Economizing Electrical ATX Fan Connections

[sgs]

ATX Case includes 1 80 mm top blow-hole LED fan (whatever that is). Planning to
add 4 more Panaflo L1A 80 mm fans (2 front, 2 rear) and manually control them
via Vantec Nexus NXP-205 Variable Fan Controller, which only accepts 4 fans.
Since I want to save power supply connectors, I thought I'd connect the original
case fan (only) to motherboard rather than power supply. The idea is not to
regulate the original case fan, but rather to simply give it power.

My motherboard will be an Asus P4C800-E Deluxe, which advertises Chassis FAN
connectors (whatever that means). If powering the original fan through the mobo
won't work then I'll either have to daisy chain 2 of the 5 fans into 1 of the
NXP-205's 4 inputs, or use an additional power supply connector.

Questions:

1. Can case fan be routinely connected to mobo instead of power supply, just to
provide it power?

2. Power Supply will be Antec 550 TruePower, which specifically warns against
(daisy chain ?) connecting more than 3 fans to its fan connector. Is it
routine to connect the NXP-205 (which will be regulating 4 fans) to the
Antec 550 fan connector?

3. Given that I'm adding 4 extra fans, should I also keep the original top
blow-hole LED fan connected? What function will it serve?

 

[Crashman]

LED fans have LED's (little lights that make them glow). Motherboard fan headers are small and use 3 pins, 12v, ground, and tachometer (RPM sensor). Fans that connect to the power supply have the standard 4 pin drive connections and can usually be daisy chained. Fans don't draw a lot of power, so you can daisy chain as many as will fit in your case!

Your fan controller will use 3-pin headers like the motherboard also provides. When you order your fans, you will have a choice of 4-pin or 3-pin headers, you'll have to choose 3-pin. And since your fan controller provides power to all 4 fans, you don't daisy chain anything. Your fan controller will use 1 four pin header for input and provide 4 3-pin headers as outputs.

Therefore everything else you're asking has no bearing on what you realy need to know. What you really need to do is buy your panaflow fans with 3-pin connections, and connect all 4 of them to your fan controller.

You might need 3-pin extension cables to reach your fan controller, I don't know where to buy them.

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[Crashman]

I just read that your fan controller comes with 3 to 4 pin adapters that would allow you to use 4-pin fans, but using them would only make the case appear messy, you should skip using the adapters and use 3-pin fans instead.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>