My 9800GT / Accelero S1 Rev2 / Scythe PWM install

InvisiBill

2[H]4U
Joined
Jan 2, 2003
Messages
2,608
I was researching a number of the parts for this in my other threads. I really liked the Accelero setup I saw on a card for sale by another member, and wanted to make mine almost exactly the same.

My 9800GT's stock cooler had a 4-wire PWM fan controlled by the VGA BIOS. I wanted to reuse this connection for my custom cooler, to allow for automatic fan control as well as keeping it from being plugged into the motherboard. I wanted to use a larger, quiet fan to avoid the whine of the stocker ramping up and down. I also wanted a slim fan, to keep it as far away from the next card as possible.

The best fan I could find to meet those requirements seemed to be the Scythe SY1012SL12H(PWM). Unfortunately, the fan only seems to come attached to the Shuriken CPU cooler. I went so far as to contact Scythe's sales department, with no luck. I ended up buying the whole Shuriken just to get the fan.

Now that I had a fan that would work with the card's PWM and fit nicely on the S1, I had to actually make it plug into the card. I started searching for parts on electronics sites, without much luck. I didn't have the exact measurements or a way to get them from the plug (I need to get some digital calipers one of these days...) so I was sort of searching in the dark. Then I struck gold. Another one of my projects in process is the white J1 connector on Dell sound cards. I happened to notice that the PWM fan plug was similar to the plug on the Dell cable on my desk. Studying it more, it wasn't just similar, it was actually the same plug but with fewer pins. I was able to look up the provided part number, and on the same page was the part number for the 4-pin version that I needed. I ordered the connector and pins, cut the plug off the Scythe fan, soldered on the new pins, and clipped them into the connector.

The only part I haven't finalized yet is actually securing the fan to the S1. I really dislike the look of zipties. I'd like to come up with something using silicone mounts, but I haven't really gotten anywhere with that yet. For now, I'm using some nicer wire ties that came with some new part that I bought in the past. They're a silver-ish wire with a thick clear plastic coating. I simply looped them around the heatpipes, then came up through the mounting holes in the fan and twisted them around tightly. I then trimmed off the wire ties as close as possible without being so close as to let them come undone. For what it is, I think it looks decent for a temporary solution.

The final step was to edit the VGA BIOS to match the fan speed to the proper temperature range. I ended up using the basic automatic settings, ramping the fan up from 30% to 100% over the 40°C - 60°C range. The GPU now stays in the low 40s during regular usage, maxing out around 50°C when I'm CUDA crunching. With the stocker, it never got below 60°C at idle and was mid 70s under load. The new setup is quieter than my Yate Loon case fans, compared to the noisy stocker which I could hear ramping up and down during games.

And now, the pictures...


The finished product


The fan cable could be a little shorter, but I thought it could be handy if I were able to plug it into other video cards too, so I left a little slack. I also wasn't sure how many times I'd screw up the pins on the end and need to clip it off and start over.


A closeup of the plug. The black wire could be just a little shorter to match the others better.


Slightly different angle of the plug


A little wider shot of the bottom of the card, showing the fan and the plug


The whole assembly installed


A straighter shot to show the space between the fan and second video card


A closer shot of the fan and second video card

Sorry for the crappy cameraphone pics, and thanks to everyone who helped me figure something out for this project or got me thinking of another way to solve a problem with it.
 
I just realized that I never posted the part numbers...

The white connector that plugs into the video card is 455-1164-ND (shorter version of the 10-pin 455-1151-ND used for the Dell/SB J1 connector). The actual pins that get soldered onto the wires and put in the connector are 455-1127-1-ND. DigiKey has a minimum order of 10 of the connectors and 100 of the pins (which is still probably cheaper than shipping on the order). Those minimums aren't all bad, as you'll want extras in case you screw up a couple times. I also recommend leaving a little slack in the wire in case you need to clip off a screwed up pin and start over.
 
Nice. My 8800GT has the same cooler but I'm running it passively.
 
I just realized that I never posted the part numbers...

The white connector that plugs into the video card is 455-1164-ND (shorter version of the 10-pin 455-1151-ND used for the Dell/SB J1 connector). The actual pins that get soldered onto the wires and put in the connector are 455-1127-1-ND. DigiKey has a minimum order of 10 of the connectors and 100 of the pins (which is still probably cheaper than shipping on the order). Those minimums aren't all bad, as you'll want extras in case you screw up a couple times. I also recommend leaving a little slack in the wire in case you need to clip off a screwed up pin and start over.


thanks for the part numbers. i hate to resurrect an older thread, but i had some questions that i feel others might benefit from.

I am a big fan of the PWM system, and have been using daisy-chained PWM fans on my liquid cooled desktop's radiator. these plug directly into in the mainboard's CPU fan header and it works flawlessly.

I also have my 4890 cooled in the same loop. soon enough im going to be getting a separate radiator with the same daisy-chained fans cooling it. i would love to be able to mate the VGA card's PWM fan control with these fans and was lucky enough to stumble onto this thread, now with part numbers! so first and foremost, thanks a lot InvisiBill


What i want to do is just create a decently small adapter. i want to have one end be the 4-pin VGA PWM female connector, and the other be a shielded 4-pin CPU PWM connector. this, combined with the arctic-cooling AF12025PWM would allow me to connect the fans independently of the CPU fan control, but also keeps me from chopping up the fan connector on the AC fan.

i tried looking up some stuff on digikey.com, but im completely new to that site, and the part searches dont have any breadcrumbs... InvisiBill, would you be able to assist me at all? you seem to know what you are looking for and how to find it. Either way, thanks for your help and info in this thread!
 
sorry, i guess having a picture to show what i am looking for helps better:

connectorslarge.jpg


this is what i am planning to have on one end of the adapter. with this ill be able to attach the AF12025PWM fans (two or four, i havent quite decided the cooling factor with that yet)


the other end will be

PHR-4.jpg



which will plug into the graphics card PWM fan header.


Any help is much appreciated! i'd rather not splice wiring if at all possible
 
I wanted to make some adapters like that also, but wasn't able to find any source of the PWM "sockets" for a full-size fan to plug into. I even looked for the motherboard header style connectors, with no luck. It's very possible that it's out there and I just missed it. I only found the other plug via the SB J1 stuff, and the 4-pin version happened to be the same type of connector and on the same catalog page.

Keep the video card fan's specs in mind when making adapters like that. I'm hoping that you're just using the RPM and PWM pins off the video card, and are drawing actual power for the 2-4 fans from a Molex plug or something. I was worried about some single 120mm fans pulling too much for the video card to handle.
 
This thread is where I was looking for that connector as well. Your best bet is probably to get the FrozenCPU PWM extension and just replace the "motherboard plug" end with the mini videocard plug, at whatever length you desire. They cost more than buying components from DigiKey, but even four of those would still only be $10. That would also make it pretty easy to split it between the video card for control/monitoring and a Molex for the actual power, as well as wiring up multiple fans to the one plug.
 
It seems some people have been referencing this thread for wiring up fans to video cards. Just for some clarification, the full-size connectors that would plug into your motherboard come wired in at least two "standard" color codes. The one with the green wire is Intel's PWM standard. The one with red is an extension of the standard black-red-yellow 3-wire fans, just adding on the blue PWM wire.

pwmcolors.png

(Original image from http://pavouk.org/hw/fan/en_fan4wire.html.)

The mini-connector on the video card has the latch on the opposite side compared to the full-size connector.
pwmgpu.jpg

(Picture mirrored from http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&number=3&artpage=3166&articID=667.)

If you look at both connectors with the latch sides facing you, the colors will go in opposite directions. If you look at the flat side of one and the latch side of the other (i.e. place the flat sides of the connectors together), the colors should line up. If you were able to plug the full-size connector directly into that video card, the alignment pins would be facing the cooler, while the flat side would be along the edge of the card - opposite of the mini connector having the latch along the edge of the card.
 
Back
Top