I ordered the Noctua fan upgrade for my hl15 back when it was first released, finally getting around to installing it. I have an issue though, in the instructions on steps 9 and 10 of the front fan it says to plug the hub in to the controller. Great, easy enough. Then on step 4 of the rear fans it says to plug those in to the splitter. Then step 5 says to plug hub (no where mentioned plugging in to a hub for the rear fans) in to the controller. So I did get two hubs with my kit, but was I supposed to get two controllers too? Or maybe I’m supposed to daisy chain the hubs? I only received a single controller and two hubs with my kit.
Any help would be appreciated. Also, I assume the old fan wires are no longer used?
I don’t have the kit, but at the high level, the goal is just to get all six fans unplugged from being powered as 2-pin from the power distribution board and plugged into the PWM headers on the motherboard. Because there are six fans and less than six fan headers, at a minimum you need the NA-FH1 fan hub and/or the 3 way fan splitter cable to do that. In theory you could connect all six fans to the fan hub and connect the hub to a single header on the motherboard. In that setup, all six fans would run at the same fan speed controlled by the IPMI. By connecting groups of fans to different motherboard headers, you can potentially tell the IPMI to run each group at different speeds. So, a logical grouping is to effectively run the three front fans off of one motherboard header and the mid case fans off of a separate motherboard header. Whether the three fans are routed through a hub or a splitter cable doesn’t really matter.
The fan controller provides some additional adjustment, so it can provide some additional speed reduction over what the IPMI is telling the fans to do, and that can be tweaked manually without going into the IPMI. That may or may not be useful depending on your workloads. Personally, I would find opening the case to adjust the fans annoying, but I can see others liking a non-IPMI tweaking ability.
Based on the instructions, I think the intention is the front fans run into the hub, the hub to the controller, and the controller to the motherboard. Then the mid case fans are just connected through a splitter cable to a second motherboard header. I think sending two hubs is an error unless they didn’t send a splitter cable. This configuration does mean that only the front fans are adjustable with the controller
Maybe that’s TL:DR and TMI, not sure, but I think the instructions for the mid case fans step 5 is a cu/paste/proofreading error and was meant to tell you to plug the splitter cable into a second free fan header #1, 2, or 3. But, as mentioned above, you could tweak the setup to have all the fans go through the controller via the hub, or leave out the controller altogether with no real impact to the end goal of PWM fans being controlled by the motherboard..
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Definitely not TMI and very helpful. Thanks! I also agree about having to open the case to adjust speed seems like a pain to me. Eliminating the controller makes the most sense to me, I just wasn’t sure if it could be eliminated, why include it at all. Anyways, thank you.
Just to clarify, the fan speed controller is included in the kit because we source it from Noctua. Some motherboards do not have the capability to regulate fan speed directly, so we include the controller to ensure proper functionality in all scenarios—just in case it’s needed.
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I also only got around to installing my upgrade kit very recently after sitting in the box for a long time.
I had the similar doubt about whether all fans should be plugged in thru the hub to the controller rather than half connected and the other half not.
I have to say that the instructions leave a fair amount to be desired. Also the pictures are smaller/lower-res (and sometimes more misleading) than they should be which leads to some confusion. Ultimately decipherable, but not very obvious. I don’t understand why these images are so grainy. Modern image compression is better than this. I think 45homelab should do an installation video for this. Here’s a list of errata / misleading items from my experience.
- Disassembly: #6 Shows view of the front-plate with Noctua beige fans in place already when its talking about disassembly rather than the original fans.
- Front Fan Assembly: #2 doesn’t mention (what they later mention in #6) that you should reuse the black rubber grommets from the original fans when inserting the screws thru the front of the face-plate. Otherwise the screws will just fall out. This general description of grommets is vague when faced with a million extra rubber noctua parts included in the kit.
- Front Fan Assembly: #5 Refers to images 3 and 4, but they are not labeled, but one can infer that its talking about the images right below.
- Front Fan Assembly: #7 Is two images adjacent to each other, but it looks like it could potentially be a single image you have to study to interpret the orientation of. This image also shows the old power connectors covered with electrical tape to prevent accidental short-circuit of leaving them in place but unconnected to anything. However, there is no mention of this in the instruction.
- Front Fan Assembly: #8 and #9 Are really out of order from a practical standpoint. And the 3rd image of #9 is just more dark and grainy and challenging to figure out which cable is which than it should be.
- Rear Fan Assembly: #4 Orientation of the splitter cable could be better to know what is connected to what.
- Rear Fan Assembly: #6 Orientation of the cables could be better to know what is connected to what.
Actually, the kit is supposed to include some plastic caps to put over the old power connectors.
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