Hi guys,

I just finished building my computer, and have some questions I'm hoping someone here can answer. The computer is built to be silent as it's being used in my home studio, and in that regard I opted for Noctua's NH-D14 for CPU cooling. My motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H which provides one CPU 4 pin fan header. So right now the Noctua fans are connected to the bundled Y splitter, which is connected to CPU fan header. That leaves me with two choices; either have the fans going full speed (which is to loud for me), or dial them down through Gigabyte's BIOS. This works fine except the fans will not speed up when the CPU starts working/gets hotter.

I've decided to replace the stock Noctua fans with two PWM fans so I can let the motherboard control the fan speed. But I'm unsure how to connect them to the motherboard. Should I connect one fan to the CPU fan header, and the other to another available fan header? Or would it be best to get a PWM Y splitter and connect them both to the CPU fan header?

Any help would be appreciated.

My choice for PWM fans are Scythe Slip Stream 120mm x 25mm PWM Mid Speed Fan - (SY1225SL12LM-P), cheap and they have a very good range (300-1300rpm), as long as your bios/software can control them imo are good choice.

Now if have a bigger budget or want something a little better, i would probably go with Noiseblocker NB-eLoop B12-PS 120mmx25mm Ultra Silent Bionic Blade PWM Fan - 400 - 1500 RPM or Noctua NF-F12 120 x 25mm PWM Fan. Personally i would go with the scythe, its less than half price of these fans.

For connecting the two pwm fans i would use Y PWM splitter, something like Akasa PWM Splitter Cable (AK-CBFA04-15). Now if you are worried about the mobo connector now having enough power for 2 fans, you can get a splitter that uses a direct 4pin molex for power, and just uses the mobo for reporting the rpm and grabbing the pwm signal, Akasa PWM Splitter - Smart Fan Cable (AK-CB002)

But i wouldnt expect to much from a gigabyte mobo and their fan control, not their biggest strenght, if you want more control and tweaking go with Asus and their FanXpert2.

You could try using Speedfan to control the existing fans.

Thans for the suggestions guys. I've tried Speedfan but haven't had any luck with it. Maybe it doesn't work well with 3 pin fans?! It's a little to advanced for me anyway.
I've ordered the above mentioned Akasa cabel, and a couple of PWM fans. Hopefully it will be pretty straight forward to remove the old fans, and fan clips so I can install the new ones.

http://www.nexustek.nl/NXS-120mm-pwm-fa ... -quiet.htm

in that other thread on Noctua, they use Nexus. Would the above work better?