Fractal Define R6 - Fan Control

[racielrod]

Hello,

I have been working on my build, which slowly but surely is getting there.
I'm using the Fractal Define R6 case; which comes with 3 x 3-pin fans.
I'm also using a Noctua NH-U9DX i4 processor cooler - which comes with 2 x 4pin Noctua fans.

Based on what I have read, it looks like 3 pin fans will run at full speed on these supermicro boards.

My questions

1. For those using this case. Are you using the fan hub that comes with the case? Or are you connecting your fans directly to one of the many fan ports on the board?
2. Is there a way I can drive the fan speeds on the processor cooler by the processor temperature?
3. I know these wouldn't support it, but if I decide to swap the OEM fans with Noctua PWM fans, can I drive these case fans by the HDD temps?

I would like to understand what are the good practices when it comes to keep both the CPU and the HDDs cool.

Thanks!
R. Rod

 

[pasiz]

Hello,

I have been working on my build, which slowly but surely is getting there.
I'm using the Fractal Define R6 case; which comes with 3 x 3-pin fans.
I'm also using a Noctua NH-U9DX i4 processor cooler - which comes with 2 x 4pin Noctua fans.

Based on what I have read, it looks like 3 pin fans will run at full speed on these supermicro boards.

My questions

1. For those using this case. Are you using the fan hub that comes with the case? Or are you connecting your fans directly to one of the many fan ports on the board?
2. Is there a way I can drive the fan speeds on the processor cooler by the processor temperature?
3. I know these wouldn't support it, but if I decide to swap the OEM fans with Noctua PWM fans, can I drive these case fans by the HDD temps?

I would like to understand what are the good practices when it comes to keep both the CPU and the HDDs cool.

Thanks!
R. Rod

For hard disks, optimum temperature is hard to define. Google hdd study is good reading if you are interested of failure rates by means of temperature.

https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/fi//archive/disk_failures.pdf

4 pin connector have feedback of rpm, this also have interest in monitoring fan life.

Case fans should be driven by means of motherboard temperatures, HDD fans by hdd temperature.

 

[racielrod]

Thanks for your response.
Complete rookie here, so I'm going to ask what might be stupid questions:
- Assuming I have PWM fans for both the case and the CPU cooler. How do I drive the RPMs on these fans by CPU and HDD temp?

My assumption is that the BIOS would be directly driving the fans connected to the board based on the CPU temp.
Is there anything on top of that -OS level?- that I can use to say "FAN3 and FAN4 rpm will be driven by the temp reported by the drives?".

Maybe I'm over-complicating things here?

 

[sretalla]

You should look at this:
https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/pid-fan-controller-perl-script.50908/

 

[pasiz]

Thanks for your response.
Complete rookie here, so I'm going to ask what might be stupid questions:
- Assuming I have PWM fans for both the case and the CPU cooler. How do I drive the RPMs on these fans by CPU and HDD temp?

I suggest that you let your bios take care of cpu temperature.

My assumption is that the BIOS would be directly driving the fans connected to the board based on the CPU temp.
Is there anything on top of that -OS level?- that I can use to say "FAN3 and FAN4 rpm will be driven by the temp reported by the drives?".

Maybe I'm over-complicating things here?

Bios have mechanism to control fans, i don't know the supermicro mb type you have, but in os level you can use IPMI which is widely adopted by supermicro.

For that i suggest reading:

https://www.supermicro.com/manuals/other/IPMI_Users_Guide.pdf