How do I connect my fan to my motherboard

arcam_boy

arcam_boy

arcam_boy

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25 Jun 2007
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90
Hi,

Just purchased a 120mm Xilence fan for my powermac g4.

Having received the fan from OC :) it appears to have a 3 pin connection as well as a power block type connection. The fan I'm wanting to replace it with simply has a 2 pin connection that connects straight to the motherboard.

The motherboard only has one 3 pin connection thats already in use by something else :confused: so I'm not sure how to go about replacing it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

IMG_0148.jpg
 
Might be better in the Mac forum.

I know nothing about Macs, but is there a spare molex plug on the PSU?
 
You would want to nick the 2 pin plug from the old fan, keeping some of the lead.
Cut the plugs off the new fan, and patch the old plug on to the red and black leads respectively. I would recommend a soldering job on this but that depends how good you are with a soldering iron.

Oh and ignore the yellow wire, it's simply a speed monitoring feature which your mac apparently doesn't have as the connection is 2pin.
 
If you are lucky, the ends of the cable will be the same in both the 2 pin and 3 pin connectors. This being the case, you should be able to remove the pins from both without causing any damage to any cables, then simply pop the black and red into the 2 pin block and tape the yellow up out of the way.

If you look at this link, there are very good images showing how to remove the pins...

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/guides-how-s/1906-guide-sleeving-3-pin-fan-56k-warning.html
 
Thanks guys and great link to re-wiring the pins.

Where do I connect the power lead as I havve quite a few spare for another 3 hard drives and one more optical drive. Do I just connect on to one of them to power the fan. I tried it early on and there was a bit of a burning smell coming from the fan so not sure if I did it right although it was very quiet in operation :D
 
your fan has 2 connectors. you only need to use one or the other. if you doing the pin rewiring thing as metioned aboive then the large power connector you dont need, if you using the large power conector then you dont need to do any rewiring of the pins on *** small one.

assuming that macs use 12volt power supplus like pcs. you just connect it up like you did earlier how ever that burning smell is a lil worrying lol .
 
lol all sorted now thank you.

I've had it running and its very quiet indeed but it doesn't seem to be shifting a great amount of air and certainly not as much as the oem fan. its rated at 68cfm http://www.xilence-power.com/ Xilence Fan 120mm (Red Wing) is this sufficent to cool my g4 powermac 1ghz single cpu?

I don't want to fry the cpu lol. :D
 
i would have thought it was enough yeah. you using as cpu fan then ? mpunted to a cpu cooler ?

noise and airflow is allways a trade off it may be slower rpm then you previous fan. hence lower air. but as most cpu coolers come with 80mm fans a 120 should be enouigh,
 
thanks the macs standard fan is 120mm.

when I finally get it running again I might leave it on for an hour or two and monitor it with istat then try using my new fan and do the same and see how it goes. because its an oldish computer now I can't find many specs i.e the old fans air flow or the general operating temp of a single 1ghz g4 processor.

hopefully it'll be working again Tuesday when I get my graphics card back from being ROM flashed but I can't see it working still myself :mad::mad:
 
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