120mm Fan Testing on an MCR120 Radiator Round 6

[Martinm210]

FWIW, the folks over at cystalfontz say this about PWM minimums on their 3 pin PWM fan controller:

Limiting the minimum PWM duty cycle to 30% or 40% should reduce the mechanical and electrical stresses in the fan, avoiding premature failure.

Although they use a different type of PWM (also 3 pin), I can actually feel the fan kick on and off with their controller at lower settings. Anyhow, apparently there is at least some thought that low PWM is also not good for the fan. Perhaps low voltage regulation is no better for that either, but voltage is better for sound quality from the little testing I've tried.

I personally would rather get away from software all together and have an analog solution that uses voltage regulation. Anyone with multiple loops would probably want one control setup for each and may or may not have more than one PWM MB header and may or may not want to mess with extra software and background tasks to control that. I wouldn't mind if something could be programmed and shut down late, but I wouldn't like have to keep a process like easytune running in the background all the time.