Anybody have a Phanteks Case?

[stevenrw]

I'm looking to upgrade my Antec case and I'm looking at the Phanteks Enthoo Luxe full tower. Looks like a great, roomy case. However it has a PWM fan header pre-connected to the 3 supplied case fans. But try as I may I can't get any coherent clear guidance regarding hooking it up. Apparently to be sure of PWM functionality the hub is connected to the mobo via a 4 pin plug which is connected to the cpu fan header. Its then powered up via a SATA plug from the psu.
All fine so far, but my question is where on the hub do I now connect the cpu fan? I only have one cpu fan header on the board and that will now be connected to the PWM hub. All the remaining connections on the hub are 3 pin.
Perhaps somebody already has one of these and can shed some light on it.

[gizmo71]

According to the manual on the web site the PWM hub has 6 PWM outputs, so it looks to me like you'd simply connect the CPU fan to FAN1 on the hub (to ensure that it's the one driving the fan speeds) and any other PWM fans to the rest of the hub (the point of the PWM hub is to allow multiple PWM fans to be controlled, albeit not independently).

It looks to me like the fans supplied with the case aren't PWM fans and therefore you'd connect them directly to the motherboard's other fan headers for old-fashioned voltage-based control; they supply two splitters in case there aren't enough headers.

I'm in the process of going through the pain of poor PWM support myself - bought a bunch of good Nanoxia PWM fans for an ultra-quiet build only to find that my new motherboard, despite having two CPU and four case fan headers, all 4-pin, only actually supports PWM on the CPU headers and just drives the case fans using voltage, with a signal on the fourth wire to wedge the PWM controllers in the fans into 100% mode. I'm going to end up driving all the case fans off splitters from the CPU_OPT fan header.

[stevenrw]

Thanks for that Gizmo, it really seems that for such an established technology, PWM fan control is something of a black art with everybody having different views on how it should work.
I initially thought that I would have to connect the cpu fan to FAN1 also, but of course being "true" PMW controlled the CPU fan is 4 pin and ALL the connections on the hub are 3 pin only so that's not going to happen either. I was also concerned about the note in the manual stating "connect one fan ONLY to FAN1" - I'm not sure of the significance placed on this.
I'm wondering if you are supposed to connect the CPU fan AND the hub to the mobo CPU header via a splitter but then it is being powered from 2 sources (mobo and SATA power to the hub) and that can't be right either.
I can't believe its this difficult.

[gizmo71]

Heh heh, from a thread on Tom's Hardware:

It's really a brilliant product, on paper. Problem is that it doesn't work. It only controls the speed of the 3-pin fans over a very tiny range of a couple hundred RPM. For all intents and purposes, they just run full speed.

No wonder they don't bother supplying PWM fans with the case!

I'm thinking about getting something like this controller as I'm struggling to get some of my fans to start up as the mobo won't give them enough juice to start before slowing them.

[stevenrw]

Reading your quote from Tom's Harware (thanks for that!) I've decided this PWM header is just not worth the faff. My existing case has Corsair SP (static pressure) fans in front of the drive bays and Be Quiet fans elsewhere. All are top quality and are 4 pins, so I'll just reuse them straight on to the mobo.
I find it really frustrating when you get something that should be so easy and isn't.
Having said that the case is great and really roomy and the lighting effects (even without the LED strips) is very effective and at around £120 seems good value.
Your proposed controller looks good, but do you need to manually adjust speeds due to increased/decreased load? You could also look at one of these maybe. http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Fans+%26+Cooling/Fan+Controllers/NZXT+Sentry+2+LCD+Touch+Screen+Fan+Controller+?productId=60587 Still (presumably) manual but with touch screen rather than knobs. It also has auto function and alarms.

[gizmo71]

Your proposed controller looks good, but do you need to manually adjust speeds due to increased/decreased load?

It can drive each fan off a temperature sensor, according to the blurb. I'll probably try and find a cheaper one which only does 3 fans, 'cause that's all I've got.

[gizmo71]

Ordered one of those Kaze Master II controllers, will report how I get on with it.

[gizmo71]

Well, sad to report that the Kaze 'Master' is more of an apprentice who doesn't show much promise.

Fan headers all 3-pin, and automation basically limited to turning off the audible alarm and using the set temperature to switch the fan from manually set speed to maximum. Might actually work quite well for my purposes but a very long way from good.

At the least the other big part of my new server/workstation build has proved excellent - two fanless GT720 graphics cards quite capable of running games well enough to watch replays and grab videos and screenshots (I won't actually be playing games on it - I've got a super duper  liquid cooled machine for that ) driving 5 monitors but using only about 3W each at idle and the whole thing quiet enough to not hear it when in bed in the next room with both doors open. No way I could've built a machine like that even 5 years ago!