Assembly Questions- fan and SATA connectors

[Mehring1917]

Hi, got to assembling parts for my first build and I need some advice please.

1. My PSU SATA cables have three connectors each. Can/should I attach more than one SSD to these or are the multiple connectors there just for convenience?

2. Instructions state bending SATA cables 90 degrees can result in data loss. Given the length of the cables (long), how do you NOT bend the them 90 degrees or more?

3. After installing a Thermaltake 3 water cooler, I see that its part H, a cable that joins two fans to one power output, could be damaged. One connector has four pins, the other, which serves an identical fan and for the same purpose, has only three in a 2-gap-1 configuration. Is this a problem?

4. I gather it's best to connect fans direct to PSU through a molex adapter but the only one supplied with my EVGA 650 G2 converts molex to a fan size female four pin, not much good for taking three pin females. System/cpu fans all have three pin female sockets but all the mobo slots have four male pins. What to do?

5. On a bottom level PSU mount, bearing in mind the PC will stand on a hard surface with a bit of room to breath underneath, is it better to mount the unit fan up or down?

Any advice really appreciated, I'm a bit stuck.

 

[USAFRet]

1. It's just power. Makes no difference
2. They're talking about a sharp 90 degree bend.

5. PSU fan to the outside (bottom)

 

[smorizio]

Hi, got to assembling parts for my first build and I need some advice please.

1. My PSU SATA cables have three connectors each. Can/should I attach more than one SSD to these or are the multiple connectors there just for convenience?
there there on each cable so that you can reach more then one drive per cable. with how thin the sata cables connectors are you dont want to stress them.

2. Instructions state bending SATA cables 90 degrees can result in data loss. Given the length of the cables (long), how do you NOT bend the them 90 degrees or more?

3. After installing a Thermaltake 3 water cooler, I see that its part H, a cable that joins two fans to one power output, could be damaged. One connector has four pins, the other, which serves an identical fan and for the same purpose, has only three in a 2-gap-1 configuration. Is this a problem
on computer fans there are two types 4 pin pmw fans that have two cables for power and two cables wires for speed sensor. these fans use small signals timing to adjust speed. the three pin fans are two for power and one for speed. these fans are controlled by the amount of voltage sent down the power wires. most mb that have fan plugs for both three and four pin fan control. with cpu coolers you need the 4 pin on cpu header to let the mb know there a cooler. the mb then control the pump/fans by temp of the cpu. the other 3 pin would be used for pump power and most times goes on cpu option port.

4. I gather it's best to connect fans direct to PSU through a molex adapter but the only one supplied with my EVGA 650 G2 converts molex to a fan size female four pin, not much good for taking three pin females. System/cpu fans all have three pin female sockets but all the mobo slots have four male pins. What to do?
you can use them without any issues all fan ports are wired the same you just have to make sure you connect your fans to pin one.
http://www.allpinouts.org/index.php/Motherboard_%28CPU%29_4_Pin_Fan

5. On a bottom level PSU mount, bearing in mind the PC will stand on a hard surface with a bit of room to breath underneath, is it better to mount the unit fan up or down?
at some point pick up a small pc stand with wheels..lets the case have good airflow and lets you move the tower for cleaning and moving.

Any advice really appreciated, I'm a bit stuck.

 

[norseman4]

1 - With the PSU SATA power cables, you can connect ay combination of drives to the cable. Only 1, all of them, or any combination in between.

2 - These are hard bends that's being talked about. You will see the data cables, as they are packaged at a pretty tight radius, that's ok.

3 - This is fine, the 4th pin is for PWM or pulse width modulation that controls the fan speed. The 3rd pin your this case isn't required in this configuration.

4 - Fans of 140mm and below can be connected to the fan headers on the motherboard. The formation of the connectors will allow 3-pin connectors to connect to 4 pin and vice versa.

5 - PSU's suck air in through it's fan and out through the back. In most cases, erm, instances having a down mounted PSU is ideal so cooler air is always going through the PSU.

 

[Paperdoc]

1. The cables are that way so you can use them all if you need it, no problem. The wires CAN supply that much power to standard SATA devices. It's better than running a complete separate bunch of wires for each connector.
2.USAFRet is right.
3. That missing pin is not damaged, it's by design. Pin #3 is the one that takes a speed pulse signal generated in a fan motor back to the mobo for counting to measure and display fan speed. When two fans are powered from one port, you should send back to the mobo only ONE fan's speed signal. Otherwise the counting circuits get very confused and generate wrong results.
4. Connecting fans direct to the PSU via Molex and adapter gets you fans that always run at full speed and cannot be monitored by the mobo at all. I think it is much better to connect to mobo ports where they can be monitored and controlled according to heat generated by varying work load. It is especially important to connect the CPU cooling system to the CPU_FAN mobo header, because the mobo's system exercises very careful control and monitoring of this fan to ensure the CPU cannot be damaged by overheating.

Fan connectors are built so that you CAN connect a 3-pin female fan connector to a 4-pin power supply connector, and the other way around. The results depend on which way. In the particular case of drawing power from a PSU's 4-pin Molex output, it does not matter - all fans powered this way can only run at full speed unless you add other items to reduce the voltage they receive. If you connect a 3-pin fan to a 4-pin mobo fan port, it also will only run full speed because the port uses PWM Mode to control fan speed, and 3-pin fans cannot use that system. (One exception below.) If you connect a 4-pin fan to a 3-pin mobo port, it will run properly under control by the mobo, but it will not have a couple of subtle features that 4-pin designs have.

Exception: SOME mobos allow you to change the control mode used by a 4-pin CHA_FAN port. Normally it is PWM Mode. But some allow you to change that to Voltage Control Mode. IF yours can do that, then such a port CAN control the speed of a 3-pin fan attached to it. (This feature is common on mobo CPU_FAN ports, but not so common on CHA_FAN ports.)

Now, your problem, OP, is that you appear to have only 4-pin fan ports on your mobo but 3-pin fans to plug in. Unless your mobo has the exceptional feature of allowing port mode to be changed, you have three options:
(a) If you plug those 3-pin fans into 4-pin ports, they all will run full speed all the time. You would get the same result by connecting them all via an adapter and some splitters to one 4-pin Molex output from the PSU. Such an output can power many fans - it has much more power available than a mobo fan port. The only thing you'd "lose" that way is display of fan speeds, which you cannot change anyway. IF you do this and find you want the fans to run slower, you can buy small "low-noise adapters" that connect into each fan's connectors and simply reduce the voltage to the fan.
(b) buy replacement 4-pin fans instead and use them.
(c) Get a Phanteks PWM Hub like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811984004&cm_re=phanteks_hub-_-11-984-004-_-Product

It is designed to allow you to use ONE mobo 4-pin fan port to power and control many fans. The way a fan hub does this is to draw all power for its fans NOT from the mobo port but from a SATA power output connector direct from the PSU. Its one cable connection to the mobo port does two things: it gets the 4-pin port's PWM control signal to the hub, and it feeds the speed signal from ONE of its fans back to the mobo for monitoring. ALL the fans connected to the hub are controlled by the SAME mobo port's signal, so you would connect all your case ventilation fans to a hub that is connected to a mobo 4-pin CHA_FAN port. Most such 4-pin (PWM mode) hubs simply share the PWM signal among their fans so they are all under control, but this means they all must be of the 4-pin design. THIS hub does it differently - it uses the PWM signal internally to create many output ports under Voltage Control suitable for 3-pin fans. So this is one way you could use your several 3-pin fans under the control of one 4-pin mobo CHA_FAN port.

5. I agreed with USAFRet. The fan is an intake - it draws air into the PSU for cooling, and the hot air exits through the back vent holes. It is better to draw in outside cooler air, not warm air from inside the case.

 

[Mehring1917]

Thanks for your time and trouble, all of you, that's a massive help and enabled me to power up first time.... no explosions, nothing visibly damaged, no investment lost, yet. A relief about the not damaged fan connector, that could have been a real butt ache waiting for a replacement.

Fans all turned and I'll make do with the stock stuff until I can afford to upgrade to 4 pins.

Next step was to install the graphics card which has 2 x 6 pin ports. Following from the logic of your answers above, power is just power and I could power them both off the same cable? Erring on the side of caution I've used two for the moment, couldn't figure why one card would need two ports if one cable was enough. Please advise if I can use just one, it's getting a bit cluttered in there.

 

[Norton72]

1. The cables are that way so you can use them all if you need it, no problem. The wires CAN supply that much power to standard SATA devices. It's better than running a complete separate bunch of wires for each connector.
2.USAFRet is right.
3. That missing pin is not damaged, it's by design. Pin #3 is the one that takes a speed pulse signal generated in a fan motor back to the mobo for counting to measure and display fan speed. When two fans are powered from one port, you should send back to the mobo only ONE fan's speed signal. Otherwise the counting circuits get very confused and generate wrong results.
4. Connecting fans direct to the PSU via Molex and adapter gets you fans that always run at full speed and cannot be monitored by the mobo at all. I think it is much better to connect to mobo ports where they can be monitored and controlled according to heat generated by varying work load. It is especially important to connect the CPU cooling system to the CPU_FAN mobo header, because the mobo's system exercises very careful control and monitoring of this fan to ensure the CPU cannot be damaged by overheating.

Fan connectors are built so that you CAN connect a 3-pin female fan connector to a 4-pin power supply connector, and the other way around. The results depend on which way. In the particular case of drawing power from a PSU's 4-pin Molex output, it does not matter - all fans powered this way can only run at full speed unless you add other items to reduce the voltage they receive. If you connect a 3-pin fan to a 4-pin mobo fan port, it also will only run full speed because the port uses PWM Mode to control fan speed, and 3-pin fans cannot use that system. (One exception below.) If you connect a 4-pin fan to a 3-pin mobo port, it will run properly under control by the mobo, but it will not have a couple of subtle features that 4-pin designs have.

Exception: SOME mobos allow you to change the control mode used by a 4-pin CHA_FAN port. Normally it is PWM Mode. But some allow you to change that to Voltage Control Mode. IF yours can do that, then such a port CAN control the speed of a 3-pin fan attached to it. (This feature is common on mobo CPU_FAN ports, but not so common on CHA_FAN ports.)

Now, your problem, OP, is that you appear to have only 4-pin fan ports on your mobo but 3-pin fans to plug in. Unless your mobo has the exceptional feature of allowing port mode to be changed, you have three options:
(a) If you plug those 3-pin fans into 4-pin ports, they all will run full speed all the time. You would get the same result by connecting them all via an adapter and some splitters to one 4-pin Molex output from the PSU. Such an output can power many fans - it has much more power available than a mobo fan port. The only thing you'd "lose" that way is display of fan speeds, which you cannot change anyway. IF you do this and find you want the fans to run slower, you can buy small "low-noise adapters" that connect into each fan's connectors and simply reduce the voltage to the fan.
(b) buy replacement 4-pin fans instead and use them.
(c) Get a Phanteks PWM Hub like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811984004&cm_re=phanteks_hub-_-11-984-004-_-Product

It is designed to allow you to use ONE mobo 4-pin fan port to power and control many fans. The way a fan hub does this is to draw all power for its fans NOT from the mobo port but from a SATA power output connector direct from the PSU. Its one cable connection to the mobo port does two things: it gets the 4-pin port's PWM control signal to the hub, and it feeds the speed signal from ONE of its fans back to the mobo for monitoring. ALL the fans connected to the hub are controlled by the SAME mobo port's signal, so you would connect all your case ventilation fans to a hub that is connected to a mobo 4-pin CHA_FAN port. Most such 4-pin (PWM mode) hubs simply share the PWM signal among their fans so they are all under control, but this means they all must be of the 4-pin design. THIS hub does it differently - it uses the PWM signal internally to create many output ports under Voltage Control suitable for 3-pin fans. So this is one way you could use your several 3-pin fans under the control of one 4-pin mobo CHA_FAN port.

5. I agreed with USAFRet. The fan is an intake - it draws air into the PSU for cooling, and the hot air exits through the back vent holes. It is better to draw in outside cooler air, not warm air from inside the case.

This is a great post. I need this information. I've been having trouble controlling fan speed in my new build. In fact, I seem to have no control at all, They just seem to run at full speed all the time.

OP, sorry to hijack your thread. Good luck with your build.

 

[norseman4]

Next step was to install the graphics card which has 2 x 6 pin ports. Following from the logic of your answers above, power is just power and I could power them both off the same cable? Erring on the side of caution I've used two for the moment, couldn't figure why one card would need two ports if one cable was enough. Please advise if I can use just one, it's getting a bit cluttered in there.

Yup, if a cable has both connectors you can use that one cable. (An issue can come up when the card draws more power than the specified maximum for a PCIe power socket though, which hasn't happened in a while - 290x2 - but when it does using a single cable for each socket is the only safe way to go.)

AFAIK there was only 1 card like that, so a single cable using both connectors will be fine.

 

[smorizio]

on gpu and there power plugs it how the pci power standard was written. mb pci slots have a set max voltage and so does the 6 and 8 pin power connectors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#Power