ravton, when you spoke about keeping the bottom temps down I assumed you were talking about hot chips on the HDD's PCB. It's not easy to attach any form of cooling device on a HDD chip without thermal epoxy.. and that's not very practical =). Thermal epoxy? What the heck are you talking about? You ...

That's great. Now if only it had a 3 pin instead of a 2 pin lead. But then again I'm sure that's easily obtainable :P Careful. Panaflo's are available either with the hall-effect sensor for RPM monitoring or not. It's not something you can add later (well, I'm sure someone could figure it out - for...

Since it's practically impossible to cool the bottom with a waterblock, I doubt it's really necessary to have a fan cool the bottom of the drive when already watercooling the sides. Or am I completely wrong? Seems useless with watercooling a HDD if you still need to cool the bottom with a fan.. Who...

Nice idea.. first time I've seen watercooling applied to the sides of a HDD, strangely enough. It's pretty obvious that the sides are hottar than the top of a HDD, one can only guess why so many people have watercooled the top of their drives instead of the sides :) As someone who has watercooled H...

I know this sounds crazy and wacko, but I know many go the extremes to block out sound and help consolidate and get good solid airflow. I did not know if anyone has tried caulking up the small areas in a case where you could have trouble using some form of packing. :?: By itself this won't do much,...

A sound absorber (not dampener) on the all behind your PC helps a little depending on how quiet your case and fans are. If you have a reasonably quiet case, it mostly helps alleviate a small amount of power supply noise. It's not that much difference but it does help a little. Make sure to use the r...

With an external controller you could shape the drive waveform to be quiet. Square-wave drive too loud? Fine, instead drive the coils with pulses that gently slope up from zero, or perhaps a sinewave drive. This is pretty common with industrial fan control systems and there are several application ...

Whoa, Ravton, back it down. Woah. Where'd that come from? I don't think I've gone anywhere to back down from. I think anyone who reads this thread, here on Silent PC Review, would assume that Energy was talking about building a device to clone a Fanmate. The device clearly was not met to be used wi...

You're the only person arguing that a 24W design is unreasonable; I hope you're having a good time. The facts again are just that you claimed that 120mmx38mm fans top out at 7W. Something that is clearly not true. My post corrected what you said. You created and have continued the comedy by continuo...

> Incorrect. A current Delta is 2.0A continuous Which is what I am referring to. Regarding statistics: o The original post was regarding a Fanmate competitor o The Fanmate has a limit of 7W (altho somewhat warm) o Thus my reply was correct in context as I stated Other posters also replied similarly...

As an extreme example, I have a 36W 120mm fan in front of me right now. As long as it caters to 95% of users fans thats fine. If someone is using a 200CF/M fan and suddenly decides to make it quiet I would be very surprised :) I didn't say that you should. As stated, I merely used this an example t...

Ravton, try reading what I write. o <B>100cfm</B> 120mm fans top out at 5W o Big 120x38mm fans top out at 120-128cfm, and around 7W In the context of what design spec re heatsink/market fit. I read what you wrote exactly, apparently you did not. You did not specify any contect, you may have assumed...

jafb2000 wrote:o Re wattage, big 120x38mm fan top out at 7W
o 100cfm 120mm fans top out at 5W

Not true. Not even close to true. Maybe the fans you sell fit that but a basic search will find that fans vary much more widely. As an extreme example, I have a 36W 120mm fan in front of me right now.

The fans won't necessarily be run at as much as 5V though: this is to be part of a circuit that should adjust the voltage automatically so as to keep the fan at some target speed which might be very slow. Still, if the speed sensor inside the fan is part of the coil switching circuitry then I suppo...

The tachometer output is always at 50% duty cycle. That means that the time the signal is at GND is the same as the time at VCC (whatever the pull-up voltage is). Most fans are 2 pulses/rotation. As long as you're running at higher voltages (>= 5Volts) the tachometer is _extremely_ clean. You won't ...

fmah wrote:Yeah, I did it at work with Solidworks. I sent you the email about doing bay brackets, you might have forgotten.

Doh. I didn't connect the names. Sorry about that. I never heard back from my last email to ya. I'll send you another.

Hey fmah - what type of place did the prototypes for you? Also, what did you design them with? I have a couple of non-hd-related items I'd like to have manufactured but don't know where to begin. Thanks!

Forgot to ask: do you have a trimmer for each potentiometer that one can set the lowest RPM (and thus voltage) per potentiometer for each channel separately? This way one could set the trimmer so that it becomes impossible to give each fan too little voltage (forcing them to stop spinning). regards...

Looks very useful. Build instructions / schematics / parts would be nice, if you have time and are willing to share. I wish somebody would sell something as well thought out as this in a metal casing for ready installation into an expansion slot. I haven't found any good (silent/cool) controllers w...

The majority of fans I've tested will only start interrmittently at 3.3V but will run fine once started. It takes very little to make the fan stall though. Unfortunately a large portion of these fans have problems with the tachometer output at 3.3V.

It's really not that big. The Fan controller is only about 5x2 inches. That's the same width as that crappy Nexus controller, but about 1/2" deeper. Fit's in a drive bay with lots of spare room. That's why the pcb seems a little cramped in places. I also needed big fat traces as it works with fans u...

Do you mean "with out generating any heat"? What I mean by that is while most FanBus' drop voltage by converting it to excess heat, my fan controller does the same thing but without generating any heat. Thus, it doesn't heat up the inside of your case like others do. And it doesn't cause all that a...

Here's a link to my system. It's been in development on and off for at least a year. http://home.mn.rr.com/ravton/ Does everything you're talking about but on a larger scale. Supports both Graphical and Character LCD's and VFD's. http://home.mn.rr.com/ravton/images/wccs3_small.jpg http://home.mn.rr....

The fan controller is part of my overall system control system which you can see at http://home.mn.rr.com/ravton/ . The Fan controller is unique in that: 1) It converts 12V from 0V-12V. 2) It does this without generating any heat (like a linear controller). 3) It does this without generating any noi...