Connecting fan wires to motherboard

milld · Mar 17, 2013

Hello all,
I've just built my first computer and the only thing i have left to hook up are the fan wires. From what i've researched, these wires should be attached to the motherboard in order to allow for fan speed control,etc. The problem I'm facing is that the motherboard has a 3 pin male connection and the wire is a 3 pin male. Obviously you can't attach male to male so how do i do this? I can't find a female to female extension online anywhere. Any help would be great! thank you.

smorizio · Mar 17, 2013

all mb fan headers are male 3 or 4 pins with a clip so that you can only clip the fan in one way. the cheap case fans may have male or 43/4 pin molex connector. so that it plugged into the power supply itself. your fans may need to be conencted to power supply floppy cable.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pc-power-supplies,1664-3.html

dudewitbow · Mar 17, 2013

MB fans are supposed to be male headers. what is weird is your fans are male, which they should be female connectors.

milld · Mar 17, 2013

smorizio :

Thanks for the quick reply. So, if my fan wires are 3 pin males and the motherboard fan connections are also 3 pin males... how do I connect them? (I don't really want to attach the fans directly to the powersupply)

scout_03 · Mar 17, 2013

what is the name and model of your case and does this case came with a fan controller ?

milld · Mar 17, 2013

dudewithabow,
Thanks for the reply man. Yeah that is what I was afraid of... I have no idea what to do. Maybe i'll just hook them up directly to the powersupply : /

milld · Mar 17, 2013

scout_03 :

Hey Scout_3,
It is a NZXT - Phantom and yes there are fan controller switches/sliders on the top of the case

scout_03 · Mar 17, 2013

then those are the fan tha came with the case see this on page 2 how to connect the case fan to the case controller http://www.nzxt.com/Download/phantom_manual_eng.pdf

dudewitbow · Mar 17, 2013

if your talkign about the phantom, those 3 pin males are extras for any extra fans. the fans on the case are already hooked up to the fan controller, except for the one on the side panel.

basicallyt all fans are already connected to the fan controler, except the 2 on the side panel the rest of the pins are for any extra fans you want connected to a fan controller. these do NOT need to be connected to the motherboard in anyway.

milld · Mar 18, 2013

dudewitbow :

Ah great, this is the information i was looking for! So as long as the case fans are hooked up to the fan controller... that is all that needs to be done? How are they getting the power to run?

dudewitbow · Mar 18, 2013

milld :

how fan controllers work is that they are powered by molex(which i believe the phantoms fan controller is when i worked on it back in january) directly from the psu. the controls are on teh top of the case which controls the voltage given to the fans altering its speed. That's all. What fan controllers provide is a way to control fans without having to control it via the motherboard at all. its sort of like an add on. Fan controllers are controlled by either software built into the fan controller, or knobs/sliders that are more analog. the case just has extra male headers on it in order to connect more fans if you add more fans into it and would like to use the built in fan controller rather than the motherboard headers. as 3 pin fans tend to not be able to be controlled by most motherboards, but can be controlled by fan controllers.

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Connecting fan wires to motherboard

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