Budge72 Posted August 29, 2018 Report Share Posted August 29, 2018 (edited) I have the Thermaltake Floe Riing RGB 280 Premium Edition water cooler AIO. It works as advertised with no problems in Windows 10. However, I have a dual boot system that also runs Mac OS High Sierra. I don't expect Thermaltake to support Mac OS, but I have now way to control the fan speeds without the Riing Plus RGB software. I tried using the Thermaltake Sync Controller, which does have a lead for the fan headers on my motherboard, but it requires an ARGB header that my motherboard doesn't have. I was hoping that the fans would have some way of speeding up based on cpu temps without software, but they never speed up during CPU load. I don't know what to do. I wonder if it would be possible to disconnect the pwm leads (12V, ground, and PWM) from the plug that goes into the controller and reroute them to the motherboard fan header. If this is possible, I would keep the Tach lead connected so that the software wouldn't freak out. I would probably have to run another Tach lead from the plug back to the motherboard fan header so that I could monitor fan speeds. Is this the only solution? Would it work? Edited August 29, 2018 by Budge72 New idea for solution Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Budge72 Posted August 29, 2018 Author Report Share Posted August 29, 2018 So I got inpatient and decided to try a little Thermaltake hacking. First, I noticed that Thermaltake uses 9-pin connectors on the controller hub. But the fans only have 8 wires coming out. Logically, it seems that each fan needs 4 wires for addressable RGB (5V, DO, DI, GND) and 4 wires for the fan (GND, 12V, Tach, PWM). So I looked at the connection from my water pump to the controller hub. The power for the pump is provided by a header on my motherboard. But the addressable rgb leds plug into the same port type on the controller hub as the fans. So I can assume that the same 4 wires that provide leads for my pump leds also provide leads for my fan leds. That means that the other 4 wires coming from my fans are for controlling the fan. Thankfully, it seems that Thermaltake was nice and put the wires for the leds on one row of the connector, and the wires for the fans on the other row (the row that has the 10th slot plugged). Also, Thermaltake used the standard fan header pinout and wire colors. That pinout SEEMS TO BE: plug, GND (black), 12V (white), tach (green), PWM (blue). Not wanting to see any magic smoke, I decided to test my theory in stages. First,with the computer powered off, I disconnected one of the fans from the controller hub and wired the black and white leads from the fan to the black and yellow leads from a molex plug. I also ran the signal wire to a fan header. The fan powered on with the computer, and Mac OS was able to see the fan speed. So I successfully have the fan pinouts for these Riing Plus fans (PWM by default). Since I'm not sure how the Thermaltake software is going to react with missing signals from the controller, I'm going to take this one step at a time. I carefully used a needle to pull the black and white wires out of the fan connector. I wired them to the molex black and yellow again. Then I plugged the fan connector back into the hub. Everything worked when I booted up Windows and the TT software didn't seem to notice that anything was wrong. My next step will be to try to connect the 12V, GND, and PWM to the fan header on the motherboard and see how the TT software reacts. I'm fairly certain that will go just fine. But I'm still not sure how to handle the tach signal wire. It seems that the TT software needs it to warn you if the fan stops. I could leave it connected to the controller hub and run another tach wire from there to the motherboard fan header. In theory, both the motherboard and the TT software would see the same fan rpms. But now I would have a wire connecting my motherboard header to the TT controller...which worries me. I don't know if there is 2-way communication on that wire or not. I'll have to do some research and see if it's safe to try. If all of this works, I could use a fan splitter cable to power them both and match the rpms. More on the Budge Mod tomorrow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xBazilio Posted July 3, 2019 Report Share Posted July 3, 2019 Hi! You ended on a cliffhanger! Were you able to connect tach to both controller and MOBO? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xBazilio Posted July 6, 2019 Report Share Posted July 6, 2019 I was able to plug tach wire to both MOBO and TT controller. Works as a charm! Spent 6 hours rewiring all my 5 fans. Got rid of one of two controlles by plugging two fans in one socket. When there are two fans, tach from the first goes to MOBO, tach from the second goes to TT controller. When there is one fan (my rear fan), tach goes both to MOBO and TT controller. I made some photos DooDee 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Budge72 Posted July 6, 2019 Author Report Share Posted July 6, 2019 2 hours ago, xBazilio said: I was able to plug tach wire to both MOBO and TT controller. Works as a charm! Spent 6 hours rewiring all my 5 fans. Got rid of one of two controlles by plugging two fans in one socket. When there are two fans, tach from the first goes to MOBO, tach from the second goes to TT controller. When there is one fan (my rear fan), tach goes both to MOBO and TT controller. I made some photos xBazilio, you are awesome! I've had my mod running for almost a year now with zero trouble, but I never took it to that final step. I got sucked down a new rabbit hole called 3D printing. With your input, I'll finish this mod and see how it works with my dual boot system. Thanks for picking this up. xBazilio 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amandavernon Posted September 17, 2019 Report Share Posted September 17, 2019 On 7/6/2019 at 9:43 PM, Budge72 said: When there are two fans, tach from the first goes to MOBO, tach from the second goes to TT controller. When there is one fan (my rear fan), tach goes both to MOBO and TT controller. What about controlling 3 pin fans using voltage control? Will it be working? http://buyessays.cheap/buy-dissertations-cheap/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xBazilio Posted September 17, 2019 Report Share Posted September 17, 2019 3 minutes ago, amandavernon said: What about controlling 3 pin fans using voltage control? Will it be working? http://buyessays.cheap/buy-dissertations-cheap/ Yes. Just the same. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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