Simple water-air delta PWM fan controller?

[stewi1014]

Hello,

I'm currently researching a workstation build I'm planning in the Corsair 1000D due to it's dual system support with a headless NAS/Streaming/part time game server with all traditionally controlled air cooling; note no 5.25" bays in the 1000D. As I'm sure many of you are aware there the 1000D houses a huge number of fans. I'm currently stumped on how I can control fan speed on the 8 radiator fans. The rest I can control fine with PWM splitters and extension cables. I'm going to be dual booting Linux and Windows on the main machine and will be booting windows no more than once a month, so would like to stay away from fan controllers that involve software not supported on Linux.

 

It seems ridiculously simple to me, but I've failed to find anything that will do this without a large OLED screen in a 5.25" mounting and a plethora of hardware and software that I'll either never use, or can't run.

 

TL;DR: I have 8 fans than I need to control based on the difference between water and air temp.

Is there a product that can take two temperature inputs, calculate a delta, apply a simple fan curve, and generate a PWM signal based on the result?

 

Edit: I should note that I'll be happy with most any reasonable fan curve. Being able to change it is not a requirement for me.

[BensNo1Fan]

2 minutes ago, stewi1014 said:

Hello,

I'm currently researching a workstation build I'm planning in the Corsair 1000D due to it's dual system support with a headless NAS/Streaming/part time game server with all traditionally controlled air cooling; note no 5.25" bays in the 1000D. As I'm sure many of you are aware there the 1000D houses a huge number of fans. I'm currently stumped on how I can control fan speed on the 8 radiator fans. The rest I can control fine with PWM splitters and extension cables. I'm going to be dual booting Linux and Windows on the main machine and will be booting windows no more than once a month, so would like to stay away from fan controllers that involve software not supported on Linux.

 

It seems ridiculously simple to me, but I've failed to find anything that will do this without a large OLED screen in a 5.25" mounting and a plethora of hardware and software that I'll either never use, or can't run.

 

TL;DR: I have 8 fans than I need to control based on the difference between water and air temp.

Is there a product that can take two temperature inputs, calculate a delta, apply a simple fan curve, and generate a PWM signal based on the result?

 

I believe youre describing a PWM fan controller, like one from corsair or something.

 

 

[stewi1014]

12 minutes ago, BensNo1Fan said:

 

I believe youre describing a PWM fan controller, like one from corsair or something.

 

 

Is there nothing cheaper and simpler than the commander pro? Could I really set and forget it from windows?

 

Edit: It wouldn't support Linux would it?

[That_Dutch_Guy]

An arduino could easily do it

[BensNo1Fan]

Apparently according to this: http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=175667

No linux support

[stewi1014]

Seems to me like someone needs to make a $5 board with some basic logic and a bunch of fan connectors. Maybe a variable resistor or two to configure fan curve.

 

Edit: Heck, production cost of something like that could be well under $1 for numbers over 1000pcs produced.

[Dschijn]

The Aquaero for sure, but that is not cheap.

[For Science!]

6 hours ago, stewi1014 said:

Seems to me like someone needs to make a $5 board with some basic logic and a bunch of fan connectors. Maybe a variable resistor or two to configure fan curve.

 

Edit: Heck, production cost of something like that could be well under $1 for numbers over 1000pcs produced.

2 pin temperature sensor as a stop plug and an Asus motherboard. This is what i use in my 900D build.

[stewi1014]

3 hours ago, For Science! said:

2 pin temperature sensor as a stop plug and an Asus motherboard. This is what i use in my 900D build.

I'll start trawling through the manuals of the motherboards I'm considering and see what I can find. After thinking it over an Arduino might not be such a bad choice. I'd like to keep things simple, but an Arduino could offer some interesting functionality. Does it have an adequate analogue to digital converter to read multiple temperature sensors, or would I have to jerry rig some kind of capacitor charge/discharge circuit to read them?

[For Science!]

1 minute ago, stewi1014 said:

-

I belive MSI and ASUS motherboard are the main ones that have 2-pin temperature sensor headers natively on the motherboard which the value can be read in BIOS. Fans can be tied to this temperature directly since the principle of water cooling is: "If water is hot, fans on radiator need to spin", "If water is cold, no need to spin fans on radiator". Therefore air/water delta is not important since, if your coolant temperature is 10 degrees celcius and the ambient is -20 degrees celcius, there is a 30 degree delta, but absolutely no need to spin the fans up.

 

In contrast, if your fluid temperature is 50 degrees celcius and your ambient temperature is also 50 degrees celcius, which you have a delta of 0 degrees, it is in your best interest to keep your fans at 100% to make sure your fluid temperature doesn't exceed the rated 55-60 degrees max temperature.

 

I also have a dual-linux/windows system and so I keep everything controlled by the BIOS, and have a fan curve attached to T_SENSOR1, which is my 2-pin temperature sensor and have a fan curve that starts at 0% from a fluid tempertaure of 35 degrees, and goes to 100 % at about 55 degrees (-5 from the max temp of a D5 pump). So its quite a steep fan curve going from 0-100 across 20 degrees or so, but this is how to control a fans properly for a watercooled setup, in my opinion.

[stewi1014]

38 minutes ago, For Science! said:

I belive MSI and ASUS motherboard are the main ones that have 2-pin temperature sensor headers natively on the motherboard which the value can be read in BIOS. Fans can be tied to this temperature directly since the principle of water cooling is: "If water is hot, fans on radiator need to spin", "If water is cold, no need to spin fans on radiator". Therefore air/water delta is not important since, if your coolant temperature is 10 degrees celcius and the ambient is -20 degrees celcius, there is a 30 degree delta, but absolutely no need to spin the fans up.

 

In contrast, if your fluid temperature is 50 degrees celcius and your ambient temperature is also 50 degrees celcius, which you have a delta of 0 degrees, it is in your best interest to keep your fans at 100% to make sure your fluid temperature doesn't exceed the rated 55-60 degrees max temperature.

 

I also have a dual-linux/windows system and so I keep everything controlled by the BIOS, and have a fan curve attached to T_SENSOR1, which is my 2-pin temperature sensor and have a fan curve that starts at 0% from a fluid tempertaure of 35 degrees, and goes to 100 % at about 55 degrees (-5 from the max temp of a D5 pump). So its quite a steep fan curve going from 0-100 across 20 degrees or so, but this is how to control a fans properly for a watercooled setup, in my opinion.

Good point about the temperature delta. I was thinking about seasonal differences causing fans to run faster in summer, but you're exactly right; the 'right' temperature in the loop is agnostic to the ambient temperature.

 

I'm feeling more and more convinced that the motherboard is the way to go with this, just time consuming to find and scour the manuals for them all.

 

I was looking for x299 motherboards that have 10Gig Ethernet I could run to the server, but haven't found any that also have temperature sensing. I'll be able to run the cable internally if I use 10Gig cards on PCIe extentions, so would make it cleaner, if a bit more expensive. All that networking and EMI protection overhead for two systems a few cm apart.. In any other scenario transferring data in this fashion would be absurd.

[For Science!]

1 hour ago, stewi1014 said:

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The ROG Rampage VI Extreme has onboard Aqantia AQC-107 Ethernet and also multiple 2-pin temperature headers (#16, #19 in the manual). This is the highest end board from Asus for X299 and so I imagine it costs a fair bit, but if that means you don't have to buy a 10 Gig network interface....maybe worth it?

 

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ROG-RAMPAGE-VI-EXTREME/

 

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA2066/ROG_RAMPAGE_VI_EXTREME/E13932_ROG_RAMPAGE_VI_EXTREME_UM_V2_WEB.pdf

[stewi1014]

7 hours ago, For Science! said:

The ROG Rampage VI Extreme has onboard Aqantia AQC-107 Ethernet and also multiple 2-pin temperature headers (#16, #19 in the manual). This is the highest end board from Asus for X299 and so I imagine it costs a fair bit, but if that means you don't have to buy a 10 Gig network interface....maybe worth it?

 

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ROG-RAMPAGE-VI-EXTREME/

 

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA2066/ROG_RAMPAGE_VI_EXTREME/E13932_ROG_RAMPAGE_VI_EXTREME_UM_V2_WEB.pdf

Wow, that's quite the board. Thanks for that. It's certainly well suited to custom loops. I'll keep it in mind. Thanks.