I have them in a Supermicro 4U chassis. I have the 140s in the front, the 120s in the middle, and the 80s as the exhaust.
I’m curious how to control these fans. I’ve used SuperMicro in the past, but never a Gigabyte Server Board. I appreciate any and all help. BTW, I will be using this board for UNRaid, but was curious if I could control the via BMC Management.
Noctua makes a PWM controller powered by sata rated for 5A max @12V. A14 iPPCs pull .5A/ea and the F12s pull .3A/ea
I would be more concerned with the rating for those PWM splitter hubs, but you could power both of them with separate controllers and that should handle everything and give you at dual zone manual control.
Noctua has good literature on their products. I’ve only used mine as a manual controller, but this states that it can also work in tandem with fan header control as well.
Unfortunately while I’m really good with cooling solutions and thermals, I know nothing of enterprise gear beyond the basics so someone else will have to help you with that answer.
Glad to help, just one correction though, I made the mistake of trusting an amazon comment for the power rating. It’s actually 3A max for the controller.
How many fans can be connected to the NA-FC1 controller?
The maximum number of fans that can be connected to the NA-FC1 is limited by the total combined power draw of all fans, which must not exceed 3A for 5V and 12V fans.
Thanks for that, I just did some rearranging of the fans. I initially had the 140s hooked up to the splitter with the 120s, and I separated them into another fan header, so I now have three zones.
The problem I have now is if I can find a way to get them to work via BMC or via the bios, I haven’t looked at it today, as I’m busy ATM.
I know I was able to do it with IPMI commands on the Supermicro board I have but was hoping to move away from that if I could. One thing I did notice is that since the Noctuas have a lower RPM they tend to ramp up, I know there was a whole thread on this for the IPMI on Supermicro, I haven’t found anything though on Gigabyte.
Worst-case scenario, I will have to set them manually with the Noctua controllers.
It works as a PWM scaler in that mode. To summarize:
If it’s not plugged into a board fan header, or the board does not supply a PWM signal → fan speed is manually controlled by the dial.
If the board is supplying a PWM signal → fan speed is scaled based on the dial.
In both cases, if it’s in no-stop mode (green light), it won’t allow the fan to drop below 300 RPM.
If the ultimate goal is full PWM control from a fan header, the NA-FC1 won’t serve any purpose. It mostly fills the role of either a full-manual PWM controller, or a scaler for systems with fan slopes that are too high and can’t be changed.
I don’t know what options that Gigabyte board has. Their manual makes management look like typical MegaRAC interface, but doesn’t show the fan control module enabled, so it may not have much customization exposed.
For independent dynamic fan control that has no reliance on the board, the only decent options I’ve seen so far are from Aquacomputer, but I haven’t had a chance to play with any of them.