Adding additional case fans?

ninjasurfer1

Hi,

I bought all of the parts for a HTPC, and am trying to put it together.

The Case has two inbuilt rear fans and an option for 3 additional fans,
BUT, I can only find one chassis fan connection on the Mobo.

Is there any way that I can hook up the case fans and the additional fans?(an adaptor, or using the inbuilt pwr_fan connection(not sure what this is??))

Cheers,

Components:

Corsair Powersupply 450W Modular
6xSATA, ATX/EPS, 1xPCI-E, 20/24pin 66

Silverstone SST-LC17B HTPC, Black
(Without PSU) €95

ASUS P5QL PRO, P43, Socket-775
DDR2, ATX, GbLAN, ICH10, PCI-Ex(2.0)x16 €76.50

Sapphire Radeon HD 4350 1GB DDR2
PCI-Express 2.0, 2xDVI-I, HDCP, Heatsink, Lite-Retail €41

Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200 2,5GHz,
Socket LGA775, 2MB, 800MHz, Boxed w/fan €58

Crucial DDR2 PC6400 4GB KIT CL6
Kit w/two matched DDR2 PC6400 2GB CL6 €52

Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA2 x 2 €145
32MB 7200RPM

Sony NEC Optiarc DVD±RW burner AD-5240S
DVDRW 24x, DL, SATA, Bulk, Black €20

Effluo

ninjasurfer1 wrote: »

Hi,

I bought all of the parts for a HTPC, and am trying to put it together.

The Case has two inbuilt rear fans and an option for 3 additional fans,
BUT, I can only find one chassis fan connection on the Mobo.

Is there any way that I can hook up the case fans and the additional fans?(an adaptor, or using the inbuilt pwr_fan connection(not sure what this is??))

Cheers,

Components:

Corsair Powersupply 450W Modular
6xSATA, ATX/EPS, 1xPCI-E, 20/24pin 66

Silverstone SST-LC17B HTPC, Black
(Without PSU) €95

ASUS P5QL PRO, P43, Socket-775
DDR2, ATX, GbLAN, ICH10, PCI-Ex(2.0)x16 €76.50

Sapphire Radeon HD 4350 1GB DDR2
PCI-Express 2.0, 2xDVI-I, HDCP, Heatsink, Lite-Retail €41

Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200 2,5GHz,
Socket LGA775, 2MB, 800MHz, Boxed w/fan €58

Crucial DDR2 PC6400 4GB KIT CL6
Kit w/two matched DDR2 PC6400 2GB CL6 €52

Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA2 x 2 €145
32MB 7200RPM

Sony NEC Optiarc DVD±RW burner AD-5240S
DVDRW 24x, DL, SATA, Bulk, Black €20

Most case fans have molex power connectors.

Not sure if you'll really need them though. In a htpc is good to have it as quiet as possible. Might be a good idea if you find that the cpu and graphics card fans are making noise cause of the heat in the case. Otherwise i'd leave em out

ninjasurfer1

Effluo wrote: »

Most case fans have molex power connectors.

Not sure if you'll really need them though. In a htpc is good to have it as quiet as possible. Might be a good idea if you find that the cpu and graphics card fans are making noise cause of the heat in the case. Otherwise i'd leave em out

Thanks for the response.

At the moment, there's a standard E5200 cpu fan and the CPU 120mm fan.
The graphics card doesn't have a fan.
I plan on having approx 4-5 hdd's onboard as well, so do you think these 2 fans would be enough on their own?
About the molex adaptors, can you power multiple fans from the same molex adaptor to reduce the number of connections being used? (I want the connections for SATA drives).

uberpixie

You can daisy chain a number of molex connectors together to power a number of fans. But you will not be able to control their speed from the motherboard....

One option you should consider is using a fan controler: this would allow you to control a number of 3 pin fans and you could manually set the speed of each fan.

Fan controlers typically control between 3-5 fans. You can them with or without fancy displays and in either 3.5" or 5.25" bays.

requiem1

ninjasurfer1 wrote: »

Thanks for the response.

At the moment, there's a standard E5200 cpu fan and the CPU 120mm fan.
The graphics card doesn't have a fan.
I plan on having approx 4-5 hdd's onboard as well, so do you think these 2 fans would be enough on their own?
About the molex adaptors, can you power multiple fans from the same molex adaptor to reduce the number of connections being used? (I want the connections for SATA drives).

Sounds alot like my htpc and its fine with two case fans on low. Sure I have the asus power control tool thing and my htpc never goes above medium performance so i wouldn't be too worried

Solitaire

Working off memory here but IIRC the two (?) fan mounts near the front are a waste of time in the LC17 unless you go all Dremel on its ass. They're supposed to act as air intakes and also cool the HDD stacks but there's just the one slight issue of being almost totally blocked off so there's negligible airflow possible

EDIT: Now I can't even find the reviews that went on and on about the problem :rolleyes: There were different revisions of the case from what I can see, some with metal blanking plates that were so well attached they had to be Dremeled out, others had the PCB for the case's front port connectors blocking the bottom half of the fans and most of the air intake. Others don't have these issues and the front fans were actually pretty handy.

One other thing is to check to see if there's room at the side for the third additional fan; some CPU coolers can block it.

Back to the original topic... you could use some kind of Molex adaptor or even (if desperate) go caveman and just splice both cables together if the case fans are too noisy at 100% speed. Not a thing to try with a 120mm+ fan (higher power draw) but it should be okay with a pair of standard 80mm fans. As for the other three... either get a trio of fans that are very quiet at full speed, have built-in speed setting seletors (like Antec's TriCool fans) or get a PCI-slot-based fan speed controller like this.

requiem1

solitare did you become a mod today? or are there two solitares? sorry to go off topic