Thanks! I've got a couple of videos planned that will hopefully cover some of this. As for why I made it: I got myself a couple of 10-gigabit network cards designed for servers. Servers typically have much higher airflow than your average PC, so the cards were overheating. The usual solution is to zip-tie a fan to the network card, but I wanted something a bit nicer.
@@CodeSevenDesign Network card didn't cross my mind at first, I was thinking a raid card or pcie storage card would benefit from this. Super sleek design, love it!
@@CodeSevenDesign This is exactly why I have a fan zip tied to my current HBA server card in my tower workstation :D What a beautiful design. I absolutely love the simplicity.
@@manitoba-op4jx I'm going to guess no because that would require an actual pcie device present on the board to offer the sensor and control, and that would bump the price way higher.
Am I the only one in here that immediately thought at least 4 reasons as to "why"? :D Cooling NICs, HBAs, GPUs with passive heatsinks or heck, even the back of some GPUs, those M.2 carrier boards... It looks really awesome and it's honestly a great idea. Good luck with it man!
My graphics card is water cooled and the NVME drive underneath it gets no airflow. I have jerry-rigged a fan to cool it. I've wanted a PCIe powered fan forever.
a couple other ideas... 1) multi fan version like a GPU. 2) a cage fan exhaust option. some cases re quite limited on airflow so having a way to pull air out could do wonders in restricted airflow devices. 3) have it controlled by the pc similar to a normal PC fan 4) a temperature sensor version, when it starts getting warm in whatever case, it can just come on without the push button.
u know, to cool down graphics card, or any other pcie 'stuff' a lot of people using ATX Mobo. So it makes sense. It can also be use in home server or some sort.
There used to be cards like this with 2 fans and a rpm adjusting slider at the pcie cover from the outside so you can change fan speed without opening the case
Been looking for something like this for some time and its really cool to see it put into production. My PC is an oven and needs all the help it can get
Fantastic idea and one that can be expanded upon. Most motherboards come with proprietary fan controller ICs and proprietary software because of which fans becomes a PITA to handle if you're not using the built in software or something goes wrong with the fan headers etc. An open source fan controller design which is powered from the PCIe slot (powerful and clean) would be very useful for those who might want to run multiple fans on their servers and perhaps even use a more complex microcontroller to remotely monitor fan operation and temperatures etc.
Hey, just a little bit of an engineer here as well. And this is really cool demo for assembling, I like it! Currently also working on embedded project (which is something rather new to me) and your video is quite interesting to see regarding pipeline :)
That is absolutely superb and a much better solution than I used which was some generic slot brackets, a laser cut 3mm wood plate to hold the fan and a 3D printed mount that goes over the PCIe slot to hold everything steady. :-)
while having limited uses, it is a really nice addition even just to be sure on summer season to keep airflow moving on really small and fanless cases (or the ones that barely have a spot for fans) I love this idea!
This by itself is already a very interesting and useful idea for servers. I think there is greater potential here to also add a second or third header that can be controlled independently, but I have no idea how much extra cost (both monetary and time) that would tack on. Great project and I can't wait to see more!
really cool! definitely looking forward to seeing more! the thing i would be most interested in is how you made both the programming and testing fixtures, and how they work.
Looks awesome. you should program and test during the same step to decrease assembly time. it would require a bit more electronics and a new test jig, but with the pi its 100% achievable.
Love your work, I'm in Australia too and do some retro electronics projects occasionally for my own purposes. I made a desk fan design using a 12V fan powered by USB with an onboard boost converter, although my PWM is controlled by a pair of NE555 timers. Granted a microcontroller would've been the easy approach but I opted for a timer-based design instead.
Brilliant! I have an idea: make the same thing, but without a PCI interface. That way, you can use free slots in the PC case and the fan could be connected conventionally via the motherboard.
This video was so to my liking that I went to check what other videos you've made. Then I realized you have exactly one video. might as well subscribe.
I personally like to use a large flat file to clean up the edges of PCBs. I think a sheet of sandpaper glued to something flat would also work. With the shape of your fan controller, it would be very quick to just slide it over a fixed piece of sandpaper.
Does this actually use the pcie edge for power only or are you connecting the the SMBus (System Management Bus) it is an I2C derived protocol and you could have the fan actually show as an available controllable fan withing the os (with uefi i think also in "BIOS")
I initially wanted to have SMBus control, but it turns out a lot of motherboards don't bother implementing SMBus on the PCIe ports. If I were going to make a version with fan control, I think I'd use a PCIe lane - maybe with a PCIe to USB or UART converter.
@@CodeSevenDesign Thats fair, but if you're doing a 2nd revison and have the spare time, try implementing a simple SMBus interface. The new ATTiny family is almost as cheap as the attiny13 and has hardware i2c. You could even toss in an ntc to dynamically adjust fan speeds and report temps via i2c.
You're getting a lot of "why" but i actually was looking for exactly this product a year or two ago. Couldn't really find anything. Going to go check out your site now. Glad the algorithm recommended this video.
love the design and process of individually testing the pieces. maybe for after separating the boards try using a knife sharpener like the really cheap ones, that have two sharpening disks. One or two passes through that should make for consistent results.
Modern Lian Li cases (and probably other brands too) have mesh around the PSU area and places to mount fans that can blow air onto the PCIe slots from under. For example the lancool 216. I think its a bit more of an elegant solution to have (reverse flow) fans mounted on the case, but nonetheless a cool project!
Thanks for the video! I appreciate the quality and application of QA processes similar to those in industry, it's certainly an interesting subject. Nevertheless, after reading some comments, I digress and reflect on another topic... just to brush up on the theme of how sad it is to live in an underdeveloped country. Let's say I bought a board complete with a fan. This would cost me $80. Converted to our local money taking into account today's exchange rate (10/07/2024, 1USD ≈ 5.50 BRL), the board+fan combo would result in about 440 Reais (BRL), our local money. On top of this 440 Reais, we include federal import taxes (60%) and state taxes (17%, calculated on the value of the product plus the 60% federal taxes), giving us a total of approximately 408 Reais, equivalent to 92% of the original product value. The price of the board and fan would be, for us, 848 Reais and some change. I'm not considering shipping costs, which would be taken into account when calculating both taxes. The average salary of a Brazilian at present date is approximately 3200 Reais by month (90% of the population earns less than this amount per month). This product would be equivalent to 26% of the total monthly earnings of an average Brazilian. One week's work.
I saw this (or something similar) and was set to buy soon! I have 3 x Rosewill 4U's and the have all my PCIe slots full and even with a mid-wall fan, the last card in the slot still gets hot. I was going to optimize a bit and put this in the last 7th slot. There used to be more PCI slot fans on the market in the early 2000s but what's left now is just plain ugly and low quality or are just braces for standard fans. This is done so well. Thank you for making this.
First video on the channel, it was amazing! Loved to watch this and hope to see more like this in the future, you got yourself another subscriber 😋 Could you show more how you made the pogopins be straight and exact position them? Did you use 3D printing for this or any other solution? I've been looking for how to make pogopins straight and reliable, just like yours looked to be. Sorry that it isn't about the PCIe fan controller, I just think that is simple and so much self explanatory, and you showed everything for my needs 😋 I think the fan controller is amazing, no doubt about it! ❤
A suggesstion: The button can be moved to the back panel of the controller, because if it is installed in the case, it is not convenient to change the speed of the fan.
Have you considered creating modular versions with 2 or 3 fans? For example, to improve the airflow to the graphics card. There's literally no room in my case for another PCIe device. But the idea is really interesting. I like the approach to assembly and quality control.
Instead of the Scraper maybe you could use a large Deburring Tool so it "deburrs" both sides at the same time and shoudl also get the little nib left behind by the break-off
Yo, the video looks so good I thought you were a massive tech channel that I was already a sub lol, you earned a sub, nice video would like to see more
Fun fact: Per the Intel Standard, behavior below 30 % PWM duty cycle is undefined. So at 25 % fan speed, some fans may run at 25 %, others will default to 30 % and others again will stop completely.
Good catch! I originally had the firmware run the fan at 30% for a couple of seconds before dropping to 25% to ensure it starts correctly. After testing with about 20 different fans, I couldn't find one that wouldn't reliably start at well below 25%. Another option would be to output 30% instead of 25%, but I'm too much of a perfectionist to do that!
@@CodeSevenDesign Running at 30 % at first is called a start-up pulse in the standard. I have fans in my collection that show all kinds of behavior, but I feel like the more modern fans cope better with non-compliant fan controllers.
Something ive wanted to do for the longest time is something very similar but have able to control all my case fans so i can set custom curves outside of mobo or proprietary software
High manufacturing cost is the unfortunate side effect of a low volume 1-man operation. That said, at this pricepoint I'd just pay a little bit extra and get a dual chamber case set up for intake at the bottom.
I made a mechanical matrix keyboard with LED backlighting for an 8-bit computer, the BOM cost was around $100 (or even less if you supplied your own keycaps) and people complained it was expensive. As if the $40 for a Redragon keyboard is what it should cost. I can barely squeeze the PCB itself and mechanical switches into a $50 budget. I appreciate feedback but just complaining "too expensive" without proposing a viable alternative is just insulting to designers.
@@foufou81 What does that even mean? The backplate isn’t for cooling 99% of the time. The backplates that have thermal pads won’t see any benefit from a fan pulling hot from CPU cooler either.
For other PCIE cards such as 10gig network cards that get VERY hot often and overheat. PCIe SSDs, sound cards and capture cards are the main use cases I can think of.
For either directing air to a card that needs the airflow a normal PC can't easily provide (like a network card or HBA meant for servers where flow is high across everything and streamlined) or just to throw more air at something that may need it like a mammoth GPU in a tight case or one with poor dynamics.
This would be pretty cool if you made a 2x 120mm fan version with some type of shroud that focuses air directly on bare gpu heatsink. That way you can remove the stock gpu fan and shroud
Excellent work, good craftsmanship, and It’s cool to see a modern take on a PCI fan. I remember way back when brands like Antec, Arctic, and Phobya had similar products to cool down monsters like the GTX480 and Radeon 6970. Excellent execution sir, keep up the great work.
Any plans on adding a connector for a NTC Thermistor for temperature dependent speed and connecting the microcontroller via I2C to SMBUS and have it show up as a lm-sensors compatible fan/temperature sensor? And maybe a multi-fan version with some 4-Pin connectors all individually controllable via SMBUS?
You might be able to use a knife sharpener to run the board down the middle, it would grind down the sharp edges and be very quick to just slide through like a credit card.
You could turn this into a million dollar idea: Make this board packed full of 4 pin fan headers and make It compatibile with FanControl (open source program). This way you can get software control on old unsupported motherboards
You know what would be absolutely genius ? The same thing with a 120mm fan in a 2 slow contraption wilth a closed off bottom side so the fan suck air from the back of the case. It would provide the hottest side of the GPU with 100% fresh air. It would require a 3d printed shell and a 2 slot PCIe plate, opefully very open.
its really cool but one downside seems to be a lack of automatic/temp based control for the fan speed. its really cool and look way better than what i do when im using datacenter/server hardware in my homelab computers. i just 3d print adapters that stick a fan where its needed and plug it into the motherboard. maybe some ideas to go with for a V2 able to be more fexible in where the fan can be mounted and with other sized fans, smaller and larger. some way to expose yourself to the host to control, daisy chain an existing pwm or via pcie or own thermal probe
Interesting process but I don't underatand why. For this sort of money one could just buy a whole computer case with bottom ventilation and control the fan with the mothererboard or a cheap fan controller. I understand that it's not a huge market because a decent product would have existed already if there was but why is there a market at all?
especially when pcie fan brackets can be had for $5 on amazon, i guess those don't draw power from pcie but then why would you want to? genuinely curious
@@v000000000000vita for servers as for example network cards or raidcontrollers can get hot quickly and most of the time have no good cooling exept from ziptieing a fan to it
wow. is is possible to show or roughly explain the whole process from design to finish? Like what software to design and CAD etc etc. How you designed the PCB, which are the correct manufacturing contractors to find , etc etc
It looks like this controller supports analog input it would be better to use small variable resistor to set the fan speed, yea it adds to the cost, but given the manufacturing cost it is very little % wise. you could use a rgb led and use the output color to indicate the fan speed, maybe you could make this visible, configurable from outside of the case at the bracket Could also use some through hole pads so a person could add a header to reprogram the IC Aside from this being neat and clean cable management, it would be more economical to just get brackets that have screw holes that line up with a fan's mount holes, i managed to find one that would fit a 60mm fan
Can you have more ports to plug more fans? I also thought that the controller would show up in your OS. I have some PCIe 1x ports available, but just putting ONE fan there seems like a waste. I hope the next iterations has more connectors.
How long does the process from start to finish last? How much foes a fan cost? How many fans do you need to sell to get all the machines and tools paid off? What's your hourly salary on this?
Nice.. I saw one, however I'm thinking about x3 to have a chance to cool down VRM heatsink and RAM slots also, or to use x3 with Asus/Gigabyte M.2 Hyper storage (without their case cover and a noisy fan)
This is so cool but t hose holes "appear" to only be effective if you have a blower fan, have you performed any testing to verify it provides any benefit?
Im curious if the speed control is only by the button or if it connects to the pc through the sm bus or something so it can be software controlled? *am guessing sm bus since based on the chips on the board and the missing pins on the connector, im gonna go out on a limb and guess its not actually touching any pcie lanes and either only connecting to power, or power and sm bus or some other low speed part of the connecter
pcie fan controller YES PLEASE now i just need 32 fan outputs aswell and pcie drivers and some simple UI to have fan curves or temp control somwhow and it would be mint
What size of fan does it support? If it is 120mm the better. I been looking for solutions to cool the often mis looked vrm area of the motherboard which is usually bare in low to midend boards or with passive heatsink on high end boards. Though the passive heatsink will suffice if there is an opportunity to cool down the vrms with active cooling why the heck not.
Do you sell a pcie x1 card with only the controller and the fan header and no fan holder, so I can get a extra fan header with speed control? Preferably with the button poking out the bracket (with option for low rise bracket)
would making some more holes increase the price? you could make 2 holes in the connecting piece with the right CC to mount 2 fans paralell to each other. could be useful :-)
Neat, I'm just wondering if it is possible to have fan speed control via PCIe using software on the pc like speedfan. Or maybe have it temperature controlled using the micro and a thermistor. Just some ideas.
It’s very cool, but I’d be interested in “why?”. Given there are many ways to do this with fan kits, not to mention built in to MBs and via software I’d love to know what made you want to make this (if anything beyond “just cause I can”) 😊
Weird question, but why is the only button to change the fan speed on the fan card’s pcb? Doesn’t seem that convenient to take off my side panel to change the fan speed vs pressing a button on the exterior
I have an idea, but i hope you can read my comment: Can you build this like a 240 or 360mm version with a attachable shroud on the backside That can be the best and cheapest option for a gpu fan mod, it had so much potential! The shroud can be use to fit correctly the gap between the Fan and the GPU and it will looks cool. Many user can do after that build their own 3D printed shrouds and makes an unique looking system.
Initially I though this is for people that is running out of fan header on their mother board, but I guess adding a fan into your pcie slot might have some use as well.
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
I'm an industrial engineer and I find this beautiful. Can you show them working? Elaborate on why you made this? Show the development process?
Thanks! I've got a couple of videos planned that will hopefully cover some of this. As for why I made it: I got myself a couple of 10-gigabit network cards designed for servers. Servers typically have much higher airflow than your average PC, so the cards were overheating. The usual solution is to zip-tie a fan to the network card, but I wanted something a bit nicer.
@@CodeSevenDesign Network card didn't cross my mind at first, I was thinking a raid card or pcie storage card would benefit from this. Super sleek design, love it!
@@CodeSevenDesign This is exactly why I have a fan zip tied to my current HBA server card in my tower workstation :D What a beautiful design. I absolutely love the simplicity.
can they be controlled by the computer, not just the button?
@@manitoba-op4jx I'm going to guess no because that would require an actual pcie device present on the board to offer the sensor and control, and that would bump the price way higher.
You had me at Open Source PCIe...
Me too. Unfortunately, it's only used for power, I thought you could control the fan speed using pcie.
Could you say you were... a fan at that point?
they had me a open source
@@iowesty they had me at open
Am I the only one in here that immediately thought at least 4 reasons as to "why"? :D
Cooling NICs, HBAs, GPUs with passive heatsinks or heck, even the back of some GPUs, those M.2 carrier boards...
It looks really awesome and it's honestly a great idea. Good luck with it man!
My graphics card is water cooled and the NVME drive underneath it gets no airflow. I have jerry-rigged a fan to cool it. I've wanted a PCIe powered fan forever.
This is absolutely beautiful! Not just the product; but the way you streamlined everything.. Hats off to you sir!
a couple other ideas...
1) multi fan version like a GPU.
2) a cage fan exhaust option. some cases re quite limited on airflow so having a way to pull air out could do wonders in restricted airflow devices.
3) have it controlled by the pc similar to a normal PC fan
4) a temperature sensor version, when it starts getting warm in whatever case, it can just come on without the push button.
Product photography on the Zoid site is SICK. Great work brother.
You should make a two-fan and a three-fan variant.
And an application that can be used to set the fan speed from the operating system.
What use would you have for that?
u know, to cool down graphics card, or any other pcie 'stuff'
a lot of people using ATX Mobo. So it makes sense. It can also be use in home server or some sort.
And a shroud to convert it to a blower style for PC exhaust.
@@tsstore-f1b be great for m.2 cards.
@@AceMcCrank those actually used to semi common back in the day just not open source like this
I'm absolutely shocked. I didn't even know people used pcie fans or pcie fans existed before this
people ziptied fans to server stuff before... so this is nice organisation upgrade
Me too. I've seen blower style exhaust fans that mount on the PCI slots on the case. I believe Thermaltake used to make those.
There used to be cards like this with 2 fans and a rpm adjusting slider at the pcie cover from the outside so you can change fan speed without opening the case
Though these days with some server cards, people 3d print fan ducts. Popular with cards like the Nvidia m40
did the algorithm's for RUclips got better? finally some useful videos on my Recommended Page
I hope this video blows up. I believe this project has the potential to go far
I need this!, but for half-height slots
@@Arudis4x oooo, that's actually a pretty great idea. But i feel the fans has to the Noctua NF-A4x20 PWM just for its low noise level
Been looking for something like this for some time and its really cool to see it put into production. My PC is an oven and needs all the help it can get
Fantastic idea and one that can be expanded upon. Most motherboards come with proprietary fan controller ICs and proprietary software because of which fans becomes a PITA to handle if you're not using the built in software or something goes wrong with the fan headers etc. An open source fan controller design which is powered from the PCIe slot (powerful and clean) would be very useful for those who might want to run multiple fans on their servers and perhaps even use a more complex microcontroller to remotely monitor fan operation and temperatures etc.
Hey, just a little bit of an engineer here as well. And this is really cool demo for assembling, I like it!
Currently also working on embedded project (which is something rather new to me) and your video is quite interesting to see regarding pipeline :)
This is brilliant. Just ordered one to replace my floppy 3d printed version that's cooling an HBA.
Now that is one slick PCI add in card! Great job man! I might pick one up for my next PC Build.
That is absolutely superb and a much better solution than I used which was some generic slot brackets, a laser cut 3mm wood plate to hold the fan and a 3D printed mount that goes over the PCIe slot to hold everything steady. :-)
while having limited uses, it is a really nice addition even just to be sure on summer season to keep airflow moving on really small and fanless cases (or the ones that barely have a spot for fans)
I love this idea!
Even if I’m not sure when I'd use this, I really enjoy appreciating your creative process.
Awesome work, dude!
This by itself is already a very interesting and useful idea for servers. I think there is greater potential here to also add a second or third header that can be controlled independently, but I have no idea how much extra cost (both monetary and time) that would tack on. Great project and I can't wait to see more!
really cool! definitely looking forward to seeing more! the thing i would be most interested in is how you made both the programming and testing fixtures, and how they work.
Looks awesome. you should program and test during the same step to decrease assembly time. it would require a bit more electronics and a new test jig, but with the pi its 100% achievable.
It's awesome to see an open-source manufacturing/assembly process, thanks for sharing!
Love your work, I'm in Australia too and do some retro electronics projects occasionally for my own purposes. I made a desk fan design using a 12V fan powered by USB with an onboard boost converter, although my PWM is controlled by a pair of NE555 timers. Granted a microcontroller would've been the easy approach but I opted for a timer-based design instead.
Brilliant! I have an idea: make the same thing, but without a PCI interface. That way, you can use free slots in the PC case and the fan could be connected conventionally via the motherboard.
Very cool! If you make a V3, it would be awesome to have 2 additional fan headers for additional case fans that could run off the card.
This video was so to my liking that I went to check what other videos you've made. Then I realized you have exactly one video. might as well subscribe.
I personally like to use a large flat file to clean up the edges of PCBs. I think a sheet of sandpaper glued to something flat would also work. With the shape of your fan controller, it would be very quick to just slide it over a fixed piece of sandpaper.
Flat file always worked best.
The microparticles from grinding a pcb will absolutely ruin your lungs, so be careful
Does this actually use the pcie edge for power only or are you connecting the the SMBus (System Management Bus) it is an I2C derived protocol and you could have the fan actually show as an available controllable fan withing the os (with uefi i think also in "BIOS")
Maybe using the EMC2101 or similar to communicate with the SMBus could be a great "premium" version
I initially wanted to have SMBus control, but it turns out a lot of motherboards don't bother implementing SMBus on the PCIe ports. If I were going to make a version with fan control, I think I'd use a PCIe lane - maybe with a PCIe to USB or UART converter.
@@CodeSevenDesign Thats fair, but if you're doing a 2nd revison and have the spare time, try implementing a simple SMBus interface. The new ATTiny family is almost as cheap as the attiny13 and has hardware i2c. You could even toss in an ntc to dynamically adjust fan speeds and report temps via i2c.
This is super cool! I love the small details. Awesome!!
You're getting a lot of "why" but i actually was looking for exactly this product a year or two ago. Couldn't really find anything.
Going to go check out your site now. Glad the algorithm recommended this video.
Okay, having gone to the site I'll admit this is a bit too expensive for me, but it does look great and I wish you lots of success in sales.
@@iroesstrongarm you can get a PCI fan mount for
@@gianlucaangeli not suitable .... they don't work in servers - where this does
So diff target market hey
$15 aliexpress.
@@mitchellmnr servers have no fan ports?
Thats so nice how your manufacturing jigs are set up
love the design and process of individually testing the pieces. maybe for after separating the boards try using a knife sharpener like the really cheap ones, that have two sharpening disks. One or two passes through that should make for consistent results.
WICKED idea, You could make this with 2 fans too !! nice work !! Liked and subscribed and totally 100% sharing this !
Modern Lian Li cases (and probably other brands too) have mesh around the PSU area and places to mount fans that can blow air onto the PCIe slots from under. For example the lancool 216. I think its a bit more of an elegant solution to have (reverse flow) fans mounted on the case, but nonetheless a cool project!
Thanks for the video! I appreciate the quality and application of QA processes similar to those in industry, it's certainly an interesting subject.
Nevertheless, after reading some comments, I digress and reflect on another topic... just to brush up on the theme of how sad it is to live in an underdeveloped country.
Let's say I bought a board complete with a fan. This would cost me $80. Converted to our local money taking into account today's exchange rate (10/07/2024, 1USD ≈ 5.50 BRL), the board+fan combo would result in about 440 Reais (BRL), our local money.
On top of this 440 Reais, we include federal import taxes (60%) and state taxes (17%, calculated on the value of the product plus the 60% federal taxes), giving us a total of approximately 408 Reais, equivalent to 92% of the original product value.
The price of the board and fan would be, for us, 848 Reais and some change. I'm not considering shipping costs, which would be taken into account when calculating both taxes.
The average salary of a Brazilian at present date is approximately 3200 Reais by month (90% of the population earns less than this amount per month). This product would be equivalent to 26% of the total monthly earnings of an average Brazilian. One week's work.
This seems perfect for my HBA card, but I really can't afforded at the moment. This is world class!!!
I saw this (or something similar) and was set to buy soon! I have 3 x Rosewill 4U's and the have all my PCIe slots full and even with a mid-wall fan, the last card in the slot still gets hot. I was going to optimize a bit and put this in the last 7th slot. There used to be more PCI slot fans on the market in the early 2000s but what's left now is just plain ugly and low quality or are just braces for standard fans. This is done so well. Thank you for making this.
First video on the channel, it was amazing! Loved to watch this and hope to see more like this in the future, you got yourself another subscriber 😋
Could you show more how you made the pogopins be straight and exact position them? Did you use 3D printing for this or any other solution? I've been looking for how to make pogopins straight and reliable, just like yours looked to be.
Sorry that it isn't about the PCIe fan controller, I just think that is simple and so much self explanatory, and you showed everything for my needs 😋 I think the fan controller is amazing, no doubt about it! ❤
a quick rub with sand paper smooths edges of PCBs nicely as well.
You didn’t have to make everything so perfect, but you did. Thank you.
dont know if ill ever need this , but i loved watching the process! this was amazing!
A suggesstion: The button can be moved to the back panel of the controller, because if it is installed in the case, it is not convenient to change the speed of the fan.
Really nicely done. Kinda wish I have a use for these
why is this so satisfying to watch
Have you considered creating modular versions with 2 or 3 fans? For example, to improve the airflow to the graphics card. There's literally no room in my case for another PCIe device. But the idea is really interesting. I like the approach to assembly and quality control.
Would love some more background info on how you got there and the process of development
Instead of the Scraper maybe you could use a large Deburring Tool so it "deburrs" both sides at the same time and shoudl also get the little nib left behind by the break-off
Yo, the video looks so good I thought you were a massive tech channel that I was already a sub lol, you earned a sub, nice video would like to see more
Fun fact: Per the Intel Standard, behavior below 30 % PWM duty cycle is undefined. So at 25 % fan speed, some fans may run at 25 %, others will default to 30 % and others again will stop completely.
Good catch! I originally had the firmware run the fan at 30% for a couple of seconds before dropping to 25% to ensure it starts correctly. After testing with about 20 different fans, I couldn't find one that wouldn't reliably start at well below 25%. Another option would be to output 30% instead of 25%, but I'm too much of a perfectionist to do that!
@@CodeSevenDesign Running at 30 % at first is called a start-up pulse in the standard. I have fans in my collection that show all kinds of behavior, but I feel like the more modern fans cope better with non-compliant fan controllers.
Darn, this is cool I must say!
Well done!
Something ive wanted to do for the longest time is something very similar but have able to control all my case fans so i can set custom curves outside of mobo or proprietary software
Can u explain to me the use case for this fan? Maybe I’m being stupid but the only thing I can think of is cooling a passive cooled server nic
Raid, nic, HBA in a normal case
That is very cool, but 65 dollars for PWM controler is insane
High manufacturing cost is the unfortunate side effect of a low volume 1-man operation.
That said, at this pricepoint I'd just pay a little bit extra and get a dual chamber case set up for intake at the bottom.
Depends on how much cost the backplate of the gpu you need to cool down.......
Sadly that's just how low volume electronics by independent devs have to be priced.
I made a mechanical matrix keyboard with LED backlighting for an 8-bit computer, the BOM cost was around $100 (or even less if you supplied your own keycaps) and people complained it was expensive. As if the $40 for a Redragon keyboard is what it should cost. I can barely squeeze the PCB itself and mechanical switches into a $50 budget. I appreciate feedback but just complaining "too expensive" without proposing a viable alternative is just insulting to designers.
@@foufou81 What does that even mean?
The backplate isn’t for cooling 99% of the time. The backplates that have thermal pads won’t see any benefit from a fan pulling hot from CPU cooler either.
this is cool i could see it being used
this is perfect for big pcie ssd's
no cables, no tweaking in bios...just works
nice👍👍
Looks quality. But what is the use case of a pcie fan?
I can only think of moving air inside a fan-less system, breaking a specific airflow cycle or in mining rigs.
For other PCIE cards such as 10gig network cards that get VERY hot often and overheat. PCIe SSDs, sound cards and capture cards are the main use cases I can think of.
I had a 980ti in a case with poor airflow. I put a small fan in front of it and opened the bottom slot and it helped. This would be a similar use.
For either directing air to a card that needs the airflow a normal PC can't easily provide (like a network card or HBA meant for servers where flow is high across everything and streamlined) or just to throw more air at something that may need it like a mammoth GPU in a tight case or one with poor dynamics.
In my case... for the Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Card
This would be pretty cool if you made a 2x 120mm fan version with some type of shroud that focuses air directly on bare gpu heatsink. That way you can remove the stock gpu fan and shroud
Excellent work, good craftsmanship, and It’s cool to see a modern take on a PCI fan. I remember way back when brands like Antec, Arctic, and Phobya had similar products to cool down monsters like the GTX480 and Radeon 6970. Excellent execution sir, keep up the great work.
Excellent video, these are awesome, and great for cooling GPUs
Any plans on adding a connector for a NTC Thermistor for temperature dependent speed and connecting the microcontroller via I2C to SMBUS and have it show up as a lm-sensors compatible fan/temperature sensor? And maybe a multi-fan version with some 4-Pin connectors all individually controllable via SMBUS?
A dual or triple 120mm version would do great for many applications. This is perfect for those hot 10GbE cards though.
You might be able to use a knife sharpener to run the board down the middle, it would grind down the sharp edges and be very quick to just slide through like a credit card.
You could turn this into a million dollar idea: Make this board packed full of 4 pin fan headers and make It compatibile with FanControl (open source program). This way you can get software control on old unsupported motherboards
You know what would be absolutely genius ? The same thing with a 120mm fan in a 2 slow contraption wilth a closed off bottom side so the fan suck air from the back of the case. It would provide the hottest side of the GPU with 100% fresh air. It would require a 3d printed shell and a 2 slot PCIe plate, opefully very open.
its really cool but one downside seems to be a lack of automatic/temp based control for the fan speed. its really cool and look way better than what i do when im using datacenter/server hardware in my homelab computers. i just 3d print adapters that stick a fan where its needed and plug it into the motherboard.
maybe some ideas to go with for a V2 able to be more fexible in where the fan can be mounted and with other sized fans, smaller and larger. some way to expose yourself to the host to control, daisy chain an existing pwm or via pcie or own thermal probe
This is super cool!
If you put in a slightly powerful mcu, you'd even manage to get actual pcie going on in the fan controller and have a pcie + manual control combo
Interesting process but I don't underatand why. For this sort of money one could just buy a whole computer case with bottom ventilation and control the fan with the mothererboard or a cheap fan controller.
I understand that it's not a huge market because a decent product would have existed already if there was but why is there a market at all?
especially when pcie fan brackets can be had for $5 on amazon, i guess those don't draw power from pcie but then why would you want to? genuinely curious
@@v000000000000vita for servers as for example network cards or raidcontrollers can get hot quickly and most of the time have no good cooling exept from ziptieing a fan to it
@@hiabst Server cases have excellent I/O slot air flow. Trouble arises when homecooks put cards with LFM requirements in consumer cases.
@@hiabst yeah but I'm saying there are pcie fan brackets that do exactly this without zipties and you just plug in the fan to your mobo
wow. is is possible to show or roughly explain the whole process from design to finish?
Like what software to design and CAD etc etc.
How you designed the PCB, which are the correct manufacturing contractors to find , etc etc
Would like to see how you made and programmed your programming rig
It looks like this controller supports analog input it would be better to use small variable resistor to set the fan speed, yea it adds to the cost, but given the manufacturing cost it is very little % wise. you could use a rgb led and use the output color to indicate the fan speed, maybe you could make this visible, configurable from outside of the case at the bracket
Could also use some through hole pads so a person could add a header to reprogram the IC
Aside from this being neat and clean cable management, it would be more economical to just get brackets that have screw holes that line up with a fan's mount holes, i managed to find one that would fit a 60mm fan
Is this taking power from pcie slot? how about add 1 more choices with sata power instead?
Can you have more ports to plug more fans? I also thought that the controller would show up in your OS.
I have some PCIe 1x ports available, but just putting ONE fan there seems like a waste.
I hope the next iterations has more connectors.
Cool. Looking forward to more videos.
Dude, this is awesome!
Here's a suggestion, mount the speed switch on the bracket itself instead of the board. I wouldn't wanna open up the PC anytime I wanna change speeds
More dense with info in 4 and a half minutes than most of these videos 2x as long.
How long does the process from start to finish last?
How much foes a fan cost?
How many fans do you need to sell to get all the machines and tools paid off?
What's your hourly salary on this?
Any plans for a 2 or 3 fan card?
can it work on 1x pcie lane im curious sum extra cooling on my gpu under my gpu has 1x laying around
Nice.. I saw one, however I'm thinking about x3 to have a chance to cool down VRM heatsink and RAM slots also, or to use x3 with Asus/Gigabyte M.2 Hyper storage (without their case cover and a noisy fan)
This is so cool but t hose holes "appear" to only be effective if you have a blower fan, have you performed any testing to verify it provides any benefit?
Im curious if the speed control is only by the button or if it connects to the pc through the sm bus or something so it can be software controlled?
*am guessing sm bus since based on the chips on the board and the missing pins on the connector, im gonna go out on a limb and guess its not actually touching any pcie lanes and either only connecting to power, or power and sm bus or some other low speed part of the connecter
pcie fan controller YES PLEASE now i just need 32 fan outputs aswell and pcie drivers and some simple UI to have fan curves or temp control somwhow and it would be mint
What size of fan does it support? If it is 120mm the better. I been looking for solutions to cool the often mis looked vrm area of the motherboard which is usually bare in low to midend boards or with passive heatsink on high end boards. Though the passive heatsink will suffice if there is an opportunity to cool down the vrms with active cooling why the heck not.
its very cool i just don't see the fan doing much maybe movie air in the case but for a gpu it would already be doing this ?
Do you sell a pcie x1 card with only the controller and the fan header and no fan holder, so I can get a extra fan header with speed control? Preferably with the button poking out the bracket (with option for low rise bracket)
would you be able to control them from OS or only from the button on the board?
will they come in other configurations? like 2-3 fans?
do you have dual fan version?
would making some more holes increase the price? you could make 2 holes in the connecting piece with the right CC to mount 2 fans paralell to each other. could be useful :-)
any plans to make other sizes like a 120 or a 40mm with a low profile bracket for sff use?
Temperature control via onboard sensor or remote sensor (attached to GPU) could eliminate the need for the speed switching.
Neat, I'm just wondering if it is possible to have fan speed control via PCIe using software on the pc like speedfan. Or maybe have it temperature controlled using the micro and a thermistor.
Just some ideas.
It’s very cool, but I’d be interested in “why?”. Given there are many ways to do this with fan kits, not to mention built in to MBs and via software I’d love to know what made you want to make this (if anything beyond “just cause I can”) 😊
Weird question, but why is the only button to change the fan speed on the fan card’s pcb? Doesn’t seem that convenient to take off my side panel to change the fan speed vs pressing a button on the exterior
Hmm have you thought about putting like 6-10 fan headers on here. Like an open-source replacement for iCue?
I have an idea, but i hope you can read my comment:
Can you build this like a 240 or 360mm version with a attachable shroud on the backside
That can be the best and cheapest option for a gpu fan mod, it had so much potential!
The shroud can be use to fit correctly the gap between the Fan and the GPU and it will looks cool.
Many user can do after that build their own 3D printed shrouds and makes an unique looking system.
Initially I though this is for people that is running out of fan header on their mother board, but I guess adding a fan into your pcie slot might have some use as well.
Like... Why? There is not a single 5-12V source somewhere near e.g. Molex/SATA? Or 3/4 pin header on motherboard?
Its looking good, no doubt, but why?
Is it able to handle 12V/1A fan?
If yes, then it would be perfect to cooling my U.2 cage, as it sits exactly next to free PCIe in my NAS whitebox