ehmm... power for a fan?

[MASTOURA]

this surely sounds stupid, but I see all of you people going "crazy" with adding new fans in your case so that it is cooler, and I want to do the same, but I was wondering how to power the little fans...

thanks and sorry for such a stupid question http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[tepo]

There simply are no stupid questions !!!! http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif
In my opinion the best thing (If You're going to add several fans) is to mount an extra PSU in the case. (If You have room)
Otherwise, for example one or two fans; simply take the power from Your original PSU, the current consumption is not that big so it would harm.
These "fan-crazy" guys (me included) are putting several fans, in that case You have to be concerned about the consumption of current. K7 users: please note that K7 takes more current than others prosessors ! If You have let's say ´CD, CD-RW and a few HDD:s, let's add a GeForce Video card, a NIC, Sound card and so on, You may get current problems!

Good luck! Tepo's 0,02$

Hope I didn't scare You... http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[Snuffy!]

It's not a stupid question http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

Well my fans either plug into my motherboard or the power supply cables. The motherboard powered fans have the little 3 wire connectors. On most motherboards, they have a 3 pin header at the bottom of the motherboard, and one or two next to the cpu. If you want to plug in more than one fan onto a 3 pin header, u can get a y cable power splitter, which allows you to use 2 fans off the one header. The "headers" are usually marked on the motherboard as "fan1" and "fan2"

The other type of fan plugs into your power supply cables. It's very simple, because you will have two leads coming of these fans, and this allows you to divert power to the fan, but still use any device the power cable was plugged into before. So just say all the power cables in your computer have all been used on IDE devices, you just pull a power cable out of a device (make sure your computer is off), and plug that into the male end cable coming from your fan (It will have four pins coming out at the end of the cable). Then you plug the cable with the female end into the device. This way, you can use your fan and your IDE Device.

I also have a 15cm monster fan, which I run of 240volt AC Power, (Power socket) but most people don't use those for their case cooling http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

Oh, and Tepo, including my cpu fan, and my power supply fan, I have ten fans running off a 250watt power supply. I think getting an extra Power Supply is getting a bit extreme, unless yer gonna have some serious Peltier cooling or something.


But MASTOURA, if you are gonna add numerous fans, the safe thing to do, would be to get yerself a 300watt power supply.

[This message has been edited by Snuffy! (edited 09-12-2000).]

[howste]

I guess I have a response and a question. I bought a heatsink/fan with the 3 lead plug that goes to the motherboard. Unfortunately, the motherboard is an AT with no fan headers to plug it into. I cut off the end, got a Y splitter and cut off one of the ends, and spliced the wires together. The end effect is similar to what is described above where I still have the same number of power connectors for drives, but am also powering the fan.

I noticed after I connected the yellow wire to the yellow wire, red to red, and black to black(s) that the fan was running too slow. I assume this is because the fan power wire (red) was connected to the low voltage side of the PS (also red). So I switched and attached the red to yellow, and yellow to red and the fan speed was good.

Here comes the question part. Is the yellow wire actually for a speed sensor or something? If so, did I kill it by connecting it to a power connection? Not really a big deal, since I won't be using the sensor on this system anyway, but I'd like to know for future reference.

Thanks,

Steve

[Mungla]

Howste, does your question refer to the yellow cable comming from the fan or the PSU?

3-pin fans usually have an RPM control so that you may monitor the fans RPM via your BIOS or an application. The three wires comming from the fan are:
Black = Ground
Yellow = RPM Control
Red = Positive lead

The four cables comming from your PSU that connect to your perif, ie., CD-ROM, Hard drive are split into two different voltages. Two of the cables run at 12V, while the other two cables run at 5V. Obviously, when you spliced into the cable, you were use to connecting to the Red wire. This Red wire comming from the PSU is running at 5V. The Yellow wire comming from the PSU is 12V. Does this help you understand why the Red side was making the fan turn slower?
Red Wire = 5V Positive
Black Wire = Ground (-5V I think)
Black Wire = Ground
Yellow Wire = 12V Positive

Hope this helps.

[howste]

Yep, that's what I thought. I'll disconnect the yellow fan wire from everything. I'll leave the red fan wire connected to the yellow PS, and the black fan wire connected the black PS wire next to the yellow. Thanks for the help Mungla. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

Steve

[MASTOURA]

Thanks for your help guys. I'm planning to use 2 to 3 more fans. I think they will be enough, since I am not going to overclock anything.

MASTOURA

[dgardner]

If your a skin flint like me, try a rummage through office bins, plently of goodies there, So far I have got one 386 RM laptop, just needed a new battery! One Fax Machine and numerious computer parts, including cd-roms, AWE64 sounds card (now that takes me back) etc. But they are great for old PSU's, from which come *windows tada sound* fans, Then I pop down my local hardware store buy some junction boxes and fit em into my box, yippe 10 fans later = $.1. Nice and cheap!
Suggest you service fan first though, clean dust off, give it a bit of oil so it runs quiter!

~Dave~