3/4 pin fans + case vs mainboard

[phier]

hello,
I have case fractal design 804, and it's possible to connect all fans in case to 3pin reductions, and the speed of fans is regulated via some button in case (low,med,high speed)

I accidentally bought 4pin pwm so I can't plug them to the reduction in case, but the mainboard has 4x 4pin slots for fans'. Is there some specific purpose to plugging fans into some separate case adaptor? Is it possible to say what's better to plug fans directly to mainboard (and control them somehow via bios?) or plug them into connectors inside the case?

thanks!

 

[sretalla]

Is it possible to say what's better to plug fans directly to mainboard (and control them somehow via bios?) or plug them into connectors inside the case?

Depends on your board... if it's supermicro (or Asrock), there are PID fan scripts that will allow you to control fans according to disk temperatures (which is IMO the best thing you can do).

If you have another brand, you can add a fan controller (I would recommend the Corsair Commander Pro) and use my version of the PID script.

Otherwise, sticking to the stock fan connection options and manually switching them is OK (just not suited to noise reduction when your disks are cool enough).

 

[phier]

@sretalla its supermicro x11ssl-f,
thanks.
so its better to plug into 4pin mainboard directly, right?

 

[sretalla]

so its better to plug into 4pin mainboard directly, right?

Yes, look up "fan control script PID" in the forum and you'll find many options for scripts to drive the FANs based on HDD temperature.

 

[millst]

The 4-pin connector is for PWM, which will provide fine-grained control of the fan speed. It's also a bit more efficient power-wise. They are easier to optimize for low noise. Using the 3-pin DC connector through the case would only give you the 3 fixed settings that you manually control.

 

[phier]

Hi,
there are millions of threads regarding that issue, so many scripts... nothing that can prove its working correctly etc... even for a mentioned Corsair Commander Pro another custom who know what kind of scripts... ?

Is there any solution here or this is not possible to be solved by some elegant way ...

 

[sretalla]

You need to forget using the case-provided fan controller.

You can either use the onboard PWM 4-pin connectors or a Corsair Commander Pro with the scripts you've already been directed to.

Those scripts work if you step through the instructions at the beginning of the script and modify the parameters in them to suit your hardware setup.

If you want some kind of proof, I can share you a log file or some charts from one of my systems running the commander pro script.

The script has in plain text the commands used to change the fan speeds, so if you use those commands and the fan speeds change, you can be almost 100% certain the scripts will work on your system.