Options for fan control

Anjow

Anjow

Anjow

Associate
Joined
31 Jan 2006
Posts
19
This is purely a vanity project to do something I wanted to do when I was much younger but couldn't afford to then.

I've presently got:
  • MSI Z390-A PRO ATX LGA1151 motherboard
  • i7 9700K
  • Patriot Viper Steel 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 memory
  • Intel 660p Series 2.048 TB M.2-2280 NVME SSD
  • MSI 3080 Ti Suprim X
  • ADX Power W750 Modular ATX PSU
  • Cooler Master Stacker 830 case
The case is way too big. I want to make the following changes:
  • Lian Li PC-O11 Dynamic case in black
  • NZXT Kraken X73 AIO 360mm
  • Lian Li O11D-1 vertical GPU mount kit (I'm aware this is PCI-E 3.0 only - my board only supports that)
  • Some RGB fans - ideally 3 on the bottom, 3 on the top - I realise the mount may be an issue with this
  • PSU 'extension' cables that look nicer than the basic black I've currently got. Alternatively a replacement PSU if it's cheaper to achieve something nicer looking - by which I mean uniform, tidy, not tangled. I don't care about lights on these.
Some questions that I got stuck on and I hoped folks could help with please:
  • With the vertical GPU mount, are all the fan positions on the bottom unusable? Is there a different/better mount that I should be getting which allows fans to be used in these, but still doesn't have the card too close to the window?
  • In the future can I swap out the PCI-E cable for a 4.0 one?
  • How can I control the fan colours? I saw options for fan controllers, internal USB hubs, etc. but this is way beyond anything available when I last considered what my PC looks like. Is anyone able to recommend something for this purpose please?
  • Can you recommend any 120mm RGB fans to work with this?
  • Are there any incompatibilities here that I've not thought of? Any missing requirements?
I'm not particularly price sensitive, as evidenced by this project which by all accounts is completely unnecessary and stands to gain me nothing more than something pretty looking.

Any advice would be much appreciated.
 

EsaT

EsaT

EsaT

Soldato
Joined
6 Jun 2008
Posts
11,618
Location
Finland
Arctic Freezer II is lot beefier cooler at correct price level.

PCIe v4 has lot tighter requirements for signal quality than v3.
So doubtful there will be PCIe v4 risers at least on consumer (price) level, because any longer ones would require active signal "amplifiers"/retimers.


For controlling PWM fan speeds Aqua Computer Quadro or Octo would be way superior to others in features.
(Aquaero 6 can control both standard and PWM fans)
RGB control is again lot messier.
 

Anjow

Anjow

Anjow

Associate
OP
Joined
31 Jan 2006
Posts
19
Thanks, however I am picking the cooler based purely on aesthetics and I'm not particularly fond of how that Arctic Freezer II looks - performance is kind of irrelevant in my case as my current air cooler does just fine and I'm not overclocking.

The main thing I am trying to understand is how I can control the RGB fans. For example on the NZXT site they have this fan controller and this internal USB hub - if I use both of these does that make the fans controllable via Windows? If I'm going to get other coloured fans do they need to be NZXT ones? Can they be daisy-chained or will each fan take up one channel/port on the controller?
 

EsaT

EsaT

EsaT

Soldato
Joined
6 Jun 2008
Posts
11,618
Location
Finland
Anjow said:
The main thing I am trying to understand is how I can control the RGB fans. For example on the NZXT site they have this fan controller and this internal USB hub - if I use both of these does that make the fans controllable via Windows? If I'm going to get other coloured fans do they need to be NZXT ones? Can they be daisy-chained or will each fan take up one channel/port on the controller?
Click to expand...
That controller has just three fan channels which is really bare minimum.
Also price comes from it being dumb device with no intelligence, or temperature sensor capability in it and all control is done by CPU power hogging bloatware:
https://youtu.be/NzAeAFudylI?t=370

Aqua Computer puts own small processor into their controllers, which runs the fan control basing on what its programmed to do using AquaSuite.
Hence if using only physical temperature sensors connected to it, there would be no need for any background software.


RGB control is again messy with many different standards.
Or actually cheapest basic RGB devices usually run by some prebuilt logic when getting power.
So called "Addressable" RGB was then made to actually control colours, but there have been few different ones.
Also Aqua Computer and some others have also their own RGB systems.
 

Pocket10s

Pocket10s

Pocket10s

Associate
Joined
4 Oct 2014
Posts
513
Anjow said:
This is purely a vanity project to do something I wanted to do when I was much younger but couldn't afford to then.

I've presently got:
  • MSI Z390-A PRO ATX LGA1151 motherboard
  • i7 9700K
  • Patriot Viper Steel 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 memory
  • Intel 660p Series 2.048 TB M.2-2280 NVME SSD
  • MSI 3080 Ti Suprim X
  • ADX Power W750 Modular ATX PSU
  • Cooler Master Stacker 830 case
The case is way too big. I want to make the following changes:
  • Lian Li PC-O11 Dynamic case in black
  • NZXT Kraken X73 AIO 360mm
  • Lian Li O11D-1 vertical GPU mount kit (I'm aware this is PCI-E 3.0 only - my board only supports that)
  • Some RGB fans - ideally 3 on the bottom, 3 on the top - I realise the mount may be an issue with this
  • PSU 'extension' cables that look nicer than the basic black I've currently got. Alternatively a replacement PSU if it's cheaper to achieve something nicer looking - by which I mean uniform, tidy, not tangled. I don't care about lights on these.
Some questions that I got stuck on and I hoped folks could help with please:
  • With the vertical GPU mount, are all the fan positions on the bottom unusable? Is there a different/better mount that I should be getting which allows fans to be used in these, but still doesn't have the card too close to the window?
  • In the future can I swap out the PCI-E cable for a 4.0 one?
  • How can I control the fan colours? I saw options for fan controllers, internal USB hubs, etc. but this is way beyond anything available when I last considered what my PC looks like. Is anyone able to recommend something for this purpose please?
  • Can you recommend any 120mm RGB fans to work with this?
  • Are there any incompatibilities here that I've not thought of? Any missing requirements?
I'm not particularly price sensitive, as evidenced by this project which by all accounts is completely unnecessary and stands to gain me nothing more than something pretty looking.

Any advice would be much appreciated.
Click to expand...

If your considering a new PSU, why not go for the O-11 Mini with a Corsair SF750 Platinum? They come with really nice braided cables too.
 
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