• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

12" fan mod idea . . .

C

Captain Colonoscopy

2[H]4U
Joined
Feb 19, 2004
Messages
3,861
I have this idea to mount a 12" desk fan into the side panel of an old hydralic case I have laying around. I started thinking that this would be a great idea but then I realized most desk fans don't have molex connectors. Does anyone know if an ATX power supply could run a desk fan? I assume one could solder the power cord from the fan to the proper +/-/ground wires on one of the 4-wire leads, perhaps? Another idea I had was to get a PSU that has a 2-prong outlet on the back of it and run the cord through the inside and out the back of the case to plug it in. That would probably be easier but would look kind of ghetto. I was thinking about using the rear half of the desk fan grill assembly to mount to the side panel with that auto glass molding that comes in the pre-cut window kits. The fan has the speed control right on the back of that thing so I'd have a built-in rheobus kinda. :) I then plan on putting 2 or 3 120mm exhaust fans in the top of the case and maybe keep the 60mm rear exhaust that came with it as well. I figure I might be able to run a passive zalman cooler on the CPU and GPU with this kind of setup.

What do you guys think? I'm probably going to do it after I finish my current project (still priming/sanding) just because I'm never going to use that hokey hydralic case for anything and I'm itching to hack something up with my dremel again. :) I'm thinking it will prolly be loud, but hey, who else has a 12" fan in their case?!!
 
Just plug it into the wall. Or use one of the relay kits that are used in w/c setups (assuming it uses wall voltage 120vac)
 
I never thought of a w/c relay kit, but wouldn't I still have to solder the fan wires to the connectors on the realy card? Thankies ;)
 
post a pic if you get it done i wanna see if it will be the sex or not
 
You prably aready though of this, but arn't desk fans ac, while molex (plural molexi?) are DC?
 
actually, I hadn't thought of that. Thanks for the heads up. I think I'll prolly just run the cord through the inside of the case untill I figure out whether its going to work okay or not. If it is "the sex," as spyder put it, then I'll try and figure out a better, stealthier way of hooking it up. A w/c relay switch sounds nice but is it compatible with DC power? I don't have any experience with water-cooling setups so I have no clue. If it is compatible then I'd likely do that so I don't have to turn the damn thing on/off all the time.

If anybody else has any additional thoughts I sure would appreciate them.

Thankies. :)
 
the pump relay card for a water cooling setup take 2 inputs...one from the PCI slot and AC mains power. When the card detects that the mobo is powered up, by reading voltages from the PCI slot, it switches the AC power that would turn on the pump, well the fan in your case.
 
The topic of modding desk fans into a computer case is beating a dead horse; it's been discussed to the end. If you want to risk it, then you'll get good cooling, but keep in mind that most AC fans are not magnetically shielded, and it's probably not a good idea to run one inside your computer case...

Good luck though :)
 
I had no idea the horse was dead, thanks for pointing that out though. I think I'll give it a stab anyway, that computer in the link looked pretty ghetto to me, see if I can do better. :)

Thanks for the heads up on the magnetic shielding, again something I hadn't thought of. I guess I'll see what happens. :p
 
It couldn't run off of a molex connector because (if it plugs into the wall, which I assume it does) it runs at 120V AC, as opposed to 12V DC that comes out of the PSU. You could open up your power supply and solder in the power wires if you wanted, but the easier (and safer) way would be to just run the cord outside of it. Magnetic interference is likely. Just give it a try, mount the hard drive as far away as possible from the fan, and most importantly, take pics and let us know how it went. :)
 
You might try an automotive fan.... that'll be 12V, but I'd expect that it'll still draw more power than most PSU can supply..
 
You could also think about a CleverPower PSU. They have four AC outlets in the back - kinda like a built in powerstrip. Run the fan's wires down the inside of the case and behind some stuff, then out the back/side/top/wherever and plug it into one of the AC outlets in your PSU.

Newegg has the 300w model from CleverPower but it's currently out of stock. More info @ http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=17-181-001&depa=0
 
All you have to do is wire the fan's power cable into a spare PSU power cable input that you can mod into the back of your case (what many people do for watercooling pumps) and wire that to a on/off switch mounted on the front of your case.
 
Thanks, rapple. Did not even think of automotive fans, had no idea they were 12V. I'm going to search around and see if I can find something, see what the power drain might be. You wouldn't happen to know if auto fans are shielded would ya? I suppose I could just investigate that as well.

Thanks again for the insight. Once I finish painting my other project I'm going to start on this one and post some pictures maybe. My wife told me I couldn't start cutting for this one until the other one was done. :p
 
I found some auto fans on the net that draw between 6.5 to 9 amps. Is that too much for a typical PSU? I was thinking it might be since I noticed most other DC fans that are PC oriented are drawing between .1-.5 amps. Right now I have a 300 watt PSU and the other stuff in my sig. I was thinking of getting a semi-decent 450-500 watt PSU for this project. I don't really know a whole lot about electrical stuff yet, still learning. Hopefully I won't seriously hurt myself. ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top