Where do I wire my Case fan to?

[kcooldude]

So I have two case fans, and I do not know where their power wires are supposed to go to. My motherboard has numerous fan slots labeled, chassis fan, pwr fan, cpu fan, My mother board is an asrock fatal1ty h97 performance, the manual for this can be found here: http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Fatal1ty%20H97%20Performance/?cat=Manual

In the manual it says that the chassis fan should be used for the gpu. Clearly the cpu fan is supposed to be used for the cpu, so I am thinking that the best place would be the pwr fan. I just wanted to make sure whether this is correct.

 

[martinch]

What connector do the fans have? Generally they'll have either a small 3-pin fan connector, or a molex connector (there's also a 4-pin fan connector for PWM). You can either get a 3/4-pin fan-to-molex connector, and connect them to the PSU (or just directly connect them to the PSU if they have a molex connector), or if they're 3/4-pin fan connectors, you can plug them into the relevant fan header on the motherboard. N.B. If you don't connect them to the motherboard, you'll lose the ability to control their speed via software.

 

[kcooldude]

the fan connectors are small 3-hole (female) connectors. So, Yea from what you said I think the best would be to just connect them to the pwr part of the motherboard, would you agree?

 

[Paperdoc]

Since you have fans with 3-pin connectors on them, they MUST be plugged into mobo fan ports with 3 pins. (A 3-pin fan on a 4-pin port will always run at full speed only.) Your mobo HAS two 3-pin CHA_FAN ports - the ones numbered 2 and 3 - so use them.

Use the CPU_FAN port for your CPU cooling system. NOTE that the mobo has two such ports - one with 3 pins, one with 4. Use the one that matches the connector on your CPU cooler.

Do NOT use the PWR_FAN port. That port is designed for use with certain PSU units that have a set of 3 wires coming out that ends in a typical 3-pin fan connector. Its purpose is ONLY to let the fan inside the PSU send its speed signal to the mobo for measurement and display. It does NOT control this fan or provide power to it. However, many mobos also connect the Ground and +12 VDC supplies to Pins 1 and 2 of this port so that any fan can be connected to it and run. The problem is that there is NO control of the power to this port, so any case fan connected here always runs full speed.

 

[kcooldude]

Thank you for your answer, made it really clear for me. Do most new PSU units have these pwr fan connectors? I do not think mine does but I'm not 100% sure, I have an TS XFX 650W gold standard

 

[Paperdoc]

I'm not familiar enough with all PSU's to answer that. I do know that in the past, probably less than half PSU's had these extra wires on them.

Thanks for Best Solution.