How do you wire 120mm computer case fan?

How would you go about wiring 120mm computer case fans?

I know of course that you could use a computer powersupply to achieve this with relavitve ease, but is there a way to wire the fans using a less cumbersome setup?

Thanks!

yea you need a 12v phone charger, cut the wires and match neg to neg(black) and pos to pos(red) then use electrical tape to wrap the two connects back up.
heres an image of a charger http://www.hobbyhome.ca/E-flite/Electric/EFLC4000-450.jpg

That is a great start. I have been reading a lot about wiring today. I've learned about a technique called daisy-chaining.

I plan on having 4 120mm fans on each side of the cabinet. Does anyone know how you could daisy-chain the set of 4 together and have enough power to run all 4? I'm afraid that the single charger would not run all 4 fans, am I correct or incorrect with this assumption?

jixan said:

That is a great start. I have been reading a lot about wiring today. I've learned about a technique called daisy-chaining.

I plan on having 4 120mm fans on each side of the cabinet. Does anyone know how you could daisy-chain the set of 4 together and have enough power to run all 4? I'm afraid that the single charger would not run all 4 fans, am I correct or incorrect with this assumption?

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Well if Im correct a 120mm fan runs 0.7 amps, check how many amps the charger can take and im guessing thats how much you can have. I would check with someone more experienced just in-case.

Well I think that you are spot on, I don't belive there is much else to it. Thanks d1zl3!

In that case buy a laptop trnasfomer box. RUnning 8 fans would require 8 individual phone chargers which is expensive and pointless. A brick from a laptop would require re-wiring though, personally i'd just buy an matx or shuttle powersuply, they're small and compact, and then you can run as many fans as you could possibly want off the one wall socket and the only modification you would need would be a paperclip

I must have missed somthing, what is the paperclip for???

You can run multiple fans on one charger. As stated above, you just have to keep the amps of the fans under the rated amps of the charger. 8 fans may be too many unless you have a 2A charger...most fans are less than 0.2A.

MrDank007 said:

You can run multiple fans on one charger. As stated above, you just have to keep the amps of the fans under the rated amps of the charger. 8 fans may be too many unless you have a 2A charger...most fans are less than 0.2A.

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How about this. It's cheap, its 12v and 2Amps. That fans that I like are .7A.

http://www.amazon.com/Microseven-Power-Supply-12V-CCTV/dp/B002GM5SAC

This might be a winner!

*or this one

http://www.mini-box.com/24w-12v-2A-AC-DC-Power-Adapter

I am a little more inclined to try this one.

The paperclip is simply to short a black and green wire on the PUS, that's all you need to do and you just plug your fans straight in and they're going. You can also use speed controllers without complication in this manner.

tip top toker said:

The paperclip is simply to short a black and green wire on the PUS, that's all you need to do and you just plug your fans straight in and they're going. You can also use speed controllers without complication in this manner.

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So would you open up the PSU and solder a paper clip on the hot wire and ground wire. Or am I missing the point... Please excuse my ignorance, I know not what I say. With that being said though I do have an extra laptop power supply that I could mod if that doesn't involve too much expertise. What needs rewiring?

No worries. You siply take your PSU, get the large 20 (sopmetimes 24) pin power plug that would connect to the motherboard, and roughly in the middle there will be a green ground wire. You simply take the paper clip and push one end into the metal pin hole thing on the power plug, and then bend the other end into one of the black wires copper connectors. Duck tape the sucker down and the moment you plug your PSU into the wall it will power up. You can buy fancy tools to do it (psu testers and such) but at the end of the day a paperclip is all you need.



So from that picture, you would simply short PS-ON and COM located directly beneath it (or any pin/wire labeled as COM). That is how a computer works, when it's plugged in, the pressing of the power button causes the PS_ON to be shorted and as such power the PSU up. It's a bit more dependable and depending on the PSU you buy you can be sure it's not gonna melt anything or fail etc.

Almighty, man talk about a fantastic explanation. Thank you so much. Considering I would never use the 20/24 ATX power plug, could you safely clip it off?

To save space I would potentially clip all the power cords except the for two 12v 4pin molex strings that I would need. Or would this run you the risk of having things melt?

I have noidea about the safety of cutting the wires, probably fine if you insulate off the ends. Personally i would just leave it all intact so that i can use it again should i want, that's ust me. Another good thing that you can plug onto those 12v molexs is water pumps

That would be nice if I ever considered a aeroponics setup. That probably wont be ANY time soon though.

Does anyknow know how to wire a laptop power brick to accomplish what I am trying to do?

Thanks!