Help with computer fan control.

Hello all, I have a bit of an odd question for you today. I’ve been thinking about computers and such and I’ve run into a dilemma. I’ve been trying to figure out how to run around 30 computer fans on a computer. I imagine a large power supply would be able to handle that and the rest of the computer but it seems like it’d be a fair bit of load onto the power supply and I’d have no way of controlling them.

I did some quick math and if there was thirty fans running at the maximum twelve volts with an amp draw of 0.085 amps you’d end up pulling 30.6 watts and 2.55 amps. Is this enough of a load to worry about applying to a large (1200 watt) power supply or am I being overly paranoid again?

Fan controllers are out because they can’t handle that kind of a load as far as I know. There is always the ability to just use a potentiometer but I sadly don’t know enough about them to know if they could handle the load. One could run multiple potentiometers and assigning a few fans to each to make it work though I imagine.

My current idea for a solution would be to simply add a variable DC power supply, something that could provide up to twelve volts and the necessary amperage. This would complicate the matters in adding another power supply to the system and cord to manage but I know it’d give me absolute control over the fans and provide no strain at all on the power supply in the computer.

I am interested in hearing what other solutions there are out there to this challenge. Currently this machine is entirely hypothetical, nothing exists beyond paper so there is no rush on my part.

I would also like to hear about how JustinKerr solved this problem. I know he runs a large array of fans on the drunken monkey; I would be interested in hearing about how he controls them.

Yep, I have had over 50 run off one controller.  very simple, make sure to solder the 12V and negatives together, just not the signal wire, multiple signal wires will mess with the RPM, just use one fans signal wire.