I want my Motherboard to control PWM fans and RGB

I want my ASUS X370 GAMING-F motherboard to talk to this RGB/fan controller via the 12v RGB header on my MB.

As for the images, they are of the RGB controller that came with these really cheap Asiahorse (yeah I know) RGB fans I got for a song on Amazon awhile back. The six 6-pin ports on either side are for the RGB fans. The two 4-pin ports on the shorter side of the controller are labeled RGB I presume these are for additional RGB strips (5v) but I really have no idea. Finally the remaining two ports are one 5-pin port labeled IBM (this one connects to molex via included adapter and powers the whole show right now) and one 2-pin port labled DC 12v (I presume this is meant for some adapter to 3-pin fan header for power but I’m not sure.

Oh and BTW they came with Z E R O documentation and I could find nothing on the interwebs detailing this particular device.

So to get back to my question; I’m looking to have MB communicate to RGB fans via this box b/c the fans can not connect directly to MB. I want to do this so the MB can modulate the fan speed and control the RGB. Currently I have to use a little remote which is fine for the RGB but not great for fan speed.

i googled similar product from the same supplier, i dont think you can get your pc to control this box. Or well you would need some software, probably a usb card that could relay control anything you know the kind they use in homeautomation, but that is just to much of a hassle imo.

However 4 pin fans are controlled trough a separate speed signal (pwm,. pulse width modulation),
I would imagine you could jank that cable out of of your fan connectors and connect it to a 4 pin socket on the motherboard.

And control it trough something like the speedfan program or fancontrol in your bios, depending on your motherboard. or just both meaning speedfan takes over when you start it in windows.

If you want to control multiple you can either get a fan hub for 4 pin fans or just connect the pwm controller in paralell and still suply the power trough this hub so you dont put to much pressure on that single fanhub output on your motherboard, or just split it up in multiple fan outputs.

I’m abit tired but im counting 6 pins on this controller, one of them is the pwm. i would asume they are just doing normal and then adding 2 pins for led control before or after.

So a good place to start is to find some info about normal 4 pin sockets and wich one of them are the grounding, wiche one is the 5v and idk what the 3 one is.

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A few questions:

  • Can you open the housing and take photos of both sides of the PCB in it?
  • Do you have access to an oscilloscope?
  • Would you be willing to sacrifice a random (cheap) PWM fan? Like $4 cheap

My guesses are as good as yours, just some thoughts:
On the connector labeld IBM, I guess the pinout is:

Pin0 Pin1 Pin2 Pin3 Pin4
RGB Controll GND 12V Tach PWM

The fan controll PWM and addressable RGB in computers operate at 12V.
So when we/you figure out how to power this thing (possibly by opening it), you could measure voltage between pins to figure out what pin is what. With an oscilloscope (PWM is 25kHz with varying duty cycle), this will be much easier.


For reference:

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Hello, Im not sure if you ever figured this out but I had a similar problem with my cheap asia horse fans. once you connect the fan controller to the motherboard (either the add rgb header or the special “aura sync” RGB header, you can control the fans through the motherboard (using a software like aura sync of course) by pressing and holding the middle green button that looks like a musical note. It makes absolutely no sense but when I press and hold that for like 3 seconds it instantly switched to the preset I had set in the aura sync rgb software. I believe aura sync will read it as an addressable rgb light strip. Hope this helps anyone else looking on the internet for help with these useless fans. Cheers

Thats the middle green button on the last row of buttons by the way.

Hello guys, I’m facing the same problem. So you’re saying that I can solve the problem by connecting a 2 pins cable from the controller to the motherboard. I guess it is a 2 pin to 4 pin and I can connect it in any fan spot right (like the one for the cpu dan)?