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A USB Fan Controller that now works under Linux
- spicybright 5y agoHow does is a set of dedicated pins vs routing everything through the USB bus better?
- KingMachiavelli 5y agoYou shouldn't pull more than ~1 to 2A from a motherboard fan header which means you can probably only have 1-2 fans per fan header. Also controlling the motherboard fan headers from the OS is always finicky (most BIOS are utter garbage anyway). This USB adapter pulls power directly from the PSU so it can have 5+ fans and can be more easily controlled from the OS. This specific one can also control some LED strips, etc. TBH it's not really necessary but people like to have it.
- rale00 5y agoI guess it depends on what fans you're running, but 1 A should be enough for at least 3 of the most commonly used ones. Noctua lists max input current for all their fans, and even the high speed industrial ones are only 0.18 A.
- timpattinson 5y agoI don't know of any PC fan which draws more than 0.2A, apart from server fans.
- tuatoru 5y agoStartup, stall and low-speed currents can be higher than rated becase there is less back-emf.
- tenebrisalietum 5y agoThe pins are not better and USB might be preferable because I'm betting onboard fan controllers are frequently intertwined with ACPI which even to this day continues to give issues for operating systems other than Windows. Speculation on my part though.
- simcop2387 5y agoI use one because I have two controllable fan headers on the mb and 6 fans to control. This lets me do a better job of managing the noise in the server while also letting me react to different temps in different areas (particularly hard drive temps)
- ddoolin 5y agoI run 24 fans in my build and I have a couple of these as the final stop in the wiring chain in the back and run almost exclusively in Linux these days so this is absolutely welcome.
- voxadam 5y agoOut of curiosity, how does someone cram two dozen fans into a single machine? Even a quad socket Dell R940 only has 8 fans.
- detaro 5y agoNow try to get the same cooling power without the noise a rack server makes. -> more larger, slower fans.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mendelmaleh 5y agoMaybe a monster case with three quad fan radiators in push pull...
- ddoolin 5y agoThis is it. The Corsair 1000D is actually a dual-system case and just has massive room. Two quad radiators and a triple 140 in push-pull, plus 2 rear fans. The two quads support one cooling loop (for one of the systems) and the triple supports another. https://imgur.com/gallery/U2KZD07 https://imgur.com/gallery/U2KZD07 (I don't actually keep the fans lit up like this all the time, this was post-build in a very dark garage.)
- Scramblejams 5y agoGreat news! I love Supermicro boards but a bunch of them give you like half a dozen headers and you can only control them as two sets. I'd looked into supported controllers but nothing currently shipping seemed compelling.[0] Hope Corsair doesn't rev this hardware soon, or I may have to buy a few just to sit on the shelf awaiting future deployment. [0] Happy to hear otherwise, alternatives welcome.
- DiabloD3 5y agoAs far as I can tell, Supermicro's multiple headers are all duplicates; as in, for example, it gives you like 4 case fan headers all driven off a single 2A+ PWM controller. So, basically, an onboard PWM splitter.
- beervirus 5y agoWhy does any of this need OS support? You should be able to configure fan speed via a BIOS menu as you have been since the late 1900s.
- paranoidrobot 5y agoScenarios that need OS support: Your BIOS doesn't support fan speed at all. Your BIOS doesn't doesn't support temperature-controlled fan curves, or doesn't let you customise the fan curve. You want to use a different temperature sensor, or multiple, to control different fans, pumps, etc. You want to schedule different fan profiles based on time of day or some other event.
- lights0123 5y agoNot if you run out of fan headers and need an expander.
- fooqux 5y agoAgreed, but I'd say USB headers are in shorter supply. And yeah, I know the 'splitters' are out there, but where the hell am I to mount that? Especially if you need more than one, since for some reason they only give you two headers for the price of one.
- aidenn0 5y agoUSB3 headers are in short supply, but this looks like it uses a USB2 header, no?
- Dylan16807 5y ago> Especially if you need more than one, since for some reason they only give you two headers for the price of one. USB 2.0 headers have 8 working pins and 2 ports. It's physically impossible to split them into more than two. Splitters aren't hubs.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cornhole 5y agoThe front Noctua fan in the picture of the PC is installed backwards.
- jrockway 5y agoThey're just trying to create some vorticity so that in the event an updraft forms right under the computer, they'll get a very nice rotating thunderstorm. Great for cooling!
- halikular 5y agoNot so great for RAM clearance. It would be preferred to mount it this way since it's much easier. I spent hours trying to mount this thing horizontally in my case due to it being so big and having a fan right above it, I didn't have any room to hook on the fan wire to the tower. I had to use sewing thread to hook the inner one on. I'm never taking that thing apart again.
- IshKebab 5y agoI don't think so, it looks like they are trying to draw air in at the bottom and out at the top. I don't know why you need that many fans though.
- 4wsn 5y agoSomeone must've used The Verge's guide.
- JohnJamesRambo 5y agoNow the year of the Linux Desktop can come in 2022.
- atatatat 5y agoThe year of the Linux desktop arrives the first time someone plugs their Surface Duo 2 into a monitor & keyboard.
- Teknoman117 5y agoI was really happy to see this go in, along with the reverse engineered corsair psu driver as well. I poked around once or twice with wireshark and decided I was out of my depth...
- tambourine_man 5y ago> This sleek black box can be had for $40-75 That’s not my kind of thing, nor do I have the experience, but at that price, wouldn’t you be better off using a Raspberry Pi (or similar) to control the fans, place thermometers, etc? I understand that having a computer inside a computer is silly, but we are kind of in that rabbit hole anyway. And a GPIO would be more reassuring to me than depending on driver support for one motherboard/usb fan controller. Just random thoughts
- omgitsabird 5y agoA rpi would probably take around half a minute to boot. I think it would be a pretty bad fan controller.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoIt doesn't have to run Linux.
- aidenn0 5y agoDo they really take that long? My RockPRO64 boots in about a second...
- chrissnell 5y agoYour random thought led me to this one: A Raspberry Pi that plugs into the a PCI slot, which gives it power and exposes a virtual serial port along with an Ethernet port that shows up on the host system and can be used to route packets to the Pi. The Pi, meanwhile, has all of the usual GPIO things and maybe even an external connector to expose GPIO outside of the PC case.
- namibj 5y agoDoes anyone know what temperature probes they use? Is it the typical 10k Ohm NTC? I happen to have such a 10k Ohm NTC temperature probe in my cooling water, and would much prefer to control the fans to keep the water temperature in check, instead of trying to control them based on the CPU die temperature. The fans roaring won't help if it's just one core being pegged by something, but in a warm room and all-core load they do need to spin fast.
- kcb 5y agoYes, I have one of these for that exact use case. I use this for my sensor https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CMR3CC2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CMR3CC2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... From what I understand if you're making fan curves from a sensor plugged into the device, it can operate independently. So you don't even need software support. Instead you could just set the curves in the nicer ui of the Windows app and leave it.
- omarqureshi 5y agoThe commander pro comes with its own probes, additionally if you buy the XD5 or XD7 reservoirs, they come with a probe fitted to a G1/4 so you can probe coolant temperature.
- namibj 5y agoI already have such a coolant probe in my loop, and would prefer to not open the loop (which, btw., is practically a as close to AIO as a custom loop can be while being worth the hassle of a custom loop).
- glouwbug 5y agoThat’d be a first for a working fan controller on Linux
- hsbauauvhabzb 5y agoNow if only I could figure out how to control the RGB leds in my case…
- rasz 5y ago>commander PRO can feed 6x PWM fan control and offers 2-channel individually addressable RGB lighting control
- josteink 5y ago> Now if only I could figure out how to control the RGB leds in my case… OpenRGB not working for you? See previous HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27457696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27457696
- Fnoord 5y agoBack when AMD64 was relatively new I had a case with various case fans which I could control. The machine ran Linux. I controlled the fans by hand with knobs. I know this isn't what you meant but what's inherently bad for this if its a PC you have physical access to? What I did was put the fans down when I went to sleep. Its not like you can change power profiles dynamically, only on remote computers software controlled is better. And if its remote machines, who cares about the noise?
- gpderetta 5y agoI can control them almost perfectly on my linux box: the bios set the speed as a function of the temperature, so if I want to spin the fans up, I just need to fire up some intensive computation. A power virus easily bring them to top speed. Very convenient. When I want a quieter computer I just need to kill every single process, although powering the machine off seems to be the most reliable.
- Arnavion 5y ago
- zwarag 5y agoI know it is not the main topic but. Is this just a funky fan setup or what is happening here? I have the same cpu cooler and I’ve build mine horizontally to blow out of the back. This setup looks like it is pulling from the air from the GPU.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- zeroflow 5y agoThere is the mention of a server grade fan control in the article, and it looks like this is a workstation / server board. I've seen the sockets on those boards being "90° off" in comparison to normal AM4 / 1150 / 1200 Socket motherboards which lead to those orientations.
- cm2187 5y agoI think it’s a workstation fan on a server board. The CPU is rotated on server boards vs workstations. When the fan matches the board it always blows to the back. RAM modules follow the orientation of the CPU. Parallel to the airflow on server boards, perpendicular on workstation boards.
- buro9 5y agoIt's not the setup of the author, it is just a stock photo. https://unsplash.com/photos/xV3CHzfhkjE https://unsplash.com/photos/xV3CHzfhkjE I wouldn't use it as a build guide.