I posted a video today with a Noctua fan swap (disclaimer: Noctua sent the $200 worth of fans to me for this build…)—it’s in the first 5 minutes or so of the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD9awxmOGG4
It’s honestly very easy to do a full fan swap. You unscrew the screws surrounding the fans on the front panel, and it comes right off. Then you pull the three fans off (along with the 3D printed cable hider from the factory), and unplug them from the plugs at the front.
The middle fans are in a tray that slides up once you remove a few screws on the sides of the case. And those fans are plugged into a little 3D-printed cable guide on the side of the case.
To plug in new fans, I used some fan extension cables and a fan hub to plug them into the motherboard fan headers directly (with full PWM support).
One issue I ran into: the power breakout board 45Drives includes uses up all the SATA peripheral power connectors on the Corsair PSU that’s built-in, so if you need power to your fan hub, you’ll need to leech that off something…
Thanks for testing this out. I’m curious about what fan headers you are plugging the fans into?
Are you using “CPU Fan headers” or “Case Fan headers”?
I’m not sure which is a better choice here, would it be enough to cool the hard drives too? And if we use “case fan header”, would it spin up and down with CPU temp changing?
It really depends on your motherboard and the fan controls it gives you. On the one in my build, it controls the fans through OpenBMC and all the headers are by default tied to CPU temps.
It would be best to add in your own control to either run them well enough for most conditions at a steady rate, or tie into a sensor like one of the hard drives.
Thanks Jeff, I’ll see how it ends up when I receive my full build order. It’s really taking forever to receive my order, maybe due to I’m on us-west.
I’m thinking of either plugin them in motherboard directly and check out the BMC control for supermicro MB. Never really used of those MBs. Full build version motherboard comes with 8 4 pin headers.
Worst case scenario, I’m thinking of getting a Noctua fan head and fan controller, I can set the dial manually. In your video, I think you mentioned you didn’t have a place to plugin in more sata power cable for the hub, I’m thinking of just use a splitter, it’s probably not good if I full load all 15 drives. But I’m not planning to do so.
Will trying something out once I receive and report back here.
I don’t have the those exact noctuas as Jeff, but I have 6 of a mixed nf-f12 and nf-p12
with the same noctua cpu cooler (albeit the LGA-3647 version) and with fan filters on the front.
My drive temps sit around 35C with a max of 42C.
I’m going to get those NA-IS1 fan spacers for the front intake and see if I can lower the noise a bit more.
One thing to keep in mind is that if you are working with the super micro motherboard, the ipmi fan threshold needs to be changed for noctuas since they can spin down to like 300rpm. My motherboard was triggering a error, and it was causing all the fans to ramp up for a bit before slowing down and repeating the error.
Phanteks D30-120 fans don’t fit off of the 45 drives backplate?? I finally decided to do a fan upgraded. I thought I would try the phanteks D30-120mm’s for the rgb. Their special connectors actually shorten the three fan setup to the 45 drives due to their unique connection to each other. Does anyone know a work around or do I just have to get different fans
They fit, you just need to detach the fans from each other.
Any fans that chain together like that need to be separated from each other and have their own individual wires ran to the fans.
So, YES in your current configuration they will not “fit”. But a simply detaching all the fans and screwing them in individually, they will fit fine. Depending on what came with the fans you may need to get extra wires to hook em’ all up.
I added notes about this in my spreadsheet for fan compatibility.
On the D30 model, the best I can tell, the only way to connect their fans is by using their adapter. I know it came with a separate cable but maybe I am not understanding Phantek in general?
Your understanding is correct. What Glitch3dPenguin is saying is that in theory you could get some of the additional cable pieces that snap into the corner of one of the fans, and just run the three fans separately, This of course defeats one of the benefits you were looking for which would be less wiring. Also, as far as I can tell, Phanteks doesn’t sell any kits of just the pieces that snap onto the fans to connect them together and to the mobo. If you had bought individual fans you would have a connector for each fan, but with the kit you just have one (or two?) of them.
Getting the Phanteks kit to work with the HL15 is really not very practical.
If you are really set on using those fans, if you are in the return window, you could return them and get three individual fans instead.
You can use a cable like this to daisy chain fans together off of one fan header if you don’t eant to direct run all the fans back to the mobo;
But, you’ll pay a premium for three individual D30-120 fans compared to the kit unless you can find a deal somewhere, and you also need to figure out the individual RGB wiring.
If you can solder, you could also just solder a short length of 20/6 cable between the fans instead of the snap-on connectors.
Thank you so much, I thought I was going crazy. I think I am just going to have to bite the bullet and order one more fan. The Panteks three pack comes with two cables…kind of a jerk move lol. So now I will have 7 extra fans lying around. Cable management shouldn’t be too difficult with the 3d printed cover that 45drives used. Thank you again.
Rant about fans/cables in general, quality control is terrible.packages with multiple “same” cables with missing pins or different cables in same package. And Noctua had the same problem. 3 exact same fans with different cables/ accessories and most annoying, different fans. Look closely at the labels. Different rpm’s and one doesn’t say 5v. I wouldn’t have noticed except one of the three packages had a usb A adapter no I was able to test all the fans in the bracket prior to install. The one with the 2k rpm’s came to a stop much faster than the other 2 which surprised me. Also the USB A cable only came with one of the 3 fans. Just surprising.
Are you sure they are mislabeled? There are different variants of the NF-A12 5V/12V ULN/PWM/FLX. I think for most fan companies the base model number refers to some common characteristics of all variants such as CFM and doesn’t embed the physical connection.
I don’t think you’re supposed to plug a 5V fan directly into a motherboard header.
It’s possible the picker who filled your order just wasn’t paying attention, unless you are saying the fans inside the packaging do not match the outer packaging.
It’s definitely a possibility but unfortunately I threw the boxes away yesterday. I had never seen the usb cable before. I didn’t plug it in directly to the MB and rather to a usb a port on the top of my pc case to check if they were working prior to install. I actually really appreciated that cable as I mounted all three fans to the 45 drive plate with them daisy chained. They powered up as expected the same time. This is just subjective but the 12v 2k rpm model felt like it had a little bit of less airflow but I wonder if that had to do more with the usb connection and the other two being 5volt. Either way it will work and be quieter but it just feels wrong now and I am not sure which of the two variants is the wrong one? I have reached out to Noctua.
It also feels wrong that for $800 45HL can’t provide a case with PWM fans. They actually engineer a “solution” with 2 pin power and DC fans for a problem that wouldn’t exist if they just spent a few extra dollars on PWM fans.
Yeah, so you want 12v fans, and to plug those into the motherboard header.
If you are using the USB connector on the 12v fan, then its going to only get 5v, so it would probably be running at about half the rpm, (ie less airflow).
If those 5v fans are running off the fan headers on the motherboard, you are supplying more power to them than they are rated for which isn’t going to be good for the longevity of them
Thank you. When dealing with Noctua they asked for proof of purchase and what fans I bought. It does look like the 12volt 2k rpm’s should have been the correct order meaning 2 of the three fans were wrong. At least now I think I know what to advocate for. Thank you again!
I agree with this so much. It’s my biggest issue with the Chassis/System in general. Spend $800 on a case and then need to spend more to have basic fan function.
