Programbound cooling?

[Eeglis]

I'm looking for a way for programs to trigger different fan curves. For example, by default all fans should be stopped, and CPU fan at min RPM, when I launch a game the fans would ramp up.

Also no, sadly there's no good curve for me. And I don't want to manually turn on fans every time I launch a game.
My current "manual way" of turning fans up is putting fan controller on desired speed. As for CPU cooler and one extra fan that didn't fit into fan controller (too many fans) I have to use AI Suite, I mean it kinda works, but at times I forget to put fans back on.

 

In case someone wants to know, I got NH-D15 as my CPU Cooler.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Fan curves should be a function of temperature, not the program running.

[pwn_intended]

How many fans are you running with? Your motherboard has 5 fan headers on it....

 

Also, AI Suite on the z97 chipset is actually considered pretty good fan control software from what I have heard. You should be able to customize literally every fan on its own custom curve based off of whatever temperatures your computer measures.

 

Having the fans running at minimum speed should be essentially silent, and turning them off totally is a little overkill...

[Eeglis]

1 minute ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Fan curves should be a function of temperature, not the program running.

I'm aware of that. With my cooler I haven't found a good curve though, since some programs stress CPU more or less. For example I can turn off all fans and put CPU cooler on minimum settings and CPU won't exceed 52C
Whilst when I'm running a game I want more agressive curve, for example that fans would be at 500RPM @ 40C.

[done12many2]

3 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Fan curves should be a function of temperature, not the program running.

 

Exactly.

 

I'm running 25 x 120mm fans and 2 D5 PWM pumps in my rig and at idle with no thermal load, you can't hear anything at all.  As CPU and GPU loads increase, water temp does as well.  As water temps increase, so does fan speed.  No need to specify whether it's a game, benchmark, or stress test as the fan speed is relative to water and case temps.

[Mira Yurizaki]

3 minutes ago, Eeglis said:

I'm aware of that. With my cooler I haven't found a good curve though, since some programs stress CPU more or less. For example I can turn off all fans and put CPU cooler on minimum settings and CPU won't exceed 52C
Whilst when I'm running a game I want more agressive curve, for example that fans would be at 500RPM @ 40C.

To me this doesn't make much sense why idling at 52C is acceptable but 52C during gaming is not. Temperature has no impact on performance other than thermal throttling. The only thing temperature buys you is component lifespan and it's already rated at 50C or so.

[Eeglis]

4 minutes ago, pwn_intended said:

How many fans are you running with? Your motherboard has 5 fan headers on it....

 

Also, AI Suite on the z97 chipset is actually considered pretty good fan control software from what I have heard. You should be able to customize literally every fan on its own custom curve based off of whatever temperatures your computer measures.

 

Having the fans running at minimum speed should be essentially silent, and turning them off totally is a little overkill...

I have
6x 120mm (5 of them attached to a single fan controller)
2x 80mm (temporarily attached to GPU)
2x 140mm x 150mm CPU Cooler fans.
Minimum speed doesn't cut it for me

[Wolther]

1 minute ago, Eeglis said:

I have
6x 120mm (5 of them attached to a single fan controller)
2x 80mm (temporarily attached to GPU)
2x 140mm x 150mm CPU Cooler fans.
Minimum speed doesn't cut it for me

Why..? Is my only question

[Eeglis]

Well in that case would you like to suggest a fan curve for i7-4790k and NH-D15? Because the default curve my Motherboard gave me resulted in 40-45C temps, and constant ramping up and down. The CPU cooler would jump nonstop from 400 to 800 RPM and back to 400 and back to 800

[Eeglis]

Just now, Wolther said:

Why..? Is my only question

Why? Cause I had couple of extra fans lying around, waiting to be put in another computer, so I decided to stick them in for fun.
Why the low rpm fans aren't silent enough for me? That I can not answer to you, they just bother me.

[Mira Yurizaki]

The feature you're looking for is temperature hysteresis. I know either my GPU or motherboard has this feature (I forget exactly which one), but supposedly SpeedFan will let you do this too.

[Eeglis]

Just now, M.Yurizaki said:

The feature you're looking for is fan hysteresis. I know either my GPU or motherboard has this feature (I forget exactly which one), but supposedly SpeedFan will let you do this too.

NZXT's CAM software has it.

[done12many2]

3 minutes ago, Eeglis said:

Why? Cause I had couple of extra fans lying around, waiting to be put in another computer, so I decided to stick them in for fun.
Why the low rpm fans aren't silent enough for me? That I can not answer to you, they just bother me.

 

It's probably more of an issue of fan quality vs actual RPM.  I assure you that there are fans that are completely inaudible at their lowest operating speed.

 

By the way, those 80mm fans are probably making more noise than the 120mm.  Smaller fans just do that.

[Eeglis]

2 minutes ago, done12many2 said:

 

It's probably more of an issue of fan quality vs actual RPM.  I assure you that there are fans that are completely inaudible at their lowest operating speed.

 

By the way, those 80mm fans are probably making more noise than the 120mm.  Smaller fans just do that.

They're actually off unless I turn them on. The only things that are bothering me right now are: CPU Cooler's fans and HDD's. I'm getting rid of my HDDs soon, man they're terrible. I'm running most of the time completely with out them because their noise is driving me nuts.

[Wolther]

9 minutes ago, Eeglis said:

Why? Cause I had couple of extra fans lying around, waiting to be put in another computer, so I decided to stick them in for fun.
 

For fun I guess is cool and all, but there's diminishing returns where it just doesn't make sense anymore. Sometimes there's little to no gain when exceeding 4 fans. 

Look at this if you want 

Also, sounds like your fan curve is just too steep, you can flatten it out a bit, and let it get steeper as temperatures reach the higher end 

 

Edit: For now, until you figure everything out, figuring something out for white noise might not be a bad solution. 

 

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

Also had another thought, if it's jumping between 400 and 800 RPM, you don't have a fan curve. You have a step function. If the fan literally cannot continuously change its RPM despite what the graph says, you need a better fan. Or a better fan controller.

 

Oh, there you go, buy a fan controller and do it yourself.

[Eeglis]

1 minute ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Also had another thought, if it's jumping between 400 and 800 RPM, you don't have a fan curve. You have a step function. If the fan literally cannot continuously change it's RPM despite what the graph says, you need a better fan. Or a better fan controller.

 

Oh, there you go, buy a fan controller and do it yourself.

I'm aware of that I need only couple of fans. I have only 4 fans active (+ 2 from my CPU cooler) on normal usage. And the said 4 fans came with the case. Also there's my fan curve at the moment

[Eeglis]

1 minute ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Also had another thought, if it's jumping between 400 and 800 RPM, you don't have a fan curve. You have a step function. If the fan literally cannot continuously change it's RPM despite what the graph says, you need a better fan. Or a better fan controller.

 

Oh, there you go, buy a fan controller and do it yourself.

I've got fan controller for 5 fans but that doesn't help with the CPU cooler's fans. And the jumps between 400 to 800 is an exaggeration but still, annoying.

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 minutes ago, Eeglis said:

I've got fan controller for 5 fans but that doesn't help with the CPU cooler's fans. And the jumps between 400 to 800 is an exaggeration but still, annoying.

You should smooth out the fan curve. Also are you sure the fan can operate that low of a percentage? Some fans can't go that low. My case fans for instance have a minimum of like 30%. Any lower and they effectively shut off.

[pwn_intended]

3 minutes ago, Eeglis said:

I'm aware of that I need only couple of fans. I have only 4 fans active (+ 2 from my CPU cooler) on normal usage. And the said 4 fans came with the case. Also there's my fan curve at the moment

Yea, that curve seems extremely steep and would case the fans to constantly change speed. Personally I would set it to about 20% until 30C or so and set it to ramp up to 50% at about 60c.

[Eeglis]

1 minute ago, M.Yurizaki said:

You should smooth out the fan curve. Also are you sure the fan can operate that low of a percentage? Some fans can't go that low. My case fans for instance have a minimum of like 30%. Any lower and they effectively shut off.

I'm sure that most of the fans can operate below 30% and those that can't will be put to another PC.
 

[Mira Yurizaki]

4 minutes ago, Eeglis said:

I'm sure that most of the fans can operate below 30% and those that can't will be put to another PC.

A FAQ from Noctua says "minimum speed" on their fans is 20%. Your curve goes below 20%. There could also be reasons why the fans don't run down that low anyway:

 

Quote

Many mainboards do not go below 40%, 50% or even 60% PWM duty cycle on case fan headers. Please refer to your mainboard manual to verify whether the fan header actually goes down to 20% duty cycle. If that's not the case, in some cases you can use the fan speed control software supplied with your mainboard to overcome these limitations and reduce the fan speed even further. However, 3rd party tools like SpeedFan offer greater flexibility and better options to work around the limitations imposed by the mainboard vendors.

 

Some mainboards feature 4-pin fan headers that actually don‘t use a PWM signal on Pin 4 to control the fan speed but rather reduce the voltage on Pin 2 (like a standard 3-pin fan header). As the fan speed at minimum voltage is usually higher than the speed at 20% PWM duty cycle, the fan can not reach as low minimum speeds under voltage control as under PWM control. Please refer to your mainboard manual to check whether or not your mainboard has 4-pin fan headers that control the fan speed by reducing voltage on Pin 2 rather than by changing the PWM duty cycle on Pin 4:

If you want to go "how come the fan won't operate below X%?" Because the electricity being sent to drive the motors probably isn't overcoming what's necessary to push the fans around. If you had an LED working at 10% duty cycle off a 300Hz pulse, you'd probably see flickering more than what appears to be a solid light. And that wouldn't be useful.

[Eeglis]

5 minutes ago, pwn_intended said:

Yea, that curve seems extremely steep and would case the fans to constantly change speed. Personally I would set it to about 20% until 30C or so and set it to ramp up to 50% at about 60c.

20% sounds too loud and the CPU fans are still jumping from 500 to 680 RPM

[done12many2]

Your fan curve is as linear and steep as mine.  The problem with that is that your CPU temp will fluctuate a bit more than mine as you are on air cooling and I'm on water.  That temp fluctuation will cause your fans to ramp up and down aggressively as AI Suite tries to follow the curve your set.

 

You need to determine the average temp of your CPU when you are playing the games that you want to adjust the fans for.  Once you know that temp, you can set your fan curve to fluctuate a great deal less in that particular area by flattening the curve.

 

 

 

[pwn_intended]

Just now, Eeglis said:

20% sounds too loud and the CPU fans are still jumping from 500 to 680 RPM

If your NOCTUA fan is too loud at 20% duty, there is something wrong with that fan. (unless you are running the 3500RPM industrial fans)