My Newest Fan!

Thats right folks, i just got myself another fan. Or more correctly... my cabinet "got a new fan". After all, it also needed some respite from the sweltering Mumbai heat. And the reason why i am writing about it, is because i didn't just buy it of the shelf, but instead cobbled it together from old parts.


Here are some snaps of it...







In case you are interested, here is how I managed it:

Parts I used:
1. A fan from an old SMPS
2. A female molex connector
3. Some insulation tape and a scissor

I salvaged the fan from an old SMPS box that i had lying around the place, this 2 wires attached to it, but did not have any way to connect it to a power supply. So i went to a hardware store and brought a female molex connector. (These weren't available by themselves, so i had to settle for a male - female molex connector, from which I cut of the male plug)

The fan was a 12 Volt fan (as are most smps fans), I had to connect it to the 12Volt rail from the connector. However the fan had a red and a black wire, but the 12 volt connector on a molex is yellow, so that is something to watch out for. (If you make a mistake, and connect the red wire from the fan to the red wire on the mole connector, then the fan will still work, however will run very slowly, since the red wire from the molex connector only supplies 5 volts.)


Here is how it should look:


Then i plugged in the connector into the power supply and screwed the fan to the back of the cabinet, such that it would blow the air outwards.
(Note: Before actually fixing the fan to the cabinet, i would suggest that you test it to ensure your connections are fine, otherwise it will be a lot of extra effort in removing the screws and re-doing the connections.)

And there, i now measured the temperatures via the monitor built into my cabinet, and it had dropped from 41 degrees on idling before, to 38 degrees now. The temperature of the CPU, GPU, HDD changed from


Also, when deciding the direction of the air flow within the cabinet, make note of the existing situation.
If you have too much air blowing in, then the new fan should ideally blow outwards, and vice versa.
Sometimes you might want to tinker with your existing fans to direct airflow towards critical components, etc.

You can find a lot more info about airflow related issues here...
http://www.technibble.com/case-cooling-the-physics-of-good-airflow/
http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/computercooling.html?id=Jm7C4TYQ