Changing the Power Supply Fan

[ZeroBurn]

my entire system consists of quiet fans (all 26 dba or under) and a silent ibm 75gxp hdd, the only sound problem i have seems to be coming from the power supply. it's an antec 300w ps from the sx1030 (the case is an enlight 7237), i cracked it open to check the fan. it seems pretty generic and i was going to swap it for a 80mm panaflo, however the tail is only a 2 pin connection. checking teamawe.com they only have 3 or 4 pin tails, is there a way to swap this generic crap with a panaflo ? or a place that sells a 2 pin attachment i could attach to the bare cable ?

thanks =P

 

[tonyou]

My roommate wrote an article about switching the power supply fan, basically all you need to do is pull out the wires on your 3 or 4 pin and use them on the 2 pin connector.

Tony

 

[ZeroBurn]

yep you can connect the bare wires, that's what did on my other fans. you can just plug them in then, but for the PS fan i'd rather use a tail or something a little more tight and clean, it's inside my PS so i don't want to worry about having to open it up or anything afterwards. just feels more secure having an actual end on it then electrical tape

 

[mechBgon]

Solder it.

 

[Blacktree]

Just clip the two wires going to the 2-pin connector and splice in the wires from your new fan. Also, you might want to cut out the sheet metal fan grille and replace it with a wire grille (if it doesn't have a wire grille already). I've done that to both of the power supplies in my Black Box, and it did help reduce noise.

You can also read my power supply modding tutorial here.
Have Fun!

 

[eia430]

Zero burn, the third wire that you see is what's called a tach signal wire or a tachometer wire. It sends a pulsed signal that is interpreted as fan rotational speed. If you find it coming from the Fan itself and two from the powersupply then it is fine to run just two wires from the powersupply to run the fan. If you find 3 wires coming from the powersupply itself then you might have a little problem. Some powersupplies monitor fan speed and if it is below a certain value the powersupply thinks that the fan has seized and will not powerup. This is the case with powermacs g4's that I've worked with. You cannot simply switch a two wire fan to replace the three wire fan that it came with. Without a tach input the powersupply will just not power up. I have worked with the antec 300w ps and if memory serves me right, they have a regular 2 wire fan. I have modified his PS to accomodate a larger 92mm fan to quiet down his powersupply. Because the 92mm fan is a bit larger than the side of the PS that we had to mount it to we had to cut the grill out of powersuply to accomodate the larger fan. We also removed the circular grill (very restrictive) on the outside portion of the ps and replaced it with a wire screw-on type grill(less restrictive.) We have underdriven the 92mm fan with +7v instead of +12v to slow down it's speed. The combination of removal and enlargement of the inner grill, replacement of the outer grill, and going to a larger fan has increased airflow over the stock fan. But doing this with a larger slower spinning fan and reducing airflow restrictions has made this a nearly silent ps. The loudest thing in his computer now are the drives. When his cd and hd spin down the computer is just about totaly silent, like a Mac G4 laptop.