PCA Forums

On all these fans and accessories every one is adding, everyone reffers to the connectors.

Question, would it work or hurt anything to just install a little jumper block to one power feed and wire all the fans and such to that using bare wires and screw connections?

Should be able to get one of those little power strips at most autoparts places cheap and wire directly to it and aviod buying a dozen molexes and Y cables I would think.

Also I am thinking all the 12v lines come from the same connection in the power supplie just threw different sets of wires. So I am guessing it makes little difference if all the fans run off one wire set.

I am right?

I am also thinking it would be a nice way to clean up the inside of the case to just run one line all the way around the inside and wire all the fans to it. Instead of the wire jungle, just one all the way from the power supplie to the last fan or light. That one line could be attached to the case with something like sticky backed velcro for easy access latter when adding more stuff.

Does that sound like a decent idea? Then only the RPM wire needs to be ran any distance if using it.
I am also geussing here the length of the wire makes no difference for fans and such.

I'm thinking about doing this in a mod soon myself.

Also, If all the wire sets come from the same connections inside the power supplie, would it make any difference if all the drives ran off one set of power wires also? Like run one set across the top of the case and down the drive rack then splice in the wires from the molex on the drives ? Thought about doing that but not sure it was a good idea! Don't want to fry a 60 gig! Would be nice though if it works okay, I am so tired of fighting the wire jumble jungle!
Got some nice red round IDE cables finnally so goodbye ribbon tangle!

canton_kid

I'd be careful with that one c-k.

You'll probably find that the reason for the various lines coming from the PSU are so that you can't overload the cable.

We're talking about the actual diameter of each cable strand and restricting it so that it can't carry too much current - if that were to happen it could melt the insulation and eventually the cores might short out - bada bing bada BANG!

It's a good idea but if it was me, I'd use each of the lines from the PSU (whether it's 2,3 or 4 depending on your PSU) for one set of connections - y'know have your CDROM and CDRW on one line, your hard drives on another for example.

I'd be very reluctant to throw everything onto one line.

Whatever you do good luck but just be careful, man!!

p.s. sorry for my late reply!!

Nothing wrong with it at all. One of my cases has all bare wire fans in it. So me being me went to radio shack bought a little black box about inch tall 1.2" wide and 3 inches long... then bought a 4 speaker push button thingy ma bobber...lol has 4 negs and 4 pos's... Took a 4 pin molex off of a burned out fan used a 16 gauge wire then wired all the pos's to the hot all the negs to the black All i gotta do is plug in one lead of the PSU to this box and it powers a total of 5 fans in that case. Fans don't draw enough amperage to worry about blowing out a PSU... Even if your using some high CFM ones that suck the juice 4 or 5 on a setup like this won't be enough to hurt the PSU any. If i can find it i'll take a pic of it later... Used the mill at work to hog out a nice clean hole to pop the speaker terminals through.

a lot of folks consolidate their fan power - this guy sells 'em , but you can get ideas from the pics on this site

If you open a Power Supply, you will find all the black wires are soldered to the same place on the pcb. Same goes for the yellow wires and red wires. What you want to do would be no problem.

Thanks for all the replies. Been away awhile, same as some of you probly, PCA lan party of course
Great time! Long drive. Nice camping.

Yep, since most of us seem to have the same opion as I first thought, all comes from the same place any way, I'll do it when I set up my new system. Not sure what P/s I'll be getting, but I have a nice case setup for 13 fans now! Pretty nice case, I like! Not sure I'll use that many fans in it though?

I'll probly run a set of wires to the back and another to the front then split those to various fans and maybe some pots to adjust the speeds. Maybe add a few toggles to turn them on and off with too.

Canton_kid