EMERGENCY!

[Eberhard Roloff]

Tycho Andersen wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Nov 2008, Steven Vollom wrote:
> 
>> In the motherboard User Guide, it shows a place next to the PCI slot for
>> a fan, however on the board those pins are identified as CD.
> 
> Looks to me like there's both. The fan pins should be just above the CD
> pins.
> 
>> two other places where there are pins for fans, they are identified as
>> 'pwr_fan and cha_fan They are flush with eachother and each has only 3
>> pins. The Heat Sink connector has places for 4 pins.
> 
> Those are standard 12V fan pins. It really shouldnt (at least, in older
> models and cheap motherboards, I don't know about the newfangled fancy
> ASUS ones ;-) matter which place you plug which fan into. If your
> heatsink fan has four pins, clearly this isn't the place.

Aktually this is not fully correct. While any fan will most probably 
work at any plug, nowadays, most people are looking for silent 
computing. And pwr- and case/chassis- fanconnectors usually are NOT 
fancontrolled, i.e. the fans connected there are constantly running at 
their highest speeds.

This is most probably nothing that you want for your CPU fan.

On a side note, if you connect a 3pin fan to a 4pin motherboard fan 
connector, the same applies. This will operate the fan without fan control.


> 2. Since the chipset fan requires a four pin connector and the one for
> the CPU is already used up (I assume), if you're really worried about
> it, some computer shops sell adapters for fans. For example, in my case,
> there's not enough 3 pin connectors for case fans, so I have a splitter
> which provides another 3 pin connecter. It connects to the big 4 pin
> power connector for my optical drive. This way, you can make sure the
> chipset fan is on as well.
This will be very useful to test, whether your cpu fan is actually 
working, since this will operate your fan directly from the PSU, 
completely surpassing the motherboard.


Again, when you are looking for low noise, I would not recommend to use 
this approach for any length of time or you will need an independantly 
operating fan control, in between.

Otoh, if you are connecting more fans, than having fan connectors on the 
motherboard, you will most likely not need any fan control at all. ;-))

Kind regards
Eberhard