Separate PSU for additional fans?

[paulcurtis]

Im building an enclosure to place some PCs inside, i want fans pushing and pulling air out of the enclosure as a whole - the fans won't be connected to the PCs in the enclosure.

What is the best/easiest way to control and power external fans? What kind of PSU should i be looking at? A PC unit or something more basic. What about a fan controller?

Any advice would be most appreciated!

cheers
paul

 

[ZOldDude]

Im building an enclosure to place some PCs inside, i want fans pushing and pulling air out of the enclosure as a whole - the fans won't be connected to the PCs in the enclosure.

What is the best/easiest way to control and power external fans? What kind of PSU should i be looking at? A PC unit or something more basic. What about a fan controller?

Any advice would be most appreciated!

cheers
paul

External fans?
The best way to controls external fans?

Ahhhh...with the ON/OFF switch?!?

 

[paulcurtis]

Ahhhh...with the ON/OFF switch?!?

Control as in speed up, slow down depending on temperature... like using one of the fan controllers that fit in a 5.25 bay with a sensor, but placed outside a pc case.

 

[ZOldDude]

Ahhhh...with the ON/OFF switch?!?

Control as in speed up, slow down depending on temperature... like using one of the fan controllers that fit in a 5.25 bay with a sensor, but placed outside a pc case.

but placed outside a pc case.

Ahhhh...with the ON/OFF switch?!?

 

[panicatak]

For a PSU you could use an old AT power supply...

 

[robmurphy]

Old AT supplies will may not be easy to find. Another problem is that the PSU will not stay powered up without a certain amount of load. Fans alone may not be enough. Most racks I've seen with fans are AC powered (at least the fan shelf is) and just work or do not work.

A simpler soloution may be some normal PC case fans, and a simple 12v DC supply. You should be able to find one of these quite easily. You may have a little wiring to do, but if your building the box your self you will be doing this anyway.

You may be able to find a seperate temperature controller for the fans, but if not just run them off the DC supply.

A simpler, but more expensive solution, would be to use AC mains fans for the case. These can be run off the supply used to power the PCs.

Just my 2p worth.

Robert Murphy

 

[Grimmy]

Here's an example, something you could find locally:

Radio Shack

Not exactly sure what your trying to do externally though.

 

[qwertycopter]

Im building an enclosure to place some PCs inside, i want fans pushing and pulling air out of the enclosure as a whole

I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish. You're putting "some" PCs into a box you built. Are these individual PCs (case and all), or just the internal parts for "some" PCs mounted in a big box? "Some" means atleast three?

I think you're going to need a LOT of case fans to cool a big box like that. Wouldn't you be better off finding some smaller house fans to blow air through? Most fans already come with low/med/high settings.

One thing you could do is use some tubing (like the kind for a dryer) to route exhaust heat to vents in the main enclosure (directly from each computer's exhaust fan).

 

[Guest]

Ok, now I have got over my first 'what is this guy trying to do, cool his PC or Fly it?' I can start to have more reasonable thoughts.

First (and only) thought is that an old 5 1/4 external CD/SCSI enclosure would happily take a 5 1/4 fan controller and come with enough 12V juice from its power brick to run any number of fans. You can get them off ebay from around a tenner.

Stuart

 

[paulcurtis]

Im making a hidden storage under a big angular desk which will have room for 3 workstations in a line + RAID eSATA storage (think of a wide box (3m x 24cm deep) at the back of the desk against a wall). All workstations are BTX meaning that air flow is from the front and expelled out the back. Im doing it for acoustic and aesthetic reasons. The extra (external to the workstation) fans are to help expel hot air out from the box as a whole and it's placed so that there is a cool air vent to the outside used to draw cool air in.

The DC power thing seems best, im no expert in electronics but enjoy putting things together and learning - it doesn't sound too difficult.
A PC supply seems overkill by comparison. I would like some way to reduce the speed of the fans (depending on noise factors). Some experimenting will need to be done.

I hope this makes sense and i don't come across *too* crazy

cheers and thanks
paul