it's good if they all run consistently at the same speed.

[W-L]

5 hours ago, DatPei said:

I see. Frankly I don't really need to control them individually, since all 6 fans are on radiator, it's good if they all run consistently at the same speed.

If you can still get a hold of the Grid+ (V1) the orginal that came out that was designed as group control so it didn't allow for individual fan control. If you ever change your setup or fan setup however indiviual control can be quite useful. 

[DatPei]

3 minutes ago, W-L said:

If you can still get a hold of the Grid+ (V1) the orginal that came out that was designed as group control so it didn't allow for individual fan control. If you ever change your setup or fan setup however indiviual control can be quite useful. 

Alright, I will have a look around and see if there is any difference in price and such. Thanks again!