Now that the Aquasuite software is installed, all the firmware is updated, and all the MPS devices are set up, it’s time to setup the temperature sensors, fans, and make some Curve Controllers which all happens in the Aquaero tab.
Each Aquaero has the ability to handle up to eight temperature sensors. Clicking on
Temperature Sensors in the right pane opens it up. By default each sensor is labeled Sensor 1, Sensor 2, and so on.
In the right red box you can see I added
Ambient Top to the end of the label for the ambient sensor located on the top of one of the top radiators. Also there is a second ambient sensor located in front of the left front radiator.
There are two water temperature sensors one in a front radiator and one in a top radiator. It looks like the last two letters got erased on sensor 3 in this screen shot. The rest of the sensors you see there are default sensors. The fan amplifiers can get warm when using voltage controlled fans under heavy load.
Now you can see the four temperature sensors I added.
Aquaero>Sensors
Next click on
Virtual Temperature Sensors to expand the box. Virtual sensors are awesome! In the first red box I named it
Ambient Ave Temp, I could have spelled it out, but this is also going to show on the Information Pages on the Aquaero display which you will see a little later on.
In the
Mode drop down box I selected
Average Temperature. In the Data Sources box below that I dragged both of my ambient temperature sensors over to the right. Now this virtual sensor is taking the average of both ambient temperature sensors. You can use up to three sensors here.
Aquaero>Sensors
Now I do the same setup with the two water temperature sensors, by averaging the two and making a virtual water temperature sensor I named
Water Ave Temp. Some people set their water temperature sensors to measure inlet, and outlet temperatures which is necessary if you want to use the Power Measurements feature of Aquasuite.
The water temperature really does not vary much throughout the loop, especially in a larger loop like this one. I don’t use the Power Measurements section at all any way; the main use of this virtual water temperature sensor is to use this with a Curve Controller which you will see shortly.
Now I’m going to make a third virtual sensor I’ll label
Water – Air Delta. This time under the Mode drop down box I select
Temperature Difference, and I’m going to use my
Ambient Ave Temp virtual temperature along with the
Water Ave Temp virtual temperature sensor. This sensor will be used as the
Data Source of my main Curve Controller.
I closed the
Temperature Sensors and
Virtual Temperature Sensors sections so we can take a look at the reset of the Sensors pane. The next section is
Software Temperature Sensors; here you can use either Aida 64 or HWiNFO monitoring programs to read any of the various sensors contained in those programs. I have both programs, but prefer HWiNFO for monitoring so that’s what I’m using.
The first one I use is
CPU Package Temp which is basically reading the max CPU core temperature. The second one I labeled
Dimm Temp, this reads the hottest of my four RAM sticks. The reason I’m using this is for the
Data Source of a Curve Controller.
Next are both GPU temperatures which I want to have on one of my Information Pages for the Aquaero display. The fifth software sensor is measuring the SSD temperature, which is also going to be used as a
Data Source for a Curve Controller. I still have room for three more software sensors.
I put a red box around the Fallback Temperature box to point out this default reading will be displayed if either software program you are using Aida 64 or HWiNFO is not running, then this will be displayed in Aquasuite or the Aquaero display.
If you see all your software sensors reading 50° you will know the program is not running. I have Aquasuite and HWiNFO set to start with Windows.
Under the Flow Sensor section this is how it ended up after setting up my Flow Sensor, not sure why it ended up in the last box, doesn’t really matter. The same for the Fill Level Sensor box, nothing to do here, and you can see it picked up the name I gave it previously.
Fan Settings
I am going to skip over the Controller tab here to start with because you have to set up all the fans properly before we can set up any Controllers.
The Aquaeros all come with four channels of fan control. Since I have two Aquaeros I have a total of eight fan channels. I have six radiators in total, 4 x 560, and 2 x 280 with a total of 30 140mm fans. I also have one 120mm fan in the HDD cage, and one 120mm fan in the rear of the case for exhaust.
There are also two small 40mm fans in the SSD hot swap bay unit on one fan channel, and I’m using the last fan channel to power the LEDs in the reservoirs, the CPU and HDD waterblocks as well as the acrylic pump top. Here’s is how the eight channels are set up in my system:
Fan Channel 1 – 8 push fans on both lower radiators
Fan Channel 2 – 8 fans on both front radiators
Fan Channel 3 – 6 pull fans on both top radiators
Fan Channel 4 – 8 push fans on both top radiators
Fan Channel 5 – rear case fan
Fan Channel 6 – 2 fans in SSD hot swap bay
Fan Channel 7 – HDD cage fan
Fan Channel 8 – LED power
Just so you know the EK Vardar fans I use draw too much amperage during startup, and trip the over current protection feature which shuts the channel off. So for the first four fan channels I have the fans all connected to Splittly9 fan splitters.
I have power and ground wired from the power supply to the Splitty9 to power the fans, and then ran the PWM and RPM wires to the appropriate Aquaero Fan Channel for control. In this first screen shot you can see all eight fan channels along the top of the right pane. There will only be four of these with a single Aquaero. If you do end up adding another Aquaero or two as a slave unit you will have to add the addition channels in the Controllers tab.
I’ve clicked on Fan Channel 1 and you can see that the Aquasuite makes the blue outline around the currently selected channel. The red box I put around the Name box in the Settings section shows where I left the default “Fan 1” and added the “Bottom 8” to the end of the name.
In this same Settings section I clicked on the Hold Minimum Power box and set the minimum power to 30%, you can either click the little arrows in the boxes or grab the slider.
In the Advanced Settings box I clicked on the PWM button since these are PWM fans. The minimum fan speed I set to 350 RPMs and maximum to 2,000 RPMs which is more than these fans will actually do.
I also use the Start Boost feature, this just turns the fans on max speed for the time specified which is set for 5 seconds here, before they drop down to the controlled speed.
Aquaero>Fan Settings
I did the same set up for Fan Channels 2, 3 and 4.
For Fan Channel 5 this is the single 120mm rear case fan. Set up similarly to the first four just slightly different settings.
Fan Channel 6 is the two 40mm fans in the SSD hot swap bays; these are standard three wire fans, so I set this channel to “Power Controlled”.
Here’s a shot of the fans I modded for the SSD hot swap bay, with the Aquaeros above. If you want to see the details of how I did this you can check it out
here.
Fan Channel 7 is another 120mm fan mounted in the HDD cage. This is set up as PWM controlled similarly to how Fan Channel 5 is set up.
See how Fan Channel 8 is greyed out, and there is a warning here “Attention: There is no controller set to this output” with a warning that this channel will run at 100%. This is fine for my use since this channel controls all of my LEDs which I want to run at full brightness anyways. There is just power and ground running from the Aquaero to the Splitty9 all the LEDs are connected to.
How to make Curve Controllers
Now that all the Sensor Inputs and Fan Settings are set up how you want them, you can make Curve Controllers to controller your fans. This is where the magic happens!
To get started press the “ADD +” button in the upper right corner. There are five options to choose from in the pop out box Curve Controller, Set Point Controller, Two Point Controller, Preset Value, and LED Controller.
Set Point controllers can adjust power to keep the temperature of the assigned data source constantly equal to the target value if possible. Two point controllers can switch assigned outputs on and off when the temperature reading of the data source rises above or falls below predefined values.
Preset values are fixed output values and do not have a data source and the RGB LED controllers can be used to change colors according to temperatures. For example green for normal temps, turning yellow with higher temps, and red for temps too high. This is to control the RGB LED output header on the back of the Aquaero.
I’ve really only ever used the Curve Controllers so that’s the only one I’ll be showing here. I have seen the other controllers used when for example if you want your fans to completely shut off under light load, or have your fans ramp up and down to keep your coolant between certain temperatures.
Here’s the Controller page with two Curve Controllers already set up. I named this first Curve Controller
“Fan Curve Radiators”, as this will control all 30 fans I have on the six radiators.
In the Data Source box I selected the
Water – Air Delta Virtual Temperature Sensor that was set up previously. In the Outputs box outlined in red on the right side I added all four fan channels that control the radiator fans as well as the one fan in the HDD cage on channel 7. I might move that channel 7 onto its own controller later, but for now this will work fine.
Next click on
Automatic Setup then the box expands to show where you can adjust the Minimum and Maximum Temperatures, as well as the Minimum and Maximum Power %. For my setup, the
Water – Air Delta rarely gets more than 4° even under max load.
I set my temperature range from .4° to 6°, and the power range from 13% to 100% Spend some time adjusting all of these numbers with your system at idle and under max load like RealBench until you get the fan speeds where you want them at both ends of the spectrum. My fans will never get down to 13%, but that got the rest of the curve where I wanted it. The curve starts out flat, but you can drag the slider to change how the curve ramps up and down.
This Curve Controller right here alone makes the investment into the Aquaero very much worth it! What makes this type of set up so awesome is that the fans will only slowly ramp up and down with your coolant temperature.
If you use something like CPU temps that vary drastically and quickly the fans are constantly ramping up and down quickly which is quite annoying. Also this automatically adjusts to your seasons, whether it’s cold in the winter, or hot in the summer the ambient temperatures do not affect how your fans operate since you are using the
Water – Air delta as the Data Source.
For the second Curve Controller I’m using my Software Sensor of the SSD temperature as the Data Source, notice how in this screen shot it shows 50°? That shows that my HWiNFO program was off when I took that screen shot. I named it SSD Fan Curve, and the Output is for Fan Channel 6 which only controls the 40mm fans in the SSD hot swap bay.
Aquaero>Controllers
This is the same page after I scrolled down you can see I have a third Curve Controller for Fan Channel 5 which controls the rear case fan. I found that when I was overclocking, and testing the system that the memory would get a little on the hot side when under heavy load. Because even under heavy load the fans are still not spinning anywhere near max speeds and there is not a lot of air flow across the memory sticks.
So I want this rear case fan to spin up to max speeds as the RAM gets hotter to pull more air across the RAM. This is where I’m going to use the software sensor that I labeled Dimm Temp, remember this is the hottest stick of RAM with the temperature reading coming from HWiNFO.
With this Curve Controller once the RAM hits 40° the fan will run at max speeds.