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Arduino As PC Fan Controller

nicolaoscon96

Hello there,

 

It's been a while to write here and I came back with a question. I want to build a fan controller for my desktop pc and I wanted to build it with an Arduino (Just add some modes like gaming for full speed, office use for lower rpm and less noise)>>Where I will be able to control by sending a  number for example 1 for gaming mode 2 for office<<. I found some online and they are really cheap but I wanted to experiment with that. So I wanted to ask is this possible? Can I control (4 fans) with an Arduino and get feedback from them about the RPM and the voltage if it possible(have it connected with USB on my computer and read the output in Arduino IDE)? The fans that am using are 3 pins (black-red-yellow).

 

Thanks

nicolaoscon96

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  • While this sounds like a great project, I'm surprised by the application.

     

    Most PC motherboards have fan control built in.

    They require a 3 wire fan (as you have identified), and control the speed according to the PC needs rather than the application.

     

    Most Video card fans are the same, they control the speed to suit the cooling need of the chip.

     

    I recently had a issue with killing hard drives in a box that had speed controlled fans.

    I switched to a Fractal R3 where the drives are across the front just behind the fans.

    Fractal Design

    You can't hear them running and there are zero temperature issues, which is good.

     

    So IMO it is better to allow the motherboard to dictate the speed, rather than the application.

    This will also allow for a speed hike if the heatsinks are getting blocked with dust, etc.

     

     

     

    Mark

Reply

  • While this sounds like a great project, I'm surprised by the application.

     

    Most PC motherboards have fan control built in.

    They require a 3 wire fan (as you have identified), and control the speed according to the PC needs rather than the application.

     

    Most Video card fans are the same, they control the speed to suit the cooling need of the chip.

     

    I recently had a issue with killing hard drives in a box that had speed controlled fans.

    I switched to a Fractal R3 where the drives are across the front just behind the fans.

    Fractal Design

    You can't hear them running and there are zero temperature issues, which is good.

     

    So IMO it is better to allow the motherboard to dictate the speed, rather than the application.

    This will also allow for a speed hike if the heatsinks are getting blocked with dust, etc.

     

     

     

    Mark

Children
  • in reply to mcb1

    Very good point, Mark.

     

    Of course, driving simultaneous 4 fans would expect to get 4 different temperature sensors and/or control inputs.

     

    Newer motherboards use 4-pin fans, at least for the CPU fan. And it is often a feature (and a must have for laptops) of the motherboard to not start itself, it there is no CPU fan present. So this could actually lead to either let the CPU fan to be driven by the motherboard, or somehow fake that there is an active fan. (Similar applies to a GPU fan.) All the chips (CPU, GPU, maybe southbridge) have integrated temperature sensors and there is not a better way to measure the temperature rise that directly from the inside of the silicon. All externally attached temperature sensors will perform worse - which could be crucial in these times of automatic short periods of rapid overclocking - probably CPU throttling.

     

    However, what could be easily achievable with Arduino is to do just a case ventilation, connect one or more fans is parallel and drive them as one channel at once.

     

    David