2 front intake chassis fans won't attached to MOBO

FrankJaeger

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Dec 25, 2012
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Hey dudes,

Case: Corsair 400r

I've known about this problem for a while but whilst i was doing some maintenance/Installing heatsink work on my build the other day I tried to sort it out.

I followed the 2 wires from the my 2 front chassis fans and they went up to the front panel (I believe this is because I can light the fans with LED's and this button is located on the front panel) After the front panel they go into the main bay where I have attached them into one of the PSU's cables with an attachment supplied with the case. This is all well and good but I would really appreciate being able to read fan rpm's, change speeds in my UEFI and other software. I have located 3 chassis fan inputs on my MOBO but these do not fit the extension given from the fans

Is there a converter which will allow my fans to attach my MOBO?

Thanks, Frank
 

animal

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Look on Newegg, or somewhere similar, they are fan extension cables, what you need just depends on what your current (without the PSU attachment) fan connector is and what type your motherboard header connectors are.
 

Paperdoc

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That still won't do all you ask.

First, you say that the fans each have two wires coming to them. That means there is no third wire to carry the fan's internally-generated speed signal anywhere. So even if you use an adapter to plug the fans into a mobo port, you will not be able to read their speed.

If you do the adapter / mobo port thing you MIGHT be able to control the fans' speed. It can work only if the mobo port you plug them into is 3-pin port. The speed of a 3-pin fan is controlled by varying the voltage supplied to it from the port, and that would work on your fans. However, a 4-pin fan receives a constant full 12 VDC on its main power supply line, and then gets an additional signal called PWM that is used inside the fan to set the actual speed. Your fans can't do this, so they will only run at full speed always if connected to a 4-pin mobo port. That is no different from what you have already.

By the way, the best way to do this with a 3-pin mobo port would be to use an adapter system that allows you to connect TWO fans to that one mobo port. This can be done with 2 adapters - one to connect from a mobo 3-pin port to a fan's larger 4-pin Molex connector (the ones that now plug into a PSU output connector), and the second that converts one 4-pin Molex PSU output connector into two of them, so you can plug both fans into that. (You nay already have that second adapter.)

Two other notes to take into account. One is that the lights on the fans are set up assuming they will receive the full 12VDC being supplied to the fan motors. If you power them instead from a mobo port at reduced voltage, the lights may work oddly. The second is the some mobo fan controller systems monitor the fan speeds and warn you (or even take corrective actions) if the fan is not working. When you plug these fans into the 3-pin mobo port but they cannot send a speed signal back to the mobo, the mobo will think those fan(s) connected to the port have failed. You MAY have to tell the mobo fan controller for that one port to ignore the fan speed so it does not throw error warnings at you.

WOAH! LATE THOUGHT!
You say there are TWO wires from the fan(s) to the front panel, where there is a button switch to control the fan lights. Is it true that the fans and the lights are controlled separately? You can turn off the lights while the fans keep running? Then those two wires you traced may ONLY be for the lights. You may NOT have found the fan motor wires which may be separate. Look again and tell us what you find. In the meantime, do not proceed with what I said above until we can verify the fan motor wiring.
 

FrankJaeger

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Dec 25, 2012
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Your in-depth reply is really appreciated!

Yes, there is a button much like the power button on my front panel which controls the fan lights (ON/OFF)

I will further check and take notes on my fan wire configuration tomorrow, I'm OCing my CPU for the minute and don't want to get confused in 2 jobs

I will report back tomorrow, cheers buddy