Soldato
- Joined
- 19 Jan 2006
- Posts
- 4,681
Hey guys,
I've always wanted a quiet, high performing, sleek looking and cool PC - unfortunately is hard to get the perfect balance, but I think I finally have!
I've never been keen on shop bought fan controllers as they look gimmicky with flashy lighting and colours, are too fiddly to use with controls for each and every fan and have features which I'll never use such as all the temperature probes! So what I've made is a very simple switched fan controller which toggles between sending 12v to the fans and 7v to the fans. It can control 8 fans, with headroom for more if necessary.
All you need is -
Molex Y Splitter
Female Fan Pigtails
DC Step Down Converter
DPDT Switch
Start with the Molex Y-Splitter, what you want to do here is cut both male heads off the connector leaving you just the female connector, then remove the red wire and the closest black wire to it from the female connector leaving you just the yellow and black next to each other, keep the red and black wire you removed for later. Attach the appropriate set of connectors for your switch to one of the yellow and black pairs and leave the other pair with about 4mm of bare wire showing and twist them so they are nice and tightly wound and not fraying - these bare ends will be screwed into the DC Step down converter.
The next thing to do is to trim off all the female fan pig tails from the 4 way Akassa cables, strip a bit of the wire off the ends of the wire and combine all the black wires in to one, and all the yellow and red wires to one, finally attach the appropriate connectors for your switch to the ends of these wires. You should end up with something which looks like this - I've chosen to add a little bit of extra wire to the end to give them further reach into my case, this was the wire taken from the Y splitter.
With two more lengths of the left over wire from the Y-Splitter you need to attach a set of your switch connectors to one end and leave the other end with about 4mm of wire bare and twisted as you did with the Y-Splitter.
Now you need to set the output voltage of your step down converter, attach the bare yellow wire from the Y-Splitter to the positive input on the converter and the black to the negative input. Plug it in to your PC to power up the converter. Using a voltmeter measure the voltage being output by the converter at the other end, you want the output to be above 6v as many fans won't start up under this voltage, I personally chose a 7v output. To adjust the output voltage there should be a potentiometer on the converter, it's the blue box with a small flathead screw on it, turn to the right to increase voltage, left to decrease.
Once set its time to wire it all up!
Add the last pieces of wire to the DC converter so you're able to connect it to the switch. Attach the fan pigtails to the centre connections on the switch, and the DC inputs on the outer connections, make sure you connect all of these in the correct polarity!
I chose to mount my switch in one of the optical drive blanking plates, which worked out to be the perfect size to mount the converter on too!
I hope this is useful for people who want to create a smililar thing.
I've always wanted a quiet, high performing, sleek looking and cool PC - unfortunately is hard to get the perfect balance, but I think I finally have!
I've never been keen on shop bought fan controllers as they look gimmicky with flashy lighting and colours, are too fiddly to use with controls for each and every fan and have features which I'll never use such as all the temperature probes! So what I've made is a very simple switched fan controller which toggles between sending 12v to the fans and 7v to the fans. It can control 8 fans, with headroom for more if necessary.
All you need is -
Molex Y Splitter
Female Fan Pigtails
DC Step Down Converter
DPDT Switch
Start with the Molex Y-Splitter, what you want to do here is cut both male heads off the connector leaving you just the female connector, then remove the red wire and the closest black wire to it from the female connector leaving you just the yellow and black next to each other, keep the red and black wire you removed for later. Attach the appropriate set of connectors for your switch to one of the yellow and black pairs and leave the other pair with about 4mm of bare wire showing and twist them so they are nice and tightly wound and not fraying - these bare ends will be screwed into the DC Step down converter.
The next thing to do is to trim off all the female fan pig tails from the 4 way Akassa cables, strip a bit of the wire off the ends of the wire and combine all the black wires in to one, and all the yellow and red wires to one, finally attach the appropriate connectors for your switch to the ends of these wires. You should end up with something which looks like this - I've chosen to add a little bit of extra wire to the end to give them further reach into my case, this was the wire taken from the Y splitter.
With two more lengths of the left over wire from the Y-Splitter you need to attach a set of your switch connectors to one end and leave the other end with about 4mm of wire bare and twisted as you did with the Y-Splitter.
Now you need to set the output voltage of your step down converter, attach the bare yellow wire from the Y-Splitter to the positive input on the converter and the black to the negative input. Plug it in to your PC to power up the converter. Using a voltmeter measure the voltage being output by the converter at the other end, you want the output to be above 6v as many fans won't start up under this voltage, I personally chose a 7v output. To adjust the output voltage there should be a potentiometer on the converter, it's the blue box with a small flathead screw on it, turn to the right to increase voltage, left to decrease.
Once set its time to wire it all up!
Add the last pieces of wire to the DC converter so you're able to connect it to the switch. Attach the fan pigtails to the centre connections on the switch, and the DC inputs on the outer connections, make sure you connect all of these in the correct polarity!
I chose to mount my switch in one of the optical drive blanking plates, which worked out to be the perfect size to mount the converter on too!
I hope this is useful for people who want to create a smililar thing.
