Where do I plug the case fans?

[Tenacious Lee]

I just bought a bare bone kit from Tiger Direct and I have been putting it together for over a week now. I'm on call for work every day till 10pm that's why. Parts in question are:

Ultra LSP 650w power supply
ASUS M3N72-D mobo
2 180mm and 1 80mm Dynex case fans.

Now my problem is that the case fans that I got have a female and a male "4 prong" (it's the best way I could think to describe them) where my mobo only has the pwr fan which I don't need to use because my power supply doesn't need it evidently and a cha fan1 connector which is a "3 pin" connector.

Where do I plug my case fans into? Do they just go to the power supply if so do I connect it? And Do I need to have a fan plugged into the CHA Fan1 spot?

I'm tired of this taking so long and driving an hour cause that's the closest I can get products that I need that day.

 

[hunter315]

The motherboard fan connectors just allow you to control the speeds, hook the fans up to molex connectors coming off the power supply, they will then work fine. You dont need one plugged into CHA Fan1, all of the fan headers except CPU Fan are optional.

 

[Tenacious Lee]

Cool. Thank You

 

[JohnnyLucky]

OK! Each Dynex fan usually comes with two types of connectors. There should be a small 3-pin connector which can be connected to a small 3 pin connector on your motherboard. The second is a large 4 pin molex connector which can be connected to a power supply. It's a little bit of design flexibilty that allows you to choose how you want to power the fans. Having a large 4 pin molex connector come in handy when motherboards do not have enough small connections to support all of the case fans.

Note - Your cpu should have come with a stock heatsink and fan. That fan should definitely be connected to the motherboard. In fact, it will not have the large 4 pin molex connector. Often the system can monitor and control that fan.