Zalman or Vantec fan controller?

DogSoldierDogSoldier The heart of radical Amish country..
edited April 2007 in Hardware
I'm looking at the Vantec Nexus NXP-205 and the Zalman ZM-MFC1. I have 4 fans that I'd like to adjust for maximum but efficient air-flow. 2x Silverstone 120mm FM121's and 2x Zalman 80mm ZM-F1's. The Zalman's will work with either fan controller. The problem is, Silverstone uses a proprietary 2-pin plug for speed control. It also has a 3-pin to plug into a fan header to monitor RPMs. Both fan controllers take 3-pin connectors. I've read that you can jam the Silverstone 2-pin onto the Vantec 3-pin connector. Does anyone have any experience with these controllers using Silverstone fans?

Comments

  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited April 2007
    I haven't tried the mix-and-match, but one option is to rewire the connectors. If you have a pin tool, it's a quick job.
  • DogSoldierDogSoldier The heart of radical Amish country..
    edited April 2007
    Hey GHoosdum.. I decided to go with the Vantec. The Silverstones have a 2-pin controller plug (Which turns out, I won't have to use), a 3-pin RPM monitoring plug and a 4-pin molex. So it will work with the Vantec and it's 4-pin molex to 3-pin connecting wires and I'll still be able to monitor the RPMs. The Asus P5B has a ton of 3-pin fan headers. I'm still confused about one thing, when using the Silverstone as the CPU fan, will the motherboard balk if I plug it into the 4-pin CPU-Fan header?
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited April 2007
    It will only balk if you have RPM monitoring turned on. The extra lead doesn't carry power, only the sensor signal.
  • DogSoldierDogSoldier The heart of radical Amish country..
    edited April 2007
    I undertand the Silverstone 3-pin only has one pin enabled, and that's to monitor RPMs. But the Silverstone is not being powered by the fan header, but by the Vantec fan controller using the 4-pin to 3-pin convertor.
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited April 2007
    I'm sorry I think I read that wrong the first time - so you're saying that you're plugging the 4-pin molex into the convertor, which is drawing from the Vantec controller for power, and the RPM monitoring lead only into the motherboard? If that's the case, that will work just fine as well, I have done something similar in the past when I had a fan that would have drawn more power than the motherboard could comfortably pass through the fan header.
  • DogSoldierDogSoldier The heart of radical Amish country..
    edited April 2007
    Sweet.. that's what I was looking for.
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