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Big oops on case fan purchase

M

Mazate

Junior Member
Forgive me for what will surely be interpreted as a dumb mistake. I admit ahead of time right off that I made a dumb mistake.

Having said that, I bought 3 80mm case fans for my case which had 3 very loud fans in it previously. The replacement fans that I bought, however, have 3 pin connectors. My motherboard has 4-pin connectors so I can't have the mobo manage the fan speed. Is there any kind of adapter that can be bought to make it so that the case fan speed can be managed by motherboard? Is there any other sort of solution or is getting new fans my only option?

Thanks.
 
Usually motherboards can control 3-pin fans with voltage control instead of PWM, to an extent. Have you tried that?
 
I haven't. However if you would be willing to give me a rough idea on how to do it, I would gladly make an attempt.
 
plug them in, they are compatible. They can be controlled by the motherboard if the motherboard control type is switched from pwm to voltage style control. line up the back tab of the 4 pin connector so the two dipples in the 3 pin connector hugs them as it goes down into the connector.
 
Thanks for the assistance. Do you know how to make a change from pwm to voltage style control, generally speaking?
 
speedfan cannot change motherboard BIOS PWM control type to voltage and vice versa, and besides that it is terribly unreliable, I have traced it to being the cause of random BSODs on many of my computers before I stopped using it. The programmer's strategy seems to be randomly having his program poke at memory addresses to try to get control of things, which causes a great amount of havoc over time in systems.
 
Mazate said:
That much I knew. But I'm not familiar with the terminology as it would appear in bios settings.
Click to expand...
Still have the motherboard manual? I would look up what your motherboard calls it myself, but my internet right now is... a sad joke.

2575430046.png
 
It's unclear from the manual if the cha_fan headers support voltage control, only pwm is mentioned. The pwr_fan header doesn't for sure, it cannot be controlled at all.

You can use the bios controls or Speedfan to see if the fans can be controlled. There is no option to choose between pwm or voltage, if it does work with voltage it should do so automatically. But my guess is pwm control only.
 
Yeah, when I turned on Q-fan what it did was bring my RPMs on my chassis fans down to about 1200 whereas before they sat up at about 2200. I loaded a game and my chassis fans didn't change at all. So, does anyone know of any good 4-wire case fans that I can use to replace these that I bought? 80mm
 
jaqie said:
speedfan cannot change motherboard BIOS PWM control type to voltage and vice versa, and besides that it is terribly unreliable, I have traced it to being the cause of random BSODs on many of my computers before I stopped using it. The programmer's strategy seems to be randomly having his program poke at memory addresses to try to get control of things, which causes a great amount of havoc over time in systems.
Click to expand...

Hmm, been using Speedfan for years now, never had a problem (well, very minor, it causes screenflicker in an old game). Wouldn't know what to do without it because my mobo's bios control are really shitty.
 
Mazate said:
Yeah, when I turned on Q-fan what it did was bring my RPMs on my chassis fans down to about 1200 whereas before they sat up at about 2200. I loaded a game and my chassis fans didn't change at all. So, does anyone know of any good 4-wire case fans that I can use to replace these that I bought? 80mm
Click to expand...

Ehm, why? It shows your mobo can in fact control fans by voltage. That game probably didn't raise temps enough for the fans to spinup, the default profile is quite conservative. Either change in bios or use Speedfan to create your own profile.
 
At least on my Sabertooth board there are different levels of fan control. I personally use "Turbo" - they spin up nicely whenever there's heavy CPU activity. If I set them to "Normal" or "Quiet" then it's the same as with you - they don't spin up at all.
 
I'm using regular 3 pin fans plugged into 4 pin PWM headers. However, not all 4 pin headers are voltage controlled on my mobo. The CPU fan headers are only PWM controlled and if I plug a 3 pin fan it always runs at full speed.
 
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