4-pin PWM fan

harrigan · Post by **harrigan** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 10:07 am

Does anyone know a source for 80mm fans with 4-pin connectors for the new LGA775 cpu-fan header?

gilmanw · Post by **gilmanw** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 12:49 pm

I have been looking for one as well. Surfing madly, I finally found that JMC makes a line of PWM fans in sizes 70mm, 80mm, 92mm, and 120mm:

http://www.jmcproducts.com/products/pwm_fans/

Haven't found an online store carrying them yet, but I suppose I could order direct from them. Note that it appears that the full RPM noise on these are are pretty high, ranging from 36.1db to 53db. On the other hand, the whole point is the PWM speed control, so hopefully you won't normally run at full RPM.

I also suspect that Sanyo would be another source, as the stock Intel cooler that came with my LGA775 P4 has a Sanyo 4-pin PWM fan. However, I have not yet found that fan on the Sanyo site...

sthayashi · Post by **sthayashi** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 12:53 pm

Normal 3-pin fans should work with them. Or are you looking for fans that will take advantage of the 4th wire's PWM output in lieu of current fan control methods?

gilmanw · Post by **gilmanw** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 1:02 pm

Yeah, I'm using a 92mm Nexus 3-pin fan right now and it works fine. However, if there's a 4-pin PWM fan available, I'd like to try it out.

Or should I stick with the "don't fix what ain't broke" rule? Nah...that's no fun!

steef · Post by **steef** » Tue Mar 01, 2005 1:15 pm

I have been looking into the same subject - 4-pin (mobo) PWM fans - for my CPU HSF.
I found that Supermicro offers 4-pin PWM controlled fans (ie Sanyo) among their accessories. Also see this document:
http://www.supermicro.com/manuals/matri ... Matrix.pdf, page 2.

I can only imagine other manufacturars offer 4-pin fans as spareparts too.

For my CPU fans it was worthwhile. However 4-pin fans will probably not better you Nexus casefans for quietness.

If you want a setup with variable fanspeed, I guess you want fans with a broad rpm range. These are also available as 3-pin fans and probably your bios can control those fans as well (Mine can, examples of 3-pin fans with a broad rpm range can be found within the same linked document).

My personal preference is however that the fans spin at constant no matter load or temperature.

And yes - availability of 4-pin PWM fans is very poor.

Good luck!

gilmanw · Post by **gilmanw** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 2:24 pm

I finally found a source for the JMC fans with 4-pin PWM control. Skyline Graphics in Texas is listed as the sole US distributor for JMC, but their (very) rudimentary website (http://www.homestead.com/prosites-skyli ... index.html) does not list any of the PWM fans (nor the JMC Panther fan that is the only 60mm fan currently on the "Recommended" list).

However, if you email them ([email protected]) or call them (214-388-7922), they actually do have both. The PWM fans are available as 70x70x15mm, 70x70x25mm, 80x80x25mm, 92x92x25mm, and 120x120x25mm (all 12 volt). The fans are not "bare" (i.e., they have the fan tails and 4-pin connectors already installed).

As for the 60mm Panther fans, they currently only have the 60x60x15mm fan, not the 60x60x25mm on the Recommended list. BTW, the part number given on the Recommended list may be incorrect (or may not be up-to-date with their current labelling scheme). Panther fans should have a "Q" suffix in the part number.

Here's hoping that the PWM fan works out (worse case scenario: I put the Nexus back on the XP90...).

frankgehry · Post by **frankgehry** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 4:37 pm

I found this video at the jms distributor site.
They talk about why the panthers are supposed to be quieter. They have 92mm but no 120mm fans.

http://www.jmcproducts.com/news/newslet ... lips.shtml

They use an ocilliscope and a sound level meter. - FG

gilmanw · Post by **gilmanw** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 4:58 pm

Sorry if I'm reviving an old post, but I have an update that might be helpful to anyone else that decides to order one of these fans.

The fan arrived very quickly and appeared to be in good condition, but it did not work when I initially plugged it in.

However, luckily I noticed that the fan's 4-pin connector didn't look quite right. Turns out the wires were in reverse order. From pin 1, the signals to the 4-pin connector should be: Gnd, +12V, Sense (rpm signal), and PWM control. At least on the unit I received, this corresponds to Black, Red, Blue, and Yellow (I confirmed this by peeling back the label on the pin hub and observing which wires were connected to the contacts labelled: G, V, S, and P respectively). With the aid of a small screwdriver, I removed and repositioned the pins in the connector in the right order and on the next try the fan spun up.

The JMC distributor later confirmed that I identified the labels correctly. He also confirmed that the 92mm fans seem to always need some "attention" (his words), but claimed the other sizes always seem fine. Does raise serious concerns about the QA of their manufacturing line.

So the fan does seem to work for now...not sure if I'll keep it or switch back to the Nexus.

sthayashi · Post by **sthayashi** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 5:39 pm

What did it cost? I don't see any prices on their site nor any order forms (and I'm not itching to spend money to find out just yet).

Olav the Viking · Post by **Olav the Viking** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 7:50 pm

Sat 19Mar2005 - I had some cooling problems initially with my Temjin TJ06 case and the Intel D925XECV2 MOBO with the LGA775 P4-560J.

The problem was the MOBO rear zone temperature (Zone B or Zone 2, depending upon whether you are displaying it with the Intel Desktop Utilities or the IDCC). The stock TJ06 120mm fans are quiet, but when the MOBO/Processor starts to heat up, their top speed of ~1200 RPM just doesn't cut it.

It took me some time searching before I finally stumbled upon an Intel document "4-Wire Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) Controlled Fans": http://www.formfactors.org/developer/sp ... Public.pdf, that actually described in detail their 4-Wire PWM fan specifications.
This document should be required reading for all SPCR fan buffs.

Once I knew what type of fan could be controlled by the auxilliary rear fan socket on the MOBO I was able to locate one supplier of PWM fans, JMC Products: http://www.jmcproducts.com. I replaced the rear fan with a $20 JMC 1225-12HBHAPW 25 x 120mm PWM fan which has a top speed of ~2700 RPM. At its normal running speed for nominal system loading (~1100 RPM), it has the same airflow and noise characteristics as the stock TJ06 fan. When things start to heat up though, it ramps up and is very effective in removing the heat and hot air generated by the CPU and its cooling fan - heat which just happens to get dumped into the rear temperature zone of the MOBO.

I set the MOBO fan control parameters for this fan to ramp from minimum to maximum speed from 38° to 58° C. I am still using the stock Intel CPU cooler, have not had any problem with CPU cooling since, and now the rear zone MOBO temperature never goes out of spec. It is noisier when it ramps up, but a little noise is much better than crispy critters inside the box. I'm very pleased with the results of using this fan.

When time permits, I plan on replacing the front TJ06 120mm fan with one of these JMC fans as well. The only shortcoming to the new fans is that they are shipped with short (about 5") leads which are unusable, and one must splice them to be longer. It is nice if you have the correct MOLEX pins (08 50 0114), so that only one splice is required to extend the fan leads and then new pins are put on the end for insertion into the fan plug. If one does a lot of PC modifications, it makes sense to order a bag of 100 of these pins.

Mon 21Mar2005 - Edited this post for the benefit of other SPCR forum threads. Comments on JMC PWM Fans vs. the Silverstone ones: the Silverstone fans are good, no doubt, but they are not PWM fans, which is required for the aux rear fan on the D925XECV2 MOBO.

I opted for AUTOMATIC control, which the Silverstone SST-FP52-B Thermal Controller does (for the front TJ06 80mm fan and for a little ducted mini fan I put in my case to blow some air onto my low-end video board heat sink). Auto fan control is great, both by the Intel MOBO and the Silverstone FP52 - set it and forget it!

All 3 JMC 120mm PWM fans I ordered were wired correctly to the pins before I spliced it to make the leads long enough.

Skyline Graphics is the supplier for JMC fans: "Charles Boyd" <[email protected]>

Any other comments on PWM fans and cooling would be most appreciated. . .

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 11:03 am

Olav the Viking,

There is probably usefull information or a question inside that mass of words (which looks about the same for all four of the posts you made). But because you use no paragraphs, it is quite hard to read. I hope it doesn't surprise you that I didn't read any of your four posts. Past experience has learned that more people think this way. So if you want more responses to your postings, then you might want to use a more readable format.

gilmanw · Post by **gilmanw** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 12:23 pm

In reply to sthayashi's question about price and ordering, I received the following pricing from Charles Boyd @ Skyline Graphics ([email protected], 214-388-7922):

PWM fans:
JMC 7015-12HBAPW 70x70x15mm $12
JMC 7025-12HBAPW 70x70x25mm $12
JMC 8025-12HBAPW 80x80x25mm $10
JMC 9025-12HBAPW 92x92x25mm $12
JMC 1225-12HBAPW 120x120x25mm $20

Panther fan (not PWM):
JMC 6015-12LBQA 60x60x15mm $8

He shipped 3 fans via USPS Priority Mail from TX to WA for $5 (ordered and shipped on Thur, arrived 2 days later on Sat).

There is no order form online. You can do it via email, phone, or fax. For myself, I did quotes via email and placed the order by phone.

laajr · Post by **laajr** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 3:13 pm

What's your impression of the 92mm fan? How does the PWM control work with your MB (Intel....?)?

Thanks!

Olav the Viking · Post by **Olav the Viking** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 3:01 pm

laajr wrote:What's your impression of the 92mm fan? How does the PWM control work with your MB (Intel....?)?

Thanks!

I have no experience with the 92mm fan. I'm using PWM with the aux rear fan connector on the Intel MOBO and the increased airflow (from ~32 cfm @ 1200RPM before to ~90 cfm @ 2700RPM after) did get my temps in spec. The only other 4-pin PWM fan connector on the MOBO is for the CPU fan, and I just plugged in the Intel fan that came with the processor there and left it alone.

When I eventually hook up the front 120mm fan to the board, it will be to one of the two 3-pin MOBO fan connectors and I believe that the fan will run in voltage controlled mode since the control signal on fan connector pin 4 is not there (according to the doc I quoted). This shouldn't be a problem as the Intel board also controls fans plugged into its 3-pin fan connectors. Are you familiar with their hardware utils IDU & IDCC? If not, look here: http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/software.htm.

There are a few issues with the IDU hardware monitoring software (minor bugs) and I just received an E-Mail back from Intel today saying they would work with me directly on this rather than through one of those P.I.T.A. form-filling automated support web sites.

The IDCC software lets you change fan settings actively and at reboot they are saved to BIOS on the MOBO, so the software does not have to actually be active to control the fans. Considering this and the easy availability of documentation through Intel's web sites, I wouldn't consider another MOBO brand.

gilmanw · Post by **gilmanw** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 10:29 pm

laajr wrote:What's your impression of the 92mm fan? How does the PWM control work with your MB (Intel....?)?

Thanks!

Finally got around to trying it tonight (the machine the fan is destined for is a huge success as a media center pc...which means it's hard to find a good time to take it offline without people getting upset). Got a decent reduction in heat (about 10%). I have an Asus P5GD2 with a hot-hot-hot P4 550 3.4GHz processor. To keep it quiet I've been letting things run a bit hot; the baseline temps under running under load (Prime95) with a Nexus 92mm fan blowing down on the XP-90 heatsink have been running around 63-64 C (CPU) and 42 C (motherboard). With the JMC 92mm PWM, it came down to around 58 C (CPU) and 38 C (motherboard). I should also note that with the low RPM of the Nexus, I had to set the BIOS to ignore CPU fan speed; with the JMC I was able to enable it.

However, the JMC is really incredibly noisy. At full speed (around 3700 RPM) in open air it sounds like my small travel high dryer (set to low). Furthermore, I could not get the Asus motherboard (QFAN2) to ramp down the RPM using PWM control. It is possible it may have been damaged by the factory error in the connector I describe above. I do not believe I damaged the RPM signal...looking at the JMC spec sheet for the RPM signal, I just applied voltage to the pull-up resistor connected to the output transistor (i.e., very unlikely to have damaged it). However, the spec sheet I found did not describe the PWM control...the bad wiring ended up grounding it so I'd guess it would be fine, but still it does not work.

To further experiment, I tried using the Asus BIOS option to control CPU fan speed via DC voltage and while it did lower the RPM by ~20% to ~3000RPM, it was still way too loud. I suppose I could put a Zalman FanMate on it to further decrease the speed, but at this point it's apparent I would not be getting this particular specimen to function as I intended (a PWM fan).

I switched back to the Nexus, which is inaudible with the case closed up and the other fans running. If I find I need to further reduce temps, I'll probably give a Panaflo 92mm a shot.

As for the JMC, based on my sample set of 1 fan, I cannot recommend the 92mm fan. While it's higher speed/CFM gives it an advantage from the cooling perspective, it is far too noisy for a HTPC. The caveat is that the fan may have been damaged by the miswiring of the connector (although that's still the fault of the manufacturer). So YMMV.

Addendum: I also played around with the 60x60x15mm Panther fans ($8 each) I received in the same order. Note that these are not the same as the 60x60x25mm Panther mentioned on MikeC's recommended list, but they are in the same family. They're pretty quiet, about on par with the 60mm Silverstone case fans (rebadged Everflow's?) that came with the LC03V case. However, there's a bit of audible clicking coming from the hub (I think) reminiscent of a Pabst fan. In fact, I have a 60x60x15mm Pabst laying around and they're pretty similar. I think I'll stick with the stock fans for now since (from my highly scientific method of putting my hand over the fan) I think the stock fans have better CFM.

Addendum2: I pulled the stock Intel cooler fan (Sanyo Denki) and tried it out. It is a much quieter fan than the 92mm JMC, but significantly louder than the Nexus of course. The Intel fan is in a round frame, but thinking of trying to mod it to fit on the XP-90 (I wouldn't trust it in a tower case, but maybe OK in my HTPC...).

laajr · Post by **laajr** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 3:11 pm

Appreciate the feedback. I have a 92mm Panaflow (low speed) on the way to use with an XP-90 and a 3.2 ghz P4 (540J). I've heard that the stock Intel cpu fan is noisy, even though it uses a 4 pin pwm fan. The CPU is on the way so I have not heard the noise level.

If the Panaflow is quite enough, I'll drop the use of the pwm Intel fan and stick with the XP-90 combo.

Thanks again.

cpemma · Post by **cpemma** » Wed Apr 06, 2005 4:33 am

More tech info on control of 4-wire fans (and 3-wire)

http://www.analog.com/library/analogDia ... speed.html

frankgehry · Post by **frankgehry** » Fri Apr 08, 2005 4:43 am

I recently purchased a couple of JMC fans, a 1225-12L, and a 92mm panther. The fans are heavy and well made on a par with papst. I have to disagree with gilman as the 92mm pwm model has a max spd. of well over 3000 rpm so I'm not surprised that it was noisy. You can't really compare a 1500rpm nexus to a 3700rpm JMC. But then, the pwm models only come in high spd versions.

You can get rpm sensing and thermal control with most models. The panther has a max spd. of 2000rpm and the 120mm is just right at 1600rpm. They are extremely smooth in the index finger spin test and relatively free of vibration. At higher speeds the motor noise is brighter than a nexus, but under 1000rpm they are definitely quiet fans. I planning a fan swap for my enermax and I think I will go ahead and get an 80mm although they don't have a panther version. I might try the 15mm version, but in any case it will be a low speed version.

This is as close to a one stop fan store as I have experienced. I do need to do some more listening at different speeds and with the 120mm installed in my case. - FG

The sales guy was very knowledgeable and was able to suggest an alternative to the 80mm panther and explained some of the options that are not listed on the web site. All of the models have rpm sensing, and they have quite a few 38mm models as well as a 15mm by 80mm.

As was mentioned earlier the 92mm was $12 and the 120mm was $14. Shipping was $5 and they arrived in two days. - FG

gilmanw · Post by **gilmanw** » Fri Apr 08, 2005 10:45 pm

Note that the 92mm JMC pwm fan I purchased was *not* a Panther. As Frank points out, I certainly do expect a 3700rpm fan to be much noisier than the Nexus, but I also expect that the PWM control would allow the motherboard to bring the speed (and noise) down when that much airflow is not needed.

I could use a Zalman FanMate to bring down the rpm to Nexus speeds and when I did so it was in the same ballpark as the Nexus in both rpm and sound. However, the whole point of getting a 4-pin PWM fan is to take advantage of motherboard control of the fan via PWM. This did not work at all, although as I noted above, the fan was initially miswired by the manufacturer and fan control *may* have been damaged when I initially tried out the fan (silly me...I didn't rip open the hub to double-check the wiring

). My motherboard has an option of using DC voltage control to bring down the fan speed, but I could never get it to go as low as Nexus rpms and was still too noisy. Again these comments are specific to the PWM models, not the Panthers.

I did get 60mm JMCs that are Panther models and they're pretty good but not really an improvement on the stock case fans. They'll make good spares one day...

As for my CPU cooler, I'm now using a 92mm Panaflo on the XP90, which stays at a nice slow 1600rpm when idle under motherboard DC voltage control (and is just a tiny bit louder than the Nexus) but gives me greater headroom for when the CPU is under heavy load. Note that the Panaflo 92mm seems to have more hub noise when mounted vertically, but since I'm using a Media PC case, it's luckily mounted horizontally.

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