There's a few ways that you can control the speed of the case fans fitted to you PC. You can plug your 3 pin fan connectors onto your motherboard and control the speed via software if your motherboard supports it, you can use inline resistors or you can use an aftermarket fan controller; the later being what we are covering. By following this simple step by step guide you can learn how to install a fan controller into your PC. Bare in mind this guide is designed for the novice PC builder that's not quite as confident working on their PCs as some of us.
So why would you add a fan controller to your PC? Well, by adding a fan controller you can do as the name suggest and control the speed of how fast your case fans spin. Some people may want to increase the speed of their fan/s to improve the cooling efficiency of your PC case. Or others may want to do the opposite and reduce the speed of their case fans to have a quieter PC. Remember the faster a cooling fan spins the more noise it will make but at the same time it will move a larger volumes of air. Having the flexibility to control your fans can come in handy if you wish to have a quiet PC while doing low load duties on your PC, like word processing or browsing the web. Then have the option to increase the fan speed to keep your temperatures under control while gaming, decoding videos or even if it's a hot day
Note: The majority of fan controllers will only work with fans that use a 3 pin plug and not a 4 pin Molex plug. There are converters that will allow you to use 4 pin Molex plugs with a fan controller, or you can rewire the fans to suit. To keep things simple this guide will only instruct you on how to install a fan controller to work with fans that have a 3 pin connector.
For this example I'll be using a generic fan controller that you can get of ebay for around 10 dollars. This particular unit controls up to 3 fans and gets installed into a spare PCI slot at the back of your PC case. The case used in this example is a Cooler Master Elite 360 and the fans are generic 80mm fans.
First thing to do is unplug your PC from the mains power and find clean area to work in, then remove the side panel to gain access to the internal components of your PC. As you can see in the picture above I've already removed a PCI cover and that's where I will be installing the fan controller. Some PC cases require you to snap or pop out one of the PCI covers and some offer a tooless solution, refer to your PC case user manual if you are uncertain on how to remove a PCI cover from your PC case.
Unplug all the power cables from the fan/s you wish to control via the fan controller. Then route the fan power cables to the area where you will mount the fan controller. It's up to you how much time you want to spend here, you can simply lay the cables down quickly or you can take your time and determine the best path for the cables to run. There's never any harm in doing some cable management, not only will your case look neater, but by minimizing the cable clutter in your case you increase the air flow through the case.
A 3 pin fan connector
Now connect the 3 pin connectors from the fan/s to the fan controller. You'll notice that these plugs are designed to go in one way, just match up the plugs according to their shape and don't use any excessive force.
A 4 pin Molex connectorThe last power plug that needs to be connected is a power source for the fan controller, this will most likely be a 4 pin Molex connector and again this plug will only go in the one way. There are some fan controllers that still allow you to plug either the power supply or a signal wire back into the motherboard to allow the use of such software based monitoring programs like SpeedFan.
Now that everything is wired up you can firmly secure the fan controller to the case. Just insert the fan controller unit into the allocated PCI slot, ensure you have lined it up correctly and then secure it to the case with a screw or the provided tooless feature of your case.
Pictured above is how it should look like when finished, as you can see all the adjustment knobs are easily accessible and not touching the sides of the PCI slot. If you have the adjustments touching the side of the PCI slot then you don't have the fan controller lined up correctly.
The final step is optional, but highly recommended, and that is to do a little cable management. Group the fan cables together and use a few cable ties to neaten them up. That's it your finished, just plug you PC back in and adjust the fan speed to your desired settings.
There are many other alternatives to a PCI mounted fan controller, there's a huge variety of fan controllers that fit into the front drive bay of a PC case. Some feature temperature sensors, card readers, LCD screens and more. Naturally the more feature packed these fan controllers are the more expensive they will be, it all depends on your budget and what you want from the product, but if you're after something simple that will get the job done then go for the PCI mounted fan controller.
Written By: Matthew Armitage
Article by: Guyver
94646Kudos
12/09/2009
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