Fan control

[fepple]

Sorry for this noob question

Is it possible to control the speed of a 3 pin fan attached to a motherboard connector? I'd have thought it would be easy but any apps I try don't seem to work.

My motherboards a P5K-E Wifi.

[fepple]

Some more googling makes it seem that you cant control the speed of a 3 pin fan...

So any suggestions on Fan Controller, the Scythe Kama-Meter looks like a good one. Does anyone have any experience with it? Will I be able to adjust fans from 0 RPM to max (2000 rpm) or once I get below 5 volts will they pretty much turn off?

The fans I want to control are on my radiator, so really I'd like some automatic control. So when the CPU reachs a temperature the fans on the Rad dynamically turn up. Any suggestions for how to achieve that?

cheers

[mpilchfamily]

Depending on the motherboard the board is able to throttle fans based on temps. But if you want control you'll need to have a separate fan controller. No controller I've seen will drop a fan to 0RPMS. At least not giving you a full range. There are ones that will either have the fan off, @5V or @12V. Some of the more complex controller may allow you to adjust fan speed based on temps but then you'll have all sorts of extra wires running around to read the temps. But for the most part fan controllers may have temp readings but they are not tied into the fans to help control speed.

[fepple]

Yeah the mortherboard has the option to automatically throttle the fans based on the System temperature, but its not very feature full and is done in the BIOS. But thats not really any good to me as I have the three fans connected to a Rad, so they arent linked to system temperature.

[mpilchfamily]

Its best to leave the fans running full. Though there is a chance that you see no temp difference even if you run all of them at a lower RPM. It all depends on your setup. If you only have the CPU the a triple fan RAD may be overkill. I'd get a basic controller like this one and see if you get any difference in temps with lower fan speeds. If not then keep all the fans on low and move on.
http://www.frozencpu.com/products/987/bus-15/Zalman_ZM-MFC1_6-Channel_Fan_Controller.html?tl=g34c17s286

I use that controller in my CM690 case. As mentioned earlier it has the feature where it can run 2 fans at 0V, 5V, or 12V. But you'll need to cut the connector off the fan to plug it into that part of the controller.

[chinaguy]

I brought a cheap fan control box that just allows you to connect 4 fans to one HD power connector.

It allows you to control the fan speed of each of the 4 fans by an adjustable switch. So you can go from 100%rpm to around 20%rpm. So how its getting hot I can turn the fan infront of the HD to 100%, the 40mm fans over my ram to 100% and the 2 140mm fans in the side panel to 50%. I can turn them all to 100% when it gets even warmer.

Then in the winter time I can turn them all down to a quiet 20%.