How do I control case fans that only has a 4 pin molex?

Hey ye'all

I really like overclocking.. thats why I have 7 case fans all rated around 38cfm to cool that fussy 2.7Ghz of mine.. but I also do alot of thesis work.. and the noise is just sometimes totally unbearable... I was looking around for a fan controller, but most of them works on a tiny 3 pin connector. 5 out of 7 of my case fans do not have these tiny petit pin heads.. but rather a HUGE 4pin molex...

I was really hoping you guys could recommend a fan controller panel (say a front panel once like the aerogate) that accepts 4 pin molex fans and control some (if not all) of my REALLY noisy case fans.. cheers to any suggestions

To permanantly lower the speed of your fans, you could remove the wire going to 12v in the molex to only 5v

7 38cfm fans ?
why ? - i highly doubt you need them all on full speed. Even if you did, just back off on your overclock for the sake of turning a few off ?
Also, what brand are your fans ?, have you looked into replacing them ?

Remember you can 5volt or 7volt your current ones to reduce the noise. (see http://www.7volts.com/)

Cant answer the baybus question, as i dont use one though, sorry !

ghetto solution, rewire the fans yourself to permanently provide 5v (swap the black and red wires) or 7v (uh, can't be arsed to check that one, this might help: http://people.freenet.de/s.urfer/7vtrick.htm )

i've done that on my system. i find that fan controllers are a bit pointless; i just run the fans at 5v and be done with it, haven't run across any stability problems yet (with this thing running nigh on 24/7. my CPU fan is on a little rheostat though)

you can buy 4 pin to 3 pin converters cheaply afaik

this fan controller allows you to use 4 pin fans or 3 pin fans (or a mix)

I once rana couple in parrallel to give 6v each but thats doesnt work very well, 7v is still a bit noisy and ive heard it doesnt do wonders for the psu. Try 5v though, it works like a dream.

im sure you could so some funky wiring to get 4pin into 3 pin or i think frozencpu sell adapters.

hmn... I might think about the rewiring thingy.. My case fans are only there to cool my cpu when I'm fragging or when I'm running a 50 loop invertions of MS/MS signals to peptide database analysis.. they're really CPU intensive.. and it takes AGES to complete.. Supposed to be a jobby for the dual Xeons with 8Gs of ECC in me lab.. but I normally work at home via telnet. Having said that, I found running it at 2.8Ghz was able to shave 1/3 of the analysis time off....

But when I'm NOT doing that.. the case fans are just plain noisy.. Was really hoping I DON'T have to permanently slow them down...

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Originally Posted by sawyen

hmn... I might think about the rewiring thingy.. My case fans are only there to cool my cpu when I'm fragging or when I'm running a 50 loop invertions of MS/MS signals to peptide database analysis.. they're really CPU intensive.. and it takes AGES to complete.. Supposed to be a jobby for the dual Xeons with 8Gs of ECC in me lab.. but I normally work at home via telnet. Having said that, I found running it at 2.8Ghz was able to shave 1/3 of the analysis time off....

But when I'm NOT doing that.. the case fans are just plain noisy.. Was really hoping I DON'T have to permanently slow them down...

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Any 3 pin controller with a simple 4 to 3 pin adaptor will work on 4 pin fans, the adaptors work both ways (just watch the sexes).

Have you checked those results against the same one done on your other machine? Overclocking has a habit of being perfectly stable but occasionally throwing out junk numbers, as ive found, spent about 10 hours debugging a program once cos i couldnt get the right answer out till i tried it on another rig, backed off the overclock and it worked like a charm.

I did cross validate the results with me lab's workstation.. For my software in particular, its really to tell whether the results are ****ty.. so its really no biggy.. Up till this date, both were giving identical results.. altho its so much faster on the Xeons...

Me boss didnt pay up his throat for nothing, but I'm too lazy to visit me lab every saturday to do protein invertions. There's always the magical telnet that relays a copy of the signals to me rig..

Thanks for all the input.. Will probably kill some fans or shove that CPU under me desk..

38CFM is tiny, my server have 9 12cm fan rated at 120CFM, and the temperature is still high. Those crappy stock Opteron heatsinks.

Those 'crappy stock Opteron heatsinks' ain't too bad, my work workstation is using the stock heatsinks with air supplied by 2x 32cfm 80mm fans (one push, one pull) through a conduit & I'm getting load temp in the mid to low 50s from 248s.

Soldering iron + bits & bobs.
That's what I did, to essentially make a few molex > 3 pin convertors. I was going to buy some, but I couldn't wait, and was bored... So I just made them instead =D