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250mm computer desktop fan

I bought a case for my self-assembled computer with a 250mm side fan. It looked huge and had a high cfm rating, as well as low advertised noise.

Of course, most of that was bull.

1) The fan had an adjustable speed resistor, but it failed very fast (rotating to intermediate positions would instead turn off the fan). I did not investigate whether it was just the slider not making enough contact or resistor coating actually worn out, I just shorted it across with a solder connection to force it always to the maximum speed.

2) The LED lights on the fan did not make any sense (I usually prefer computers to be both silent and without any bright lights when they are running), so I unsoldered each wire to the LEDs to turn them off.

3) Now that it was always at maximum speed, it was always bothering me by being too loud. Too much airflow inside your computer case is of little benefit: it just introduces much more dust and noise. So instead of supplying 12V to the fan, I changed it to 7V. To do that, disconnect the black (negative) wire to the fan from the molex pass-thru, and solder it onto the 5V positive wire. The difference between 12V and 5V is 7V. Right now it is producing much less noise. If you can go by with even less airflow, you can remove the red (positive) wire to the fan, solder it onto the 5V wire, and attach the black (negative) wire to the fan to one of the black (ground) wires on the molex pass-thru.

 

Overall rating for the fan:

Pros:

• Somewhat-useful grille "filter" on the fan.
• Constantly adjustable fan speed, while it worked
• Huge size and airflow

 

Cons:

• Noisy at maximum setting
• Resistor failed after about 1 month use
• Useless and bright LEDs
• Fan often starts to vibrate against the case

 

However, if you want lots of unrestricted airflow with as little noise as possible, this fan running at less than maximum speed is still a very good buy.

 

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