13 Fan setup.

[Bond Villain]

Hi all,

I’m building a new machine in the 5000x case. This allows for 13 fans. I have the flowing;

• 13 x QL120 fans ( 4 x 3 fan pack, 1 x 1 fan)
• H150i Elite LCD

My motherboard (Z790 Aorus Master) only has 2 USB headers.
 

Is there a way to wire 13 fans, and the AIO, to retain full iCue control using only 2 USB headers

 

thanks..

 

[LeDoyen]

for RGB you need individual fan control obviously, but for PWM you do not. It will be a lot easier to manage if you use SATA powered PWM hubs and group the fans that will be fine running at the same speed.

If you don't need to have different speeds between front and side fans, you can plug all 6 on a PWM hub and drive that off a single PWM channel.

If you do a push/pull on the AIO, maybe use another PWM hub for the 3 additional fans (one PWM channel more). Then you have one last channel for the back fan.

Then you're left with having to install two lighting node core to manage the remaining fans. These should be in the 3 packs of QL already.

Of course you're down one USB header, so it seems you'll need one of those :

 

It's just one way to do it, there are tons, but as soon as you install a USB2 powered hub, it gets easy.

Usually it's best to use as few commander units as possible and rely on PWM hubs to drive large numbers of fans, as iCUE sometimes struggles when there's many controllers (and they are expensive).

RGB controllers don't pose that problem so, you can connect more of those.