So I now started testing the real issue I had: Corsair's PWM implementation on their SP120 fans. Feel free to skip this section if this is not relevant to you. First up, the SP120 QE
Hooked directly to the Aquaero, at 50% PWM control:
Now connected to Channel 1 of the Swiftech 8 way PWM splitter, which is powered straight from the 1300G2:
Ok, that's close enough. Let's add in another fan:
We already start to see the effect of a non-standard PWM implementation. So now with fan 3 added:
Fan 4:
Fan 5:
Getting bad now, what about 6 fans on the splitter?
Ouch! Now adding fan 7:
Full speed already, no control whatsoever possible. Finally, fan 8:
Nothing changes as expected. So can the Double D help out? I hooked up the splitter to the adapter and had the passthrough over to the Aquaero.
Now with all 8 channels filled, and at the same 50% PWM signal:
Darlene is a magician- or someone with a very good electrical engineering background. Personally I prefer the former. Control is back on, the only change being a lower RPM compared to when a single fan was hooked up directly. I can live with that, I don't imagine having to run full speed anyway. The QEs are pretty quiet (who would have thought!) so let's try out a bigger challenge- the Corsair SP120 HPE fans.
First up, a fan hooked directly to the Aquaero at 50% control:
Now the same fan hooked via the Swiftech splitter:
Identical for all intents. Let's add fan 2:
Sigh.. Why did you have to do this, Corsair? Oh that's right- proprietary implementation + making a controller that is the only thing to work with it = Profit :thumbsdow
Fan 3 added:
Fan 4 added:
Now with fan 5:
and the dreaded 6th fan:
As expected, a massive jump with 6 fans on. A few users have reported having no control with 6 fans but I have a wee bit left as was the case with the QE fans. But now with fan 7:
As before, everything now runs at ~100% speed no matter what. Adding in the final 8th fan does nothing really different:
Does the 'Dapter help here too?
Yes, it does. As with the previous case, the RPMs are lowered a bit. That isn't an issue for me as I said before but I am curious as to why this is happening. Moving on, I hooked up both splitters to the adapter PCB and then to the AQ6:
No need to repeat the results here, it was the same as before. So I am confident the PCB will perform as intended with all channels occupied. In fact, this is so good that daisychaining also works. I hooked up 15 fans total (8 HPE, 7 QE) to the adapter and then to 1 channel on the AQ6 and it worked great. There is a caveat though- if I hooked up the 8 HPEs to 1 channel on the Swiftech splitter that housed 7 other QE fans, then there was no control available. If I daisychained it so that the QEs were hooked to the splitter that had the HPE fans, it was fine. Another point of curiosity but since I don't have any plans on having these different fans on the same channel, it does not affect me. Hopefully it will help others who want to try this.
Tl,dr.: Darlene's Diva 'Dapter works great. If you have a PWM controller (Newer Aquaero 6 units have this taken care of apparently) and have Corsair's PWM fans, chances are it won't work as expected. This will help.