What's with the crappy fan controllers?

[wolfram23]

So I'm budgeting and planning for a nice upgrade - stage 1 being water cooling the CPU. What I want to do as well is buy a fan controller, and I want to put multiple fans on each channel plus the MCP35X pump on a channel as well. Obviously this can use up a fair bit of power...

Ch 1: 3x 120mm case fans
Ch 2: 3x 120mm rad fans
Ch 3: pump
Ch 4: 2x 120mm slim GPU fans
Ch 5: May not be used right now

So looking and looking, and it's like every single controller is rated at 1A or less per channel! But a fan can use around 0.3-0.4A each, so you can't really put more than 2 fans per channel.

As for the pump, I read somewhere that it is 18W, or 1.5A. I don't know how accurate that is.

Anyway, so there's plenty of nice controllers out there. I really like the Scythe Kaze Master Pro because it displays RPM and temp, and is 6 channel... but 1A.

The Zalman ZM-MFC3 is ok but only 4 channels and 0.7A. Still it has great features.

It seems like the only controllers that can handle any real power are butt ugly, like the Lamptron FAN-ATIC which can manage 60W per channel. 5 channels. Great right? Well no, because it literally only has knobs and some lights. No display...

I guess the question is, is there any trickery to increase the potential amperage of the fan controller? This might include splicing wires to draw power from the PSU directly (although I guess you'd lose precise control)...

 

[Ubrales]

A practical solution would be to connect some fans directly to the PSU, and some fans to the fans controller. I would suggest just one fan per channel.

 

[wolfram23]

Yeah, might have to. We'll see. I bought the Scythe Kaze Master Pro, so I guess I"ll find out first hand if it can handle 2 fans per channel lol.

But really, it's pretty silly that they make a fan controller that can barely handle 1 fan per channel, and then only have 4 or 5 channels. I doubt many enthusiasts - the ones who buy these things generally - only have 4 or 5 fans that they'd want to control...

 

[wolfram23]

Best answer selected by Wolfram23.

 

[wolfram23]

Well I ended up putting all the case fans and my two GPU fans on the fan controller and left the pump and 2 rad fans on the motherboard. Works alright because I have them all set to increase with CPU temp - only thing is the rad fans are the loudest ones on my PC now. I might buy quieter fans for it too but anyway... it's working nicely as is. Thanks...

 

[Ubrales]

Thank you!