Question What's the difference between plugging my fans to the motherboard or the case?

[Jorge24]

My Fractal Torrent case came with some sort of fan hub control board.
Is it recommended to use this over plugging in my fans to the motherboard?
(My mobo is a GIGABYTE B850 AORUS ELITE WIFI7)

What are the pro's & con's?

Close-up of the fan hub:

This is a zoomed out picture for context:

Diagram from the case's manual:

 

[Lutfij]

If you were to connect all fans standalone to each header and or use splitters intermittently, you would end up with a lot of cables snaking from point A to point B and subsequently having to manage a lot of wires. A fan hub help mitigate that to an extend and tidy things up. The hub also helps you manage all fans to operate off of one header.

 

[Math Geek]

the biggest difference would be with the case hub, everything gets controlled by one fan header. in this case the cpu fan. so all the fans will run the same speed based on cpu temp. this is not a bad thing as it simplifies a lot.

on the other hand, if you like to set specific curves for each fan and really really like to micro manage what each is doing, then the motherboard headers are the way to go since they will allow for such management. some folks really like to deep dive and analyze each fan for speed, noise and so on.

if you like to set it and forget it, then use the case hub

if you wanna get super specific with the various fans, then use the mobo headers.