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Custom wiring & fan controlling

331 views 10 replies 4 participants last post by  axipher 
#1 ·
Hi guys,

I've been eyeballing the forums for a while now, and had a project in mind since the beginning of 2016 now, but kept delaying because of availability. I got some time on my hands now, and i said i should not waist the opportunity to start building a rig. So i've successfully ordered a bunch of components and planned a roadmap for myself but now i have some questions about custom wiring / sleeving and how everything goes together.

I am pretty much in order with what needs to be done, but i'm failing on the part where i need 6 fans to sync and look for CPU and GPU temps for ramping up when it needs and slow down when in idle/easy workload, i am usually not shutting down the pc but just logging off. In terms of motherboard, i got the Asus ROG x99 Strix as i've read good things about it and it seems to have the best performance/cost ratio. The motherboard being part from last generation of asus mobos comes with some pretty juicy options when it comes to fan controlling.

Code:

Code:
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ROG-STRIX-X99-GAMING/#x99_stop
I know most of you guys are using hardware based fan controllers like the one from aquatuning, though for me this is not an option since i need space to work with in my case which is In Win 509 Full Tower. Yes, it has a 5.25 bay but i cannot use it since my water tubes will need to use the space behind it, so my only option is to do a bunch of splitters and connect directly to the motherboard. My question is where could i find the connectors and the wires to get started on those, or should i use a hub? I'm in Europe, and pretty much all retailers i know of doesnt sell this kind of stuff. Also if there's someone that have already done something similar i'd be grateful if you could share the experience and give a tip or two on how its done. The other thing that is unclear to me is how would i go look for GPU temps for adjusting the fans speed, or is it just from the software/bios . I will have a loop that goes like this: res -> pump -> rad1 -> gpu -> gpu -> rad2 -> cpu -> goes back to res.

Another thing that is bothering me a bit is related to led strips. I kind of want to use 2 small UV leds connected to a on/off switch so that i can shut them down during the day (this is easy part), and another RGB strip or two that would influence the colors of the coolant/case connected through Asus's AURA port on the mobo. The question is how can i connect the strips and possible, multiple others single leds to be in sync with AURA?

I'm really grateful for you guys. I've learned a lot in the past month from your build logs, thank you. Also if you have some tips on good practices when it comes to water-cooling i'd be happy to hear them out, i'm listing my specs down below.
Case: In Win 509 ROG Full Tower Case
PSU: 1200w EVGA SuperNOVA P2 PSU
Mobo: Asus ROG STRIX X99 GAMING
CPU: Intel Core i7 6850K
GPU: 8G EVGA GTX1080 FTW GAMING ACX (will be upgraded to a 2-way SLI 1080TI soon after CES in January)
Ram: 32G (4x8) Corsair Vengeance LED 3200 BlueL [16-18-18-36]
Rear Fan: be quiet 140mm Silent Wings 2 PWM (as intake)
Storage: 512 Samsung 950 M.2 PCIe NVMe (will add more ssds after i'm done with moding the case, for now i just need to test if everything works)

In terms of watercooling:
Rad: 2 x EK-CoolStream XE 360 (currently i only ordered one - need to measure if there's space for second) or EK-CoolStream XE 360 and HW-Labs Nemesis 360 GTS
Fans: 6 x be quiet PURE WINGS 2 120mm PWM
CPU block: EK-Supremacy EVO Elite Edition - Intel 2011-3
Pomp: EK-D5 PWM G2 Motor

The rest are a bunch of Bitspower combinations of Reservoir & tops/mods for the pomp. I'm going to use bitspower for fittings as well.
Tubes will be Acrylic ones, not decided yet if 10mm or 13mm.
 
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#2 ·
I used this hub to connect 5 fans to the CPU fan header. The only issue I had involved all 5 fans sending a RPM signal to a single header. I fixed that by clipping the RPM pin on all but 2 of the hub headers (see this thread). Works like a charm.
Also, be sure you don't overdraw from the header. Usually the max amperage is around 1 Amp. If your fans will draw more than the upper limit of the header, the hub can be powered separately using the SATA power connector on the hub.
 
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#3 ·
Thanks, will be looking to do something similar. Would it be possible to have two splitters (3fans on each side) connected to different ports on the mobo? Like you said, i don't want to overuse the cpu header, but then they wont be in sync right?
 
#4 ·
It is possible and they will be in sync. The board sends the same PWM signal to all the headers at the same time.
And all you need to do is add the max draw of the fans and compare that to the amount the header is able to supply.
 
#5 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by dar3devil View Post

Thanks, will be looking to do something similar. Would it be possible to have two splitters (3fans on each side) connected to different ports on the mobo? Like you said, i don't want to overuse the cpu header, but then they wont be in sync right?
If you connect both splitters to the motherboard and the BIOS gives the same control options for both, and all the fans are the same, you *should* get pretty close to the same speeds from all the fans.

I've never been a fan of putting more than one fan on any motherboard header, in my mind, why risk killing a fan header on your motherboard when there are plenty of 6+ channel fan splitters that take external SATA or Molex power to save your motherboard port. I would much rather risk overloading a $20-$30 powered fan-splitter than losing a fan header completely on my $100+ motherboard.

I've seen too many people try to run higher amperage fans like the Ultra Kaze 3000 RPM models, or multiple fans off headers for water cooling RADs and then the motherboard header gets overworked and either:

- stops working completely

- loses all control and stay 100% on all the time

- gets stuck at some random percentage and can't be changed

One thing to keep in mind is most fans amperage is determined by just running the fan at 12 V, but as soon as you start adding and sort of restriction like a radiator, heat sink, or high "positive pressure build", the fan motors are going to have work a little harder and start pulling a little more current than their label says. I've seen my Gentle Typhoon AP-15's pull up to 0.12 A when mounted directly to a water cooling radiator instead of their listed 0.083A.
 
#6 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by axipher View Post

One thing to keep in mind is most fans amperage is determined by just running the fan at 12 V, but as soon as you start adding and sort of restriction like a radiator, heat sink, or high "positive pressure build", the fan motors are going to have work a little harder and start pulling a little more current than their label says. I've seen my Gentle Typhoon AP-15's pull up to 0.12 A when mounted directly to a water cooling radiator instead of their listed 0.083A.
This is true but even under these conditions, he'd still be able to run 6 of those fans off a 1A header and still have a 25% factor of safety. Like I said, check the sum fan amperage before you decide on splitter size.
 
#7 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by axipher View Post

I've never been a fan of putting more than one fan on any motherboard header, in my mind, why risk killing a fan header on your motherboard when there are plenty of 6+ channel fan splitters that take external SATA or Molex power to save your motherboard port. I would much rather risk overloading a $20-$30 powered fan-splitter than losing a fan header completely on my $100+ motherboard.
That makes a lot of sense. I have read somewhere around about something similar but someone mentioned that it is not possible to read/control the fan if you're just connecting it to a power source, i'll look into it thoroughly, i guess i missed something. Thanks a lot for your input.
 
#8 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fleacircus View Post

Quote:
Originally Posted by axipher View Post

One thing to keep in mind is most fans amperage is determined by just running the fan at 12 V, but as soon as you start adding and sort of restriction like a radiator, heat sink, or high "positive pressure build", the fan motors are going to have work a little harder and start pulling a little more current than their label says. I've seen my Gentle Typhoon AP-15's pull up to 0.12 A when mounted directly to a water cooling radiator instead of their listed 0.083A.
This is true but even under these conditions, he'd still be able to run 6 of those fans off a 1A header and still have a 25% factor of safety. Like I said, check the sum fan amperage before you decide on splitter size.
I did forget to mention start-up current, with small fan motors it's not as bad, but when a motor starts, it pulls much higher than its regular running current. So if you have multiple fans and they all see 2-3x their running current on start-up, this may only be for a split second, but it might be enough of a in-rush current to damage the motherboard header.

Quote:
Originally Posted by dar3devil View Post

Quote:
Originally Posted by axipher View Post

I've never been a fan of putting more than one fan on any motherboard header, in my mind, why risk killing a fan header on your motherboard when there are plenty of 6+ channel fan splitters that take external SATA or Molex power to save your motherboard port. I would much rather risk overloading a $20-$30 powered fan-splitter than losing a fan header completely on my $100+ motherboard.
That makes a lot of sense. I have read somewhere around about something similar but someone mentioned that it is not possible to read/control the fan if you're just connecting it to a power source, i'll look into it thoroughly, i guess i missed something. Thanks a lot for your input.
Well that depends on the fan type, if it's a 3-pin fan or a 4-pin fan using PWM control.

In the case of a 3-pin fan, the 12 V line is actually varied form ~7 V - 12 V to vary the fan speed, since it's using the 12 V line from the power supply, this means that at any thing below 100% fan speed, the motherboard's fan voltage regulator has to shed that voltage difference as a small amount of heat and this amount of heat rises as you run higher current or more fans. Now this isn't that much heat, but it becomes an issue when using splitters to multiple fans on the header. so when you hook up a powered 3-pin fan splitter, it will most likely have some voltage regulators or MOSFET's on that board that will "forward" through that reduced 7-12V signal from the motherboard to all the fans so that the motherboard header is not really being pushed at all.

Now in a 4-pin WM control system, the 12 V to the fan is always at 12 V, the 4th wire sends a pulsing square wave that changes how long it's on and off for. So at 25% fan speed, the fan is turning on for 1 millisecond, then off for 3 milliseconds (actually a lot smaller, just trying to simplify). so in the fan itself, it sees that pulsing signal and has some little controller in the fan hub that turns 12 V power to the fan motor on and off really quickly. This allows you to change the speed of a ton of fans really easily and is more efficient then regular 3-pin "linear" control. So on a 4-pin powered fan splitter, the external power from molex is sent to all the fans, the the 4th wire PWM signal is just split to each fan to adjust speed at each fan.

There are many different way to control 3-pin and 4-pin fans and pumps on top of the regular "linear voltage control on 3-pin" or the "PWM control on 4-pin" and variations which is why it's normally easier to just stick to a full fan controller and plug the fans on to that and look for one that has the kind of control you want.
 
#9 ·
Assuming that the OP is using pwm fans if you use a powered fan hub all the you need to worry about is if the pwm signal is strong enough. I know certain fans (ex: corsair sp120) you couldn't link to many off 1 header without the pwm signal not reaching them all. So it will depend on the fan and the splitter used. Some powered fan splitters use a capacitor to help smooth out the signal silverstones fan hub/splitter does this. That strix board has a cpu header, a op cpu header, a high amp fan header, water pump header which is pretty much a cpu header. You can also use a temp probes, and link them to a certain header though I haven't done that yet and don't know how well it works. So as long as it's pwm fans you should have enough power.
 
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#10 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon720 View Post

Assuming that the OP is using pwm fans if you use a powered fan hub all the you need to worry about is if the pwm signal is strong enough. I know certain fans (ex: corsair sp120) you couldn't link to many off 1 header without the pwm signal not reaching them all. So it will depend on the fan and the splitter used. Some powered fan splitters use a capacitor to help smooth out the signal silverstones fan hub/splitter does this. That strix board has a cpu header, a op cpu header, a high amp fan header, water pump header which is pretty much a cpu header. You can also use a temp probes, and link them to a certain header though I haven't done that yet and don't know how well it works. So as long as it's pwm fans you should have enough options.
Yes, the fans i have are all pwm and the same model, except the one that will go in the rear of the case, but that will be on its own. Using a temp probe/sensor sounds really appealing to me, i'm going to research that a bit, thanks.

Quote:
Originally Posted by axipher View Post

This allows you to change the speed of a ton of fans really easily and is more efficient then regular 3-pin "linear" control. So on a 4-pin powered fan splitter, the external power from molex is sent to all the fans, the the 4th wire PWM signal is just split to each fan to adjust speed at each fan.
Thank you, i found a bunch of splitters that uses a supplementary molex besides a bunch of PWM connectors, and they're sleeved as well (less work for me). Can't believe i haven't stumbled upon them earlier.

Thank you all for your help.
 
#11 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by dar3devil View Post

Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon720 View Post

Assuming that the OP is using pwm fans if you use a powered fan hub all the you need to worry about is if the pwm signal is strong enough. I know certain fans (ex: corsair sp120) you couldn't link to many off 1 header without the pwm signal not reaching them all. So it will depend on the fan and the splitter used. Some powered fan splitters use a capacitor to help smooth out the signal silverstones fan hub/splitter does this. That strix board has a cpu header, a op cpu header, a high amp fan header, water pump header which is pretty much a cpu header. You can also use a temp probes, and link them to a certain header though I haven't done that yet and don't know how well it works. So as long as it's pwm fans you should have enough options.
Yes, the fans i have are all pwm and the same model, except the one that will go in the rear of the case, but that will be on its own. Using a temp probe/sensor sounds really appealing to me, i'm going to research that a bit, thanks.

Quote:
Originally Posted by axipher View Post

This allows you to change the speed of a ton of fans really easily and is more efficient then regular 3-pin "linear" control. So on a 4-pin powered fan splitter, the external power from molex is sent to all the fans, the the 4th wire PWM signal is just split to each fan to adjust speed at each fan.
Thank you, i found a bunch of splitters that uses a supplementary molex besides a bunch of PWM connectors, and they're sleeved as well (less work for me). Can't believe i haven't stumbled upon them earlier.

Thank you all for your help.
No problem, glad to help out
 
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