antec 900 fan controll

phoenixstar · 2 Mar 2007 at 13:52

Is there any way of controlling the stock fans in the antec 900 using a fan controller? All the fans come with a 2 wired molex connector and a 3 speed switch (low, medium and high). I don't want to get new fans, just control the existing ones.

Thanks.

Alex R · 2 Mar 2007 at 14:32

Couldn't you just put the fans on the high setting, hook them up to a cheap front mounted fan controller and Bob becomes you uncle?

BillHicksRIP · 4 Mar 2007 at 15:58

Would like to know the answer to this too. Thinking of getting this case but am wondering how you control the fan speeds without opening the case and flicking the switches on each of them every time. Must confess I've never used a fan controller before so not sure how they work. Do you plug the fans molex's into the controller or something?

sja360 · 4 Mar 2007 at 16:45

you could try using a program called speedfan? it may allow you to slow the fan speeds down.
as for the fan controller option it may be abit of a difficulty as i believe most fan controllers are 3pin while the fans in the Antec 900 is 4 pin Molex (the Harddrive and CD-ROM type power connector).
You could convert the 4pin to 3pin but even then i think theres usually a limit to the Wattage rating each channel (each knob on the controller) can take and i doubt you could get a fan controller to deal with the big 20CM fan on the top.

Dan2kx · 4 Mar 2007 at 17:15

I too have wondered weither fan controllers work with molex connectors,

But i believe speedfan would only work if the fans are 3 pin and plugged into the motherboard right?

sja360 · 4 Mar 2007 at 18:33

Dan2kx said:
I too have wondered weither fan controllers work with molex connectors,

But i believe speedfan would only work if the fans are 3 pin and plugged into the motherboard right?

doh, i think your right it wont detect the fans if there just going thru standard pin molex connections.

WJA96 · 4 Mar 2007 at 19:59

Unfortunately, you're not actually going to achieve much with a fan controller. What the 3-position fan switch does is set the fan to 12, 7 or 5V. Below 5V, the fan won't start. The fan controllers you can buy all just have a potentiometer that varies the fan voltage between 5V and 12V, so you just get the same effect in the end although you would be able to select voltages in between 12V and 7V and 7V and 5V.

What you need is a PWM fan controller like this one my Dad made for me from plans I found here.

I have cunningly made the adjuster spindle spacing so that I can drill 2 holes in the centre of a blanking plate and then build another one to give me 4 fans. Drill 2 holes outside the first 2 and I can mount the two side by side.

The only downside to it is that because it's a low frequency PWM controller, it does tend to 'growl' a bit when the fans is running REALLY slowly (like 20-50rpm) but we're currently building a high frequency one which gets round that problem with 4-pin fans.

The parts cost me less than £12 from a large high street electronics store, and once Dad had corrected all the errors in the article it didn't actually take that long to build.