Fan array

[Lekko]

I have three 120mm fans on my radiator, and remember an old thread where someone wanted to wire up a bunch of PC fans to make a desktop fan for his office. The recommended advice was to rewire all the the power cables into one single point so that they are all powered equally and not daisy chain them.

That got me thinking, I could wire up all three fans to be powered off one plug, and have it controlled by one single input for a fan controller, although I'm not too sure about the RPM readout.

I'm just asking to see if anyone has done this, knows what to do. I am by no means an electrician, but can wire up just about anything if told what to do.

Just so you know what it all is, I want to use the ever-popular ZALMAN ZM-MFC1 Fan Controller, which is your standard 3-pin setup, and three standard fans with the 3 pin wired into a molex passthrough.

Is it really as easy as I am thinking?

[Marci]

Simple and how I've always done it.

Join all the reds together. Join all the blacks together. Cut the yellows completely off two fans, leaving one yellow. Wire that lot into a single 3pin connector. Done. (Black = GRND, Red = +v, Yellow = RPMPulse)

Ensure total ampage & wattage of all 3x fans doesn't exceed the specifications of a single channel of your rheostat.

[bito]

Where can one buy the 3 pin connectors - in the UK ??

[Marci]

Just recycle one of the ones that you cut off...

[ramenchef]

Hmm, I'm considering doing this myself. Is there any place that sells replacement pins in the US for the 3 pin connector? Sort of like the molex pins commonly used for PSU modding except for the 3 pin connector.

[Pete]

Yeah Sidewinder do them across the pond from us.

Kustom PC do te 3 pin in uv color but over charge so i'd do as Mark says

[Lekko]

Thanks! I am always a bit sketchy when it comes to cutting and rewiring things without any sort of guide. This should clean up a lot of clutter in wiring and save me a bunch of work.

[yonton228]

I would rather dig up a old thread than to make a new one. When wiring fans together as in this case of 3 for a rad. Do you have to snip the first two yellow fans? I will be wiring 3 fans for my rad and hooking them up to a Sunbeam rheobus controller. Thanks for the input.




-yonton228/timmy

[Marci]

Sunbeam doesn't do RPM sensing so you don't need any of the yellows... basically, you can't join yellows together. You can't combine 3x fans' RPM onto one cable. You can combine their power feeds, but not the RPM pulse.

[step]

Is it the same principle for the 4 pin molex connectors? (join all but the yellow wires)

[Marci]

4 pin molex...
red = 5v
black = ground
yellow = 12v

3pin fan connector...
red = 12v
black = ground
yellow = rpm pulse

A 4 pin molex has no rpm feed. Fans that use a 4 pin molex will have a single red and black wire going from fan to molex. Red = 12v, black = ground.

[shazza]

Marci's given the answers, but in case you want some more info, I found these guides helpful: this one by Patriote, and this one by phcjpp(post # 37).