Newbie Fan hookup problems

[mech45]

Being this is my first try at putting a computer I thought I was doing pretty good, have just about hooked up everything where it is supposed to go, or at least I hope I do. What has me stumped is the cooling fan wiring hook ups. I tried finding a post that dealt with my problem I didn't have any luck. It seems to be the consensus that the case fans should be hooked up directly to the power supply.

I have a Corsair 750w power supply, a Apevia X-Telstar case and a EVGA 132-Bl-E758-A1 motherboard. The case fans of which there are three have two small red and black wires that go into a pair of four wire connectors one male one female. The case has a flow controller and talks about being able to controll up to five fans via daisy chain. The motherboard fan connections are all three pin and I see no way of being able to hook the fans to them with out a adapter.

Two of the cables that comes out of the power supply have four prong connectors that will hook into the fan connector but the color coding doesn't match. The small red and black wires will be hooked into black and yellow wires, the end of the cable looks like it has a connection to go into a floppy drive. If the fans are hooked into this cable and the wiring is right despite the color codes won't the fans run full speed all the tiime?

Are there any schematics or pictures that show the best way to hook up the fans in this setup? Any help would be greatly appeciated!

Chris

[mech45]

Nevermind, I figured it out for myself.

[glc]

Would you care to share your solution with us, please? We like to have 2 way streets here.

[Khalil]

Yeah, lol that would be nice!!

[mech45]

I figured the solution was to easy and that was why I didn't get a response. I believe the correct way to hook them up is what the manual called a daisy chain. Each pair of connectors on each fan, which I believe are called molex connectors, have one female end and one male. I have three fans so the three pairs of connectors get connected in series into one long connector. Then one end of a cable from my power supply gets plugged into one end and the connector from the case gets plugged into the other. I believe the connector from the case is either connected to a temperature control or a manaul fan speed control which can be adjusted based on the temperature indication on the front of the case.

My apologies for not giving more detail in my previous post but I felt like a dummy after I realized how they were meant to be hooked up.

Chris

[systempat]

No, not a dummy at all. And we have all done something that looked pretty funny afterwards. The 3 fans have been chained together using the 4-pin power connectors. Now is that plugged directly into a connector from the Power Supply or is there something in-between., attached to the case. It sounds like there is something part of the case?
If plugged directly to the power supply, the fans are getting full 12 volts and will run full speed all the time. Which may be not so good from a noise issue. People have created a variety of solutions for this.
There is a different setup for fans that plug into the motherboard. Those have a smaller 3-pin or 4-pin connector. And then the correct plug on the mobo has to be identified.

[mech45]

I got to looking at it again and realized that wasn't going to work for just that reason, full speed all the time. I believe that I have to connect one of the power supply leads to the pair of molex connectors coming from the front of the case and the daisy chain to the other molex conector marked fan control. I have emailed Apevia tech support to see what they say about how it should be hooked up but I believe I have it right this time. What do they say third time is the charm? With my work schedule I haven't had much time to mess with it and I haven't powered anything up yet. If I don't get a response from Apevia I'll disconnect evrything else from the power supply and check to see what I have with a VOM. Thanks!

Chris

[flanzig1]

You are correct in that power from the PSU goes to a connector on the fan controller and the fans would go on to the other. Check the connectors to see if they are labeled something like PWR and FAN.

[mech45]

Well I got a reply from Norman at Apevia first thing this morning so I will give them high marks for that. He suggested I down load the manual for my case from a link he gave which I did. I was hoping it was a updated manual that has something in it that mine didn't but it was the same manual. After a couple of more emails which he replied to very quickly it seems that the pair of molex connectors I have coming from the front of the case are not labeled as they should be. They were supposed to be marked DC input 12v, but in fact they aren't labeled at all, the fan output connector is labeled correctly but is male instead of female.

Anyway a cable from the PSU gets hooked into one of the pair of connectors coming from the front of the case. The dasiy chain of fan molex connectors gets hooked into the fan output. Even though the fan output connector is the wrong gender it stil plugs into the other end of the daisy chain and the wire colors match. According to Norman this will work, I'll let you know as soon as my schedule lets me have time to mess with it again.

Chris

[mech45]

Finally finished everything up hit the switch and so far it works. Fans are running and are controlled by the reostat on the front of the case. So far is pretty quiet, so have the fans at 100% CPU temp is 40c and HD temp is 30c. Its only loading windows right now so I'm not sure how much of a load that is but are those normal temps? Thanks!

Chris

[vtfanmv5]

Those temps look fine. I would do a quick stress test (Prime95) on the CPU to check its load temps after you get it up and running, but it looks good.

[mech45]

Thanks, found the Eleet diagnostics page and from what I can see everything looks good.

Chris

[David M]

You have three options on where to plug in your fans.

Plug them into the motherboard fan connectors
Plug them into 4 pin Molex connectors.
Plug them into a fan speed controller, or any combination of the three..

It really depends on what you want to do with your fans.