Rear PC fan not spinning?

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moozilbee

moozilbee

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Jul 19, 2013
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Hi, My PC's rear fan recently started making a strange noise as if it was catching on something, though it wasn't. Since this fan was pretty slow and load I decided to buy a new fan, and went with the artic cooling F12 120mm (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002QVLBM2/ref=pe_385721_37038051_pe_217191_31005151_M3T1_dp_1) I bought two, one to replace the rear fan and one to later on replace the intake fan. But the old fan had one wire coming from it, with a three pin socket that went into the three pins on the motherboard (that say sys_fan). The new fan however, has some sort of wire with a three pin yellow wire going into a 4 pin socket (with four wires) which goes into a 4 pin socket(with another four wires), not really sure how to explain it. Anyway How do I plug this into my motherboard? do I plug in the three pin socket (which has only one yellow wire instead of four) or the 4 pin socket and have it not fitting correctly? Thanks!
 
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Arctic Cooling F12 PWM fans are pretty basic fan builds, with the exception that they come with the ability to "daisy-chain." As you figured out, you have a 4-pin female connector, and a 3-pin female connector (with only one wire). Attached to the 4-pin female is a 4-pin male connector.

If you are using the fan by itself, you plug the 3-pin female to the 4-pin male, then plug the 4-pin female to the Fan header. If you want to "daisy chain" multiple fans in a series, you plug each additional fans' f-pin female connector to each successive 4-pin male connector. Sadly, each, except the last, will be left with a single wire that the 3-pin female connector is attached to, but the bright side is that you can now operate up to four fans...
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nostall

nostall

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The 3pin connector should disconnect from the four pin to allow you to connect to the mother board. You didn't describe the 4 pin connector, so my guess is that it is a Molex connector which would enable you to connect it directly to a power supply cable with a similar plug/connector.
A picture would help.
 
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moozilbee

moozilbee

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I think I managed to fix it by keeping the 3 pin plugged into the four pin connector, and then plugging in the four pin into the three pin motherboard sys_fan, with one of the four pins not plugged in. This seems to work, it spins for a few seconds at startup and then spins at around 500-600rpm when components get hot. Is it meant to spin this slow though? The old fan did, but I assumed that was because it was a worse fan and didn't go as fast.
 
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moozilbee

moozilbee

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Are you sure it isn't just spinning slow because my PC isn't hot? Currently with a few non intensive programs and 6 or so Firefox tabs open my GPU is at 45C, CPU at 27C, intake fan at 1350rpm, and rear fan (one I just replaced) at 550rpm. If this isn't meant to happen, what could I do to make it spin faster?
 
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C

Calculatron

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Arctic Cooling F12 PWM fans are pretty basic fan builds, with the exception that they come with the ability to "daisy-chain." As you figured out, you have a 4-pin female connector, and a 3-pin female connector (with only one wire). Attached to the 4-pin female is a 4-pin male connector.

If you are using the fan by itself, you plug the 3-pin female to the 4-pin male, then plug the 4-pin female to the Fan header. If you want to "daisy chain" multiple fans in a series, you plug each additional fans' f-pin female connector to each successive 4-pin male connector. Sadly, each, except the last, will be left with a single wire that the 3-pin female connector is attached to, but the bright side is that you can now operate up to four fans off from one header. They all will operate off from the same flow of power, and same PWM signal. That sounds confusing, but there is instructions on and inside the box, and on their website, for how to set this up.

The fact that your fan, despite being plugged into a 3-pin fan header, is changing fan speeds just means that the RPM is being changed via voltage, instead of the PWM signal. Otherwise, the fan would run at full tilt (or otherwise the same speed) all the time.

I really like Arctic fans. They managed to put together an overall good product that isn't just quiet, but affordable.
 
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nostall

nostall

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Moozilbee, you state you plugged the fans into the mobo connector marked sys_fan; Does your mobo have any connections marked case_fan? If so try plugging into one of these headers and see if you get a higher RPM.
Can also try finding (thinking of the collection of miscellaneous cables and adapters one can acquire over time) or buying a small three/four pin - to - Molex connector and connecting directly to the PSU as I mentioned earlier (my mistake then). The fan will run at full RPM connected directly to the PSU.
 
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moozilbee

moozilbee

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Thanks, I will try looking for a case_fan socket when I get the chance, but wouldn't it be better to not have the fan running at full rpm all the time? surely temp controlled is better as your fans are quieter, use less energy and doesn't make as much noise?(although they still run at full when under load)
 
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