Confused with Eclipse p400 case Built in fans connection

twiddlewee

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Mar 2, 2017
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So I'm building my first PC and have just about everything connected except the fans to the motherboard. The two fans built into the case came connected to one wire via these connectors with two pins. There are three of these 2 pinned connection points so that leaves one unplugged and the only point I can think of to plug into my motherboard but it doesn't look like it would fit in the first place. Apologies if this makes little sense, here is a picture of what I'm talking about.
https://imgur.com/a/kmQTk
 
Solution
As of now, all your fans are connected to the fan/led controller of your P400 (based on the photo). What you do is find the power cable of that controller - it should be a SATA power cable labelled "12v input". Plug that to the PSU's SATA power. There will be no cables coming from that controller connected to your motherboard -- all will be powered directly by your PSU.
Kindly edit your post to show the picture (you may have forgotten to put the link in).

What is your motherboard?

From your description, the fans would work as DC fans using that 2-pin Y-splitter. The other end, if it has 3 "bits" (?) can be plugged into your motherboard's (i am assuming) 4-pin fan header (if there is no 3-pin fan header there). Just make sure you align the groove of the splitter to that small vertical tab of the 4-pin fan header covering pins 1, 2, and 3. You leave the 4th pin unplugged.

Hope I got what you're trying to say (even without seeing the picture yet).
 
Basically, all fans would work with only 2 pins. These 2 pins are the GND (Pin #1) and the +12VDC (Pin #2), very similar to the first two pins of a 4-pin Molex cable from your PSU. Supplying +12VDC power to this fan will just run it at full speed. Connecting a 2-pin fan to a 3-pin or 4-pin motherboard header might require some cable adapter. The motherboard header may be able to control the fan speed by changing the supplied voltage but it cannot monitor how fast or slow it is due to just having the 2 pins.

If the fan has 3 pins (such as yours based on your picture), then works similar to the 2-pin fan with just the addition of a 3rd pin that monitors how fast or slow it is. These 3 pins would then be the GND (Pin #1), +12VDC (Pin #2), and SENSE (Pin #3). The 3rd pin only acts to "report" the speed of the fan's rpm, a tachometer. This way, if you plug the 3-pin fan to a 3-pin motherboard header, the motherboard will be able to detect/display the speed of the fan and you can also control its speed by changing the supplied DC voltage. Hence, if you see a 3-pin header on a motherboard, it is usually referred to as a DC fan header.

In the case of your motherboard (Gigabyte B250M-DS3H), it has 2x 4-pin headers, namely the CPU_FAN and the SYS_FAN. As per your manual, both of these fan headers are PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) headers, due to the addition of the PWM pin (Pin #4). Note that not all 4-pin fan headers in a certain motherboard are PWM headers (some are 4-pin headers with the 4th pin having no electrical connection at all).

PWM fans (with 4 pins) can take advantage of these 4-pin PWM headers. The 4 pins are the GND (Pin #1), +12VDC (Pin #2), SENSE (Pin #3) and the PWM (Pin #4). The system is similar to the 3-pin headers but the 2nd Pin supplies a constant +12VDC and does not change. The fan motor itself has a PWM chip which uses that 4th pin to control the current being drawn by the fan, thus, changing its speed without lowering the +12VDC supplied.

3-pin fans can be installed directly to 4-pin motherboard headers, leaving Pin #4 (PWM), unplugged. The effect will be similar to plugging the 3-pin fan on a 3-pin header but the +12V supply in Pin #2 is non-variable. This means your 3-pin fan will always run at 100% and there is no way to control the fan speed.

In the same manner, 4-pin PWM fans can be installed directly to 3-pin motherboard headers too. But, the difference is, you can change the fan speed by adjusting the voltage in Pin #2. But the 4-pin PWM fan will not work as a true PWM system (where voltage is constant).

Now as for your splitter cable (I never knew that splitter was included in the Phanteks P400), it seems to be a 3-way 2-pin fan splitter cable (based on the picture, but, I cannot see the other end of that splitter in your photo). It can be plugged in directly to the PSU via a 2-pin-to-4-pin-Molex adapter, to which the system would work as I have described in the first paragraph above). If the other end of the 3-way fan splitter (which I can't see in the photo) is a 3-pin, then, you can plug it directly to your motherboard's SYS_FAN, but, it will only function similarly as if plugged in to a PSU (since your SYS_FAN is a PWM header supplying constant +12VDC).
 
As of now, all your fans are connected to the fan/led controller of your P400 (based on the photo). What you do is find the power cable of that controller - it should be a SATA power cable labelled "12v input". Plug that to the PSU's SATA power. There will be no cables coming from that controller connected to your motherboard -- all will be powered directly by your PSU.
 
Solution