Taming all those fans
CPU and GPU are getting more and more power hungry but are also generating huge amount of heat which needs to be expelled out of the computer case. The result is the use of more and more fans. Whereas 3 or 4 years ago your average computer could get away with 1 fan for the CPU (without taking into account the PSU), nowadays you will be lucky with 5 fans! The direct effect of all those fans is obviously noise and one way to reduce it has been to provide variable speed fans. The ultimate in controlling the speed of your fans is the fan controller that sits in a 5 1/4 bay with several dials that let you change your fan speed when you want. However this means that you have to manually vary the speed of your fans which is for me a strange concept because I would rather let the computer do that kind of low level job. Hence I wanted a fan controller that will automatically vary the fan speeds according to the temperature of my CPU, GPU and so on! Fortunitaly there is such a product: mCubed T-Balancer fan controller.
General concept
mCubed T-Balancer is a fan controller which is implemented on a PCB i.e. in hardware and therefore is independent of any operating system which is quite good as the controller should perform from boot-up to shutdown even if no operating system has been loaded. This box controls up to 4 fans using 6 temperature probes. Each fan can be associated with any number of probes which will determine the fan temperature i.e. the max of each temperature probe assigned to that fan. There are 3 modes of operation. One is manual which is only good when setting up the controller. One is based on a response curve. The last one is a target mode where the controller will spin the fan in order to keep a "target" temperature. If the fan temperature is below the target, the fan will stop spinning. If above the target temperature, the fan will start spinning progressively. The latter mode is the most interesting in my mind as it is similar to regulation using a feedback mechanism where the overhaul system auto-regulates itself. The only real downside at the moment is the amount of cables to install as you can see below.
You have a power cable (5,25" type), a USB cable for software communication, 4 cables to control the fans, 4 cables to give the fans' RPM to the motherboard (even if my motherboard only support 3!) and 6 sensor cables. That's really a lot of cables. I hope in the future that the controller could use the motherboard, graphic card and hard-disks temperature sensors directly from the BIOS without the need to have separate sensors. Even better it would be nice if the controller was built in the motherboard and setup accessible from the BIOS which would eliminate the need for the power cable, USB cable and fan's RPM feedback cables!
Installation
You can install the controller either in the spare 3 1/2 bay, a PCI slot or anywhere using an acrylic case. I decided to fit the controller in the lower chamber where I could also hide all the cables.
The other advantage to mount the controller away from the main computer components is the fact that the mCubed generates its own heat as well. Next is the small passive heatsink that cool the electronics.
The picture above shows you as well that I tagged each fan cable because it gets quite messy when connecting all those cables.
Once you have decided where to mount the controller, you will need to choose where to fix your 6 sensors. I decided to do the following:
- on the CPU cooler
- on the OTES
- on the RAM
- on the graphic card cooler
- on the chipset
- on the hard-disk
Sticking those sensors is not easy and I cannot remember how many times I have to re-apply the tape because they get detached with the heat! Now you have installed the hardware, you need to calibrate all those sensors and setup the mode of operation. All this is done within a graphic interface that is only available in Windows so far (not really operating system independent in that sense!). The program is not the best ever but it does the job. It took me some time to settle for the target mode after playing for too long with the response curve setup. Once that's done then you can forget about it and let the hardware do its job of controlling your fans and go back to your favorite operating system (Linux of course!).
Conclusion and result
I would not say that installing the mCubed T-Balancer is a noob job but the reward are definitely worst the effort. I quite like to see my system temperatures (using Superkaramba utility) remaining fixed while the speed of my fans are most of time so low that I cannot hear them. Fans are only spinning when necessary which is what they should only do and which reduce the noise level dramatically. So my conclusion is as follows: it is a must-have for anyone who wish to tackle noise level in their computer.
- Advantages
- auto-regulate components' temperature.
- Hardware fan controller i.e. independent of operating system.
- Reduce dramatically noise level of fans.
- Drawbacks
- Installation is not easy.
- Too many cables.
- Setup software is practical but not the best.
- Setup software only available for Windows.
- Wish list
- Integrate fan controller in motherboard.
- Setup done via BIOS screen.
- Use components' own temperature probe.
- Control fan speed via BIOS.
