Are DIY molex 5v adapters safe?

[Heathclor]

Hello, I have a fan that runs directly off of my psu through a 4 pin molex to 3 pin fan adapter. The fan ran very loudly so i modified the adapter to input 5v instead of 12v. Is this safe, will their be any complications from doing this? The drop in voltage was achieved by modifying the molex fitting to be insert able upside down ( only molex 2 pins are utilized by the adapter. One positive and one ground).

 

[cdabc123]

you are fine.. on my old pc i striped MANY connectors to get a voltage where it needs to be

 

[USAFRet]

Hello, I have a fan that runs directly off of my psu through a 4 pin molex to 3 pin fan adapter. The fan ran very loudly so i modified the adapter to input 5v instead of 12v. Is this safe, will their be any complications from doing this? The drop in voltage was achieved by modifying the molex fitting to be insert able upside down ( only molex 2 pins are utilized by the adapter. One positive and one ground).

Its safe if you know what you're doing.
If you don't, you risk letting the magic smoke out of something.

 

[Paperdoc]

The other risk for maybe future is this. With such a low voltage supplied, the fan will have a hard time starting up from the not-running state. Right now it is NOT having a problem. But as the fan bearings wear, it may get to the point where it fails to start. With the "normal" full 12 VDC supply this would ultimately happen, anyway, but it might take much longer and probably you'd be hearing fan bearing noises before it failed completely. But in your case the noises may not be apparent. So get into the habit of checking that the fan is still working every few months.

 

[Heathclor]

The other risk for maybe future is this. With such a low voltage supplied, the fan will have a hard time starting up from the not-running state. Right now it is NOT having a problem. But as the fan bearings wear, it may get to the point where it fails to start. With the "normal" full 12 VDC supply this would ultimately happen, anyway, but it might take much longer and probably you'd be hearing fan bearing noises before it failed completely. But in your case the noises may not be apparent. So get into the habit of checking that the fan is still working every few months.

Thanks for the warning.