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4 fans? What controls them?

A

AuroraProject

Gawd
Joined
Dec 13, 2004
Messages
820
I received my Coolermaster Praetorian today and I'm confused. Inside it has four 80mm fans, two on the front, one blow hole, and one on the back. The back fan connects to the mobo (that much I've figured out!), but the other three all have molex connectors on them, so if I just connect them all to the psu wont they just run at full speed all the time?

This is my first build, so I'll have many n00b questions!
 
Most likely, yes, they will run at whatever speed they are rated at. However you can buy fan controllers that you can use to put them at whatever speed you wish.
 
This is what I put in my Praetorian case.

Vantec Nexus fan controller

Works great. I soldered 3 pin connectors onto all my fans and plugged them straight into the Nexus controller. You could use 3 to 4 pin adapters, but the Nexus only comes with 2, so you'd need 1 extra.

If you read the reviews on the newegg site you might think this thing sucks, but my opinion is those people are incompetient. I mean, why would you complain about it being hard to stick your hand inside the drive bay area to unplug the fans? Isn't that like a "duh" comment? Attach the fans and then screw it into the case... duh! Anyway, it's working great for me and fits flush with the drives on the front of the case and matches the silver aluminum finish of the case perfectly (they make a black one also). The blue lighting around the knobs matches the blue leds on the Praetorian hdd and power lights.
 
Thanks for the link, I think I'll go with this one. Seems like an awful lot of wires though, between the 3 molex case fans and the adapters in the kit. Is there an easy way to just rewire the 2 wire fans into a 3 pin connector?

edit: I just noticed you mentioned soldering the 2 wire fans to 3 wire connectors, where can I get the 3 wire connectors and what do you do with the third wire?
 
Thanks for the link, I think I'll go with this one. Seems like an awful lot of wires though, between the 3 molex case fans and the adapters in the kit. Is there an easy way to just rewire the 2 wire fans into a 3 pin connector?

edit: I just noticed you mentioned soldering the 2 wire fans to 3 wire connectors, where can I get the 3 wire connectors and what do you do with the third wire?
Click to expand...

Sorry for slow response...

Soldering the wires is pretty easy (if you have a soldering iron handy that is). The Nexus comes with (2) 3 pin adapters and (2) 4 pin adapters / pass-throughs. I just cut the ends off the adapters and the fans after measuring the length I needed for each fan and soldered the 2 wires together. It really doesn't matter if you use 2 or 3 wires because the Nexus controller doesn't monitor RPMs anyway. The only 2 wires that matter are the Black and Red wires.

So, on the fan with the 3 pin connector, I used a 3 pin adapter. I cut the end off the fan wires and the end off the adapter that would have connected to it and soldered them, put some heat shrink tubing on the joint, and connected the other end of the adapter into the Nexus controller.

On the (3) 4 pin pass-through fans that only have 2 wires coming out of the fan, I cut off the 4 pin pass-through. Then used the 4 pin adapters that came with the Nexus and cut off the pass-through on them also. Then I soldered the other 2 wires to the fans just like I did with the 3 pin fan, only this time I only had 2 wires to solder. You can also take a 3 pin adapter and just cut the third wire off and use that to connect to the 2 wire fans, or pop the wire out of the connector and discard it.

One thing to note: The adapters that came with the Nexus HAD THE RED AND YELLOW WIRES REVERSED. So, if you're cutting and soldering, make sure you take note of this or you will hook up the power incorrectly and cause damage. Basically, I had to connect the red fan wire to the yellow adapter wire. Dumb mistake on their part.

That's about it. When I was finished I had all my fans directly connected to the controller with no adapters and all the wires were neatly hidden from view. Now I can control the voltage to the fans. Setting the knobs to half-way or less really cuts down on the noise, and like I said, the blue LEDs on the knobs match the blue case LEDs perfectly.
 
Astral Abyss said:
One thing to note: The adapters that came with the Nexus HAD THE RED AND YELLOW WIRES REVERSED. So, if you're cutting and soldering, make sure you take note of this or you will hook up the power incorrectly and cause damage. Basically, I had to connect the red fan wire to the yellow adapter wire. Dumb mistake on their part.
Click to expand...

I received my Nexus Monday, and I wired it up last night. Mine had the black and yellow wires reversed! So I cut all the adapters up and cut the 4 pin molex connectors off the case fans, laid out the wires how I want them and soldered everything back together. It's nice not having the giant rats nest of wiring and adapters that come with it. The Nexus works and looks great! Thanks for the suggestion.
 
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