LED Fans Don't Light Up

BlessedNoob

Honorable
Jan 20, 2016
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10,680
I have 3 Thermaltake Riing 12 fans they are LED. I bought them as a 3 pack and it came with this little fan controller. these ones http://www.bestbuy.com/site/thermaltake-riing-120mm-case-cooling-fan-blue-green-red-white/5588906.p?skuId=5588906

The little controller was really weird and not that great, so i bought a NZXT Sentry 3 fan controller. I had to do some diy to get the 4 pin thermaltake fans to fit the 3 pin slots on the sentry 3. i can control the fan speeds and everything but now they dont light up. Is it because it only 3 pins are connected and not 4?
 
Solution
OK, so it would be possible to put the Thermaltake controller back in your system and connect your Riing fans to that. If you do that, you should be able to control both the speed and the LED's of those fans. I did not search through the entire manual system for that Thermaltake controller, so I don't know whether you can do complete control using just its buttons. But I do see that you are supposed to download and install their custom software. Then on your controller box you set the five DIP switches to a particular address code, and in that software you can set that also. Then the software can work with that box, allowing you control of the fans and their LED's.

That box may not be able to control the speed of your other...


I watched a review and they said the LED should work, cuz their pc had LED fans and they were lit up
 
Unfortunately the model number of the fan kit you linked does not work on the Thermaltake website - it cannot find that model. But those fans are unusual in several ways. The controller they come with is designed to do two things separately. The first is to monitor and control the speed of the fans attached to it, and that can be done in Voltage Control Mode (IF that's how the controller does it) using three pins. The second function is to control the LED's on each fan, and it is not clear how that is done, but MAYBE it involves the 4th wire. (That would make all the fans a non-standard fan with 4 pins but using 3-pin Voltage Control Mode.) It appears the only way to control (and provide power for?) the LED's on each fan is to use the controller as provided. You are not doing that. Maybe even your modifications to the fan connectors have destroyed the ability to plug into that Theremaltake controller?
 
I can still plug on the thermaltake fans just fine. The pin connector is too small to fit the 5 pin fans so I basically opened up the 3 pin connector so the thermaltake fans do fit. I had all 3 thermaltake fans and the 2 case fans connected and they are all running
 
OK, so it would be possible to put the Thermaltake controller back in your system and connect your Riing fans to that. If you do that, you should be able to control both the speed and the LED's of those fans. I did not search through the entire manual system for that Thermaltake controller, so I don't know whether you can do complete control using just its buttons. But I do see that you are supposed to download and install their custom software. Then on your controller box you set the five DIP switches to a particular address code, and in that software you can set that also. Then the software can work with that box, allowing you control of the fans and their LED's.

That box may not be able to control the speed of your other non-Thermaltake fans. Or, maybe it can. If it is simply using Voltage Control Mode on the first 3 pins of each of its output connectors, then any "standard" fan (3-pin or 4-pin) should be able to work from those.
 
Solution