Temperature controlled fan controller?

[Red Squirrel]

When I search for fan controller on retail sites I just get front panel type where you can manually control the speed. Do they make some fan controllers that are simply a device you put in the computer and it revs up/down the fan based on temperature? I may be searching for wrong thing but can't find any. If not I'm thinking of just making my own with Arduino as it would not be too hard. Basically it would be a temperature controlled buck converter that goes between 6-12v or so. It would basically aim to keep the case temperature at 25C or lower and rev up/down as required, though there would be some delay to it so it's not jumping all over.

Basically it would be controlling 3 200 CFM 120mm fans. They draw 2.5a each. So not even sure if PC fan controllers would even handle that much current anyway. These bad boys: https://www.digikey.ca/products/en?keywords=1570-1122-ND

 

[BonzaiDuck]

When I search for fan controller on retail sites I just get front panel type where you can manually control the speed. Do they make some fan controllers that are simply a device you put in the computer and it revs up/down the fan based on temperature? I may be searching for wrong thing but can't find any. If not I'm thinking of just making my own with Arduino as it would not be too hard. Basically it would be a temperature controlled buck converter that goes between 6-12v or so. It would basically aim to keep the case temperature at 25C or lower and rev up/down as required, though there would be some delay to it so it's not jumping all over.

Basically it would be controlling 3 200 CFM 120mm fans. They draw 2.5a each. So not even sure if PC fan controllers would even handle that much current anyway. These bad boys: https://www.digikey.ca/products/en?keywords=1570-1122-ND

Well, Bro -- you're a veteran member here. I'm trying to figure out if I understand what you're asking for, or that this is just a gap in your knowledge. There should be a few add-on controllers, some with their own processor, which communicate with the PC through USB to grab the temperatures from the CPU and motherboard sensors, and allow creation of "fan curves" in their proprietary software for thermally-controlled fan speeds.

One that I'm thinking of is the Aquaero line of fan controllers:

Aquaero 6

There should also be Aquaero variants that have only an internal circuit board and don't take up a front panel bay.

I still think the best solution includes selecting a motherboard with sufficient PWM and 3-pin ports, or ports that allow either PWM or voltage control of 3-pin fans. With current gen motherboards, you should be able to set the fan-curves within the BIOS and avoid installing Windows software for that purpose.

But now I see that you are using some very beefy fans -- drawing more amps than a motherboard can handle. You would have to see whether something like the Aquaero supports that kind of wattage. If not, I would hope that your fans are of the PWM variety. In that case, you could get a PWM splitter like Swiftech makes, control the fans via a PWM signal from the motherboard, and power the fans directly from the PSU.

And looking again -- Nah -- those fans are simply voltage controllable. You might want to look at some controllers by NZXT, but again, I might think it unlikely they would control fans of 12V and 2.5A.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I was thinking something that is stand alone, you just plug a 4 pin molex connector in and then have fans connect via terminal block or something. I don't like software solutions as it usually relies on Windows. Considered motherboard headers but I want to be able to put the sensor in a strategic area and I also don't want to limit my motherboard selection based on number of headers. This is for a mining rig so the source of heat will be the GPUs.

Probably just end up making my own as I already have an idea of how I will do it, and I may even get PCBs made for it and sell the modules on Amazon or something. Just wanted to make sure there may not already be something that exists. Would keep price under $100. That aquaero looks neat though but way more than I want to pay.

I recall I had this one way back in the day that was like a small pyramid shape. Had a sensor at the tip of the pyramid. The temp curve on it was kinda odd though, it did not really do much difference.

 

[aigomorla]

2.5a x 3 = 7.5a x 12 = 90W....

i cant think of anything off the top of my head that can handle that much amperage...
A sunbeam rheobuss extreme sort of comes into mind, but its not pwm style.

You would need a pwm controller, i have a few ideas which might work however how good are you in programming an adreno?

With all the options added and the dedicated psu, i know if its possible to even do it sub 100 tho, because ur drawing 7.5a.

 

[Red Squirrel]

The arduino can do pwm, so what I'll probably do is have it read the temperature sensor, if it goes above the set threshold, it will bump the duty cycle, and wait a bit. Then bump again, and so on until it's stable. If it goes much lower then it would slow down. Idea is to not run it at full tilt if not needed. The pwm would drive a decent size mosfet which would then drive the fans. Wonder if I can connect it directly actually... that would save some steps, if not I may need inductor and diode and do a basic buck converter topology.

Also won't be sticking an actual arduino in there but rather the atmel chip on some protoboard with the required components. But yeah this is a lot of power. I almost need a fan for my fan controller.

 

[aigomorla]

i highly doubt you could power the unit directly though the adreno...

i have yet to see a module handle that much power... lol...

you would most likely need to wire a secondary psu though it like how the guys who make custom led's in reef tanks do it.

Again, you would probably need to know how to program an adreno class or a Rpi, to keep it cheap....

But GL and let me know how this project goes. It should be interesting.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah Kinda figured, the fan may not like the PWM voltage and probably prefer a smooth voltage. (for a 2 wire fan that is) Going to check my parts bins and see what I have in terms of mosfets as that will basically determine the max current. I might cheat and use p channel so I can do high side switching without needing a fet driver.

If this works out I may actually get circuit boards made. What would be really neat is to make a PCI card so it just shows up as a serial device or something, but that's beyond the scope of this particular project.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

What was the CFM spec for those fans? Do you posolutely absitively have to use those fans? There are some PWM fans out there which might produce a maximum 150 CFM. If you could just find the right fans, you could use a PWM splitter and power them directly from the PSU.

If you really need more airflow than that and have to use those fans, that's something else. If you can "do" that sort of project as you describe, I say go for it.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Does not HAVE to be those specific fans, but those seem to fall in a decent price range for performance so why I picked them. I find most fans found on computer sites are all aimed at being quiet, and just don't move enough air. I did not order them yet though, as I do have some lower flow 120mm fans I will try first, as they may turn out to be ok if I put 6 of them. 3 in the front 3 in the back. With these I'd probably just put 3, either in front or back. I'm actually thinking back, as it's probably easier for a fan to pull air through the front holes than it is to push through the back holes, from a static pressure point of view, but I will have to experiment.

This is the case they will be going in:



It will house 6 GPUs in the front with motherboard and PSUs in the back. It's a mining rig.

 

[Crono]

Are the cards blower style? You can definitely get away with using standard consumer PC case fans for cooling with that setup. Silverstone FM121 (which come with their own manual knob controllers, but probably can be used with a standard bay fan controller) or similar fans would work well if you need a lot of airflow.

EDIT: I would go with CRYORIG QF120 Performance fans, actually. $13 (USD) on NewEgg ($17.50 CAD on NewEgg.ca), which is good value for performant PWM fans.

 

[aigomorla]

have you thought about just geting something like this and calling it a day using a normal fan controller?

https://www.amazon.com/xlpace-Minin...rd_wg=GcJdq&psc=1&refRID=XXJJRWFJ0K0QSZD4T0Z3

its probably cheaper then the cost of adreno + mosfets + all the other stuff lol....

Then you can just get some decent fans and just run them at 100%, and forget about using a temperature controller?

Since its open you dont really need to worry about static very much, it should keep your gpu's cool.
Also u dont need to worry about mounting and other stuff... personally it would save you a lot of time mickey mousing stuff to get it to fit.

Or you can get one without the front fan mounts... and just stack the fans ontop of the gpus:

If you really want and need a good fan, you can prop a 20inch box fan up front...
Tape a 20x20 MERV-2 filter on front of the 20 inch box fan, and you even got dust filter.

Theres a lot of open bench crypto cases out there which can hold anywhere from 6-12 gpu's.
I think it would be less of a headache to have one of those, unless u intend on something completely DYO.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I want it rack mounted as I don't really have room anywhere (that my cat won't get into) for an open frame setup so it will be tucked away in my server room. One of the GPUs I have is in fact a blower style, the other is fans. So yeah maybe I will just try regular fans for the time being first to see where that gets me. I recently accidentally ordered 10 120mm fans instead of 2 for another purpose because I didn't realize they were packs of 5, so I have plenty to test with already. I won't bother to temp control those as they arn't fast anyhow. So yeah maybe I'll start with that. If I feel I want more power then I'll build a circuit with arduino and order those Digikey ones.

 

[aigomorla]

I want it rack mounted as I don't really have room anywhere

Theres this guy... but i hear rosewell is terrible when it comes to rack allignment... :T
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147270

but it looks completely legit...

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah I saw that actually. Kinda what inspired my idea. Saw a bunch of other designs too. Cheaper to DIY though. I also found that cards don't quite fit in 4U. Some of the designs I saw they had a hump in the area where the connector goes. I figure may as well just make the whole thing 5U at that point.

If crypto crashes like everyone thinks it will, then I'll probably re-purpose the case for storage, I'll come up with a way to mount the hard drives vertically like those backblaze pods. The challenge is finding a card or other way of having tons of sata ports though. That and it would not really be hot swap. That just means I need to build two for redundancy.

 

[Red Squirrel]

So I decided to go ahead and order those 3 fans. I needed the grilles, and a few other things that are all obtainable at Digikey... so figured why not. I will power them directly to see how it sounds, if it's completely insane, which it probably will be, I'll then proceed with the controller. If it's actually not that bad I might just leave them at full power. 90 watts though... lol. Controller is probably still a good idea.

This is way overkill, but why not.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Was playing with this a bit. Arduino is definitely not fast enough for a general purpose SMPS without doing tons of micro optimizing but for this purpose I think it will work fine. I just winded an inductor with some #18 wire and threw in a huge filter cap and driving it at around 60khz and I was able to control the fan speed. I still need to actually add in the voltage/temperature logic as I was just hard coding different pwm values for testing.

But think this will work. My inductor only ended up being like 2 mH so it's not that great, and the capacitor is doing most of the work of smoothing it out, but for fans I think it will do fine. I could technically just PWM the fan directly if I really wanted to but will go with the buck topology to at least try to get a smooth voltage curve.

Once I do get it working it will then be the thing of ensuring it can drive the fans for a decent amount of time without the mosfet blowing up.

I ended up going with a N channel transistor driving a P channel mosfet, not the most ideal way but it will work for this case.

 

[NatePo717]

Check out Crystalfontz displays. There's quite a few of them.

https://www.crystalfontz.com/product/cfa633tmiku-lcd-16x2-usb-character-display

4 fans, can have temperature sensors added to them. I believe you can tune fan curves with them. Also can be used to replace power on/off and restart. With customizable displays to display fan speeds/temperatures and lots of other things.

We used them on servers we used to produce and they worked pretty well.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Check out Crystalfontz displays. There's quite a few of them.

https://www.crystalfontz.com/product/cfa633tmiku-lcd-16x2-usb-character-display

4 fans, can have temperature sensors added to them. I believe you can tune fan curves with them. Also can be used to replace power on/off and restart. With customizable displays to display fan speeds/temperatures and lots of other things.

We used them on servers we used to produce and they worked pretty well.

That does look interesting. Very similar to what I had in mind actually. Actually I kind of like the idea of adding a general purpose LCD on my servers too, could display alarms etc as well.

I may end up making my own anyway at this point though as it makes for a fun project.