Help me power this fan from my Alpha server

[Czar]

I have an old alpha server thats just sitting here in my room doing nothing and I was wondering if I could use one of the fans in it for something else.

The fan is circular from Comair Rotron, its 12vdc and 2.26a. The power connector is a 4 pin one like the new p4 motherboards use, it has 3 wires, one blue, one red and one black.

Any way to splice it to an old at power supply?

 

[Czar]

^bump

 

[Heisenberg]

The black is probably the ground and the red the +12v line. Just connect those to the +12v and ground coming out of the power supply. If that doesn't work try moving the wires around (the blue may be the +12v). There's a small chance of damaging something if the wiring is wrong the first time but if it's an old fan and power supply I wouldn't worry too much. I've done something similar and hooked the fan up backwards the first time 😱 and it didn't hurt anything.

 

[Goi]

The blacks definitely the GND, and either the blue or red would be +12V and +5V, either way you won't damage your fan if you connect it wrongly, as long as you make sure the black is connected to GND.

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: Goi
The blacks definitely the GND, and either the blue or red would be +12V and +5V, either way you won't damage your fan if you connect it wrongly, as long as you make sure the black is connected to GND.

I believe black = GND, red = 5v, blue = 12v (I've seen a power supply like that before)

 

[Czar]

I managed to power it up, connected the red wire to the yellow wire on the power supply and then the black to a black one on the power supply. The blue one isnt connected to anything, I suppose its a rpm monitoring wire.