fan controller

[bonesaw]

hey guys i was thinking that i need a fan controller when the other day i unpluged my 2 120cm fans located and the top of the case and the bottom floor of the case and it was insanely quite for me at least. the reason i didn't jump right in and buy one is because i had own one before. i went through the trouble of hooking all my fans up to it (had 4 at the time) and booted and saw smoke. Inraged i pulled out the controller bare handed and cursed its name. Not wanting to run into something like this again i was wondering if anyone has a good fan controller that they could recomend. I want it mainly for the to two fans i mentioned above and the side case fan i have. if i can have these three fans off when not playing games that would make a huge difference when listening to music and movies, and just turn them on to game would be awesome.

[QSDT]

I made my own for $10 au using a op-amp with a 20 amp rating. But I got the Hz wrong and the fans are noisier now when I turn them down it's a weird high pitched wine, so I'll have to take it out and change the Hz. But I do have full vari speed from 100% to 0 running 5 fans.

[Samuknow]

I have both a home brew and a Nexus. I think that is it. Works great. the Nexus does not bring them down to 0. But very slow....

[d16man]

I have the Ultra fan commander, it will do seven fans, and monitor 3 different temps (HDD, CPU, CASE)...I like it a lot and I got it cheap...

[bonesaw]

i really just want to be able to turn the fans off without opening my case and finding the wire and pulling out when the computer is on.

[QSDT]

Originally Posted by bonesaw

i really just want to be able to turn the fans off without opening my case and finding the wire and pulling out when the computer is on.

Well thats easy, just buy a toggle switch and wire your fans power through it, drill a hole somewhere in your case poke the switch through it and your done, on & off whenever you want.

[bonesaw]

how do you do that? my dad probaly has some switch i can steel to make this happen.

[dabaerman]

yeh, if on/off is the control you want, then a simple on/off switch is what
you want. you can use an old AT Power swich to control 1 or more fans.
I have 2 from pcToys (system maxx), 1 in 5.25in bay, another for 3.5. each
will control 4 fans, have blue led's and are reasonably priced.
hope you get what works for ya.

Ron

[QSDT]

Well with my fans I've joined all of the wires together from 4 fans so thats 4 black joined to one and the 4 red ones joined to one, and then these go to your molex 4 pin connector. So what you do is to put the switch in between one of your 4 joined fan wires, after where you have joined them together but before your molex connector with enough wire to reach where you want the switch to go. So that when you turn the switch off it cuts the power to the fans your done.

[bonesaw]

I'll see what my dad says because he is a carpenter and has all the parts and know how to do this. I might have to use a light switch but i'll take a picture of the finished product to show.

[booman]

I bought two Sunbeam Chromatic Windmills and I love em. They can control 7 fans with 5 speeds. And it comes with three thermal sensors. It has some animating lights and the time.
For some reason it never shows the correct time but I love checking my temps when playing games.
The first one I kinda messed up by soldering my own extension cable for a fan. Here is my thread on my concerns with the controller.
Just make sure you buy fans with the 3-pin female adapter. With out em they won't connect to the controller.