Feeling a little … dumb considering I’ve been building computers 23 years. But this is my first enterprise gear at 41 cause I’m tired of not playing with it anymore. Havn’t touch a rack really to work on it in 7 years since I took a cloud job.
Now I work in a datacenter but I don’t even get to do the physical stuff.
Anyway. On the fan controller, shouldn’t the sata connector be connected. And if so, anybody got instructions on how I’m supposed to get to the guy. Cause I got small hands but not that small and I started unscrewing but…
And there are three fan headers that come off the connector for the 3 Molex Power board… are those necessary to plug in?
To be fair, the fan setup on the HL15 v1 was a little …dumb.
Could you be a little more specific about what you have? Did you order an HL15 v1 case and then the Noctua fan upgrade separately and now you are trying to install the upgrade kit? There should be instructions around for that, surprised they didn’t include them or a sheet with a link. Or did you order an HL15 v2 case? Or …?
What is your end goal? Are you trying to unplug the fans from the fan hub and controller so you can connect them directly to your motherboard? Is your system built but something about the fans isn’t working?
What part can’t you reach? The FC1, FH1 or something else?
I don’t have the kit, but i think the controller is magnetic and just gets stuck to the edge of the case. If that is what you are referring to maybe it just fell off in shipping?
It doesn’t sound like you are trying to install the kit, but to figure out what is what here are some instructions for the install of the kit;
It’s for the HL15 v1 and 45HL documentation isn’t always well proofread, but it might provide some general guidance on disassembly and how things might have been connected in assembly.
I don’t think there are explicit instructions around for disassembling the case, but it’s not that difficult because as you noted it is all just screwed together. It takes a little work if you need to get under the backplane, and if so it can help to take off the front first.
What motherboard are you using? If your motherboard supports PWM fans you shouldn’t really need the FC1 controller.
I’m just a dumby, and I see a powered fan hub, and I go. Well That has a sata Power am I supposed to plug it in?
I can’t get to it easily right now from what I can see. Except for I am going to have to completely unscrew the steel surrounding the wall of fans, just to get to the little fan hub that’s been carefully trapped beneath the drive cage.
Or am I just being dumb and I don’t need to plug it in?
The TL;DR is No, I don’t think you need to connect the SATA connector.
The longer answer is that a single fan header on most motherboards will support max of about 12W (and a typical 120mm fan will draw 1.5-2W max) or six fans connected to it, so, since that fan hub can have 8 fans connected, you wouldn’t want to have all 8 fans drawing power from the one motherboard header. So, in that scenario you would connect the SATA, which could provide up to 54 watts. The six fans in the HL15 should only draw max about 10 watts, and I’m not 100% sure how the HL15 v2 is wired, but I believe that hub only has the 3 front fans connected to it (?), so that’s only 6 watts or less max through the fan header, which is no problem. Per the manual, it won’t hurt anything or eliminate features to connect it, but I don’t think there is any need to disassemble the case to connect SATA to it from the PSU.
Remember that fan hub isn’t specifically for the HL15, so it supports systems that might have 8 or more fans and those fans might be larger (140mm, 180mm, …) and more power hungry.