from Hacker News

A USB Fan Controller that now works under Linux

by arm on 10/5/21, 8:23 PM with 68 comments

• by cornhole on 10/5/21, 10:50 PM

  The front Noctua fan in the picture of the PC is installed backwards.

• by glouwbug on 10/6/21, 2:46 AM

  That’d be a first for a working fan controller on Linux

• by zwarag on 10/6/21, 4:55 AM

  I know it is not the main topic but. Is this just a funky fan setup or what is happening here? I have the same cpu cooler and I’ve build mine horizontally to blow out of the back. This setup looks like it is pulling from the air from the GPU.

• by namibj on 10/6/21, 2:08 AM

  Does anyone know what temperature probes they use? Is it the typical 10k Ohm NTC?

  I happen to have such a 10k Ohm NTC temperature probe in my cooling water, and would much prefer to control the fans to keep the water temperature in check, instead of trying to control them based on the CPU die temperature. The fans roaring won't help if it's just one core being pegged by something, but in a warm room and all-core load they do need to spin fast.

• by ddoolin on 10/6/21, 12:34 AM

  I run 24 fans in my build and I have a couple of these as the final stop in the wiring chain in the back and run almost exclusively in Linux these days so this is absolutely welcome.

• by Teknoman117 on 10/6/21, 12:08 AM

  I was really happy to see this go in, along with the reverse engineered corsair psu driver as well.

  I poked around once or twice with wireshark and decided I was out of my depth...

• by Scramblejams on 10/5/21, 9:38 PM

  Great news! I love Supermicro boards but a bunch of them give you like half a dozen headers and you can only control them as two sets. I'd looked into supported controllers but nothing currently shipping seemed compelling.[0]

  Hope Corsair doesn't rev this hardware soon, or I may have to buy a few just to sit on the shelf awaiting future deployment.

  [0] Happy to hear otherwise, alternatives welcome.

• by JohnJamesRambo on 10/5/21, 11:41 PM

  Now the year of the Linux Desktop can come in 2022.

• by spicybright on 10/5/21, 9:48 PM

  How does is a set of dedicated pins vs routing everything through the USB bus better?

• by beervirus on 10/5/21, 10:47 PM

  Why does any of this need OS support? You should be able to configure fan speed via a BIOS menu as you have been since the late 1900s.

• by tambourine_man on 10/6/21, 1:58 AM

  > This sleek black box can be had for $40-75

  That’s not my kind of thing, nor do I have the experience, but at that price, wouldn’t you be better off using a Raspberry Pi (or similar) to control the fans, place thermometers, etc?

  I understand that having a computer inside a computer is silly, but we are kind of in that rabbit hole anyway. And a GPIO would be more reassuring to me than depending on driver support for one motherboard/usb fan controller.

  Just random thoughts