Easy way to slow down a case fan?

Ease · 5 Jan 2009 at 18:35

Hi all, I'm trying to slow down one of my 80mm fans (with a 4pin molex connector), and I'm not being very succesful. I tried swapping the Yellow-Black wires to Yellow-Red to reduce the voltage to 7V. The fan still works... but at exactly the same speed (or at least as far as I can tell... tis hard to judge RPM when the fan is a blur =P). Do any of you have a (cheap) solution?

P.s. If it helps, I have thousand of resistors, potentiometers, e.t.c lying around my room, so if you think of any electronic solution please suggest that as well!

Ease · 5 Jan 2009 at 19:11

Its only plugged into the PSU.

Ease · 5 Jan 2009 at 22:04

Diggsy, that's what I've done. I'm on 7V and the speed hasn't changed at all. Will try 5V later, when my hand stops hurting from accidentally cutting it open with a screw driver =P

Ease · 6 Jan 2009 at 12:29

Bubo said:
Google "Making high-power fan controllers", not exactly easy, but is the best way of doing it, and you said you have loads of electronic components to hand to make a one channel version.

Ooo, I saw some interesting options... now to find my soldering iron!