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What's the point of a fan controller?

TheSuspect
By TheSuspect
in Cooling
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Go to solution Solved by STRMfrmXMN,
4 minutes ago, TheSuspect said:

I guess to reduce/increase the strength of certain fans, but what's the point of them? How do they even work? I'm a bit ignorant with fan controllers, there's probably a use for them. Enlighten me please

They restrict or allow certain voltage to a fan if plugged in. If you want them to be extra quiet the fan controller severely limits the voltage it sends to the fan. If you want it to run faster to keep your system cooler then it will allow for more voltage. Some fans are not fond of fan controlling however so that's just something to keep in mind.

Posted

I guess to reduce/increase the strength of certain fans, but what's the point of them? How do they even work? I'm a bit ignorant with fan controllers, there's probably a use for them. Enlighten me please

Nothing.

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It allows you to control your fans at will individually.

 

You can set up custom profiles so that at certain temps fan speed will increase/decrease.

 

Basically you have more control over how loud and how hot your system is.

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They give less or more electricity to the fans to speed them up/down.

They give you an option to silence your PC during light use like web browsing and ramp them up when gaming.

They also fill me with joy.

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4 minutes ago, TheSuspect said:

I guess to reduce/increase the strength of certain fans, but what's the point of them? How do they even work? I'm a bit ignorant with fan controllers, there's probably a use for them. Enlighten me please

 

Its like a USB hub but for fans - lets you hook all your fans up to a control unit so set various fan speeds/temp controls

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To adjust the speed of the fan.

I lower the speeds when I record audio for videos :)

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  • Solution
4 minutes ago, TheSuspect said:

I guess to reduce/increase the strength of certain fans, but what's the point of them? How do they even work? I'm a bit ignorant with fan controllers, there's probably a use for them. Enlighten me please

They restrict or allow certain voltage to a fan if plugged in. If you want them to be extra quiet the fan controller severely limits the voltage it sends to the fan. If you want it to run faster to keep your system cooler then it will allow for more voltage. Some fans are not fond of fan controlling however so that's just something to keep in mind.

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My computer is over clocked and there's no control over the fan speeds. So it's constantly loud. Even when just surfing the web or dicking around. At these times I wish I had a controller to lower the speed of my fans to bring the noise down. I just bought a NZXT? Sentry 2 to take care of this issue.

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I got an NZXT Sentry 3 somewhat recently for my secondary computer and I love it. Idk if it's the Corsair 88R case being smaller that makes the noise from the fans more noticeable or if I'm just using loud fans but it seems a bit too loud for my liking if the fans are at full speed. (2 Blue LED 120mm Cougar fans and 2 Corsair Quiet Edition AF120 non-LED 120MM fans)  The Sentry 3 fixed all that and now if I don't need the fans full speed I can lower them to as low as 40% speed which makes the case really quiet.  I'm using a Pentium G3258 at 4GHz with the stock cooler and a GTX 960 neither of which I think get all that hot (If I'm wrong someone please tell me so I learn.  ?) so I'm pretty sure I could leave the fans at no more than 60-70% even when gaming on it and still have a decent interior case temperature.

 

i got the Sentry 3 instead of the 2 because I liked the colors of the 3 better and for those that this matters to I'm pretty sure the 3 allows for higher wattage fans to be used or overall is a higher watt limit fan controller.  (One or both things.)

 

So the point of a fan controller is to give the user more control over case fan speeds to allow for relatively more specific control over when the fans run at higher speeds which translates to a quieter system at times when the fans can safely run slower.

 

For people like myself who have a low white noise tolerance having a fan controller in even 1 of my 2 desktop PCs is doing a lot to keep me sane and happy when I'm using my secondary desktop.  ?

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