Seasonic fan replacement

teapot · Post by **teapot** » Thu Aug 11, 2005 3:52 pm

I have a new seasonic S12 500w. Its pretty quiet, but I am toying with the idea of putting in a quiet, less 'crunchy' fan. The ones I have in accidental abundance and I'm very pleased with in the rest of the case are the ultra-quiet akasa amber 120mm fans (rebranded YS-Tech I believe), they are specified:

Application PC Case fan
Fan dimension 120 x 120 x 25mm
Fan speed 1400 R.P.M.
Fan airflow 44.8 CFM
Fan air pressure 1.8mm H20
Fan life expectancy 80000/hrs
Bearing type Twin Ball Bearing
Connector 3-pin with RPM sensor wire
Voltage rating 12V
Noise level 18.0 dB(A)
Product code AK-183-L2B

Would these make a suitable replacement for the existing adda fan?

To change the fan I would either need to snip the old one off and solder the wires together or extract from the bundles the wires going out to the fan monitor connector and replace the 3-pin connected with the smaller style one found inside the psu. The former method would be easier, but perhaps not such a good job. The latter might be a bit of a pain, and not having the proper crimping tools or spare connector head may be difficult to do. Has anyone done this? Can you suggest the best way of doing it?

mattthemuppet · Post by **mattthemuppet** » Fri Aug 12, 2005 11:47 am

Not exactly the same, but I swapped out the fan in my FSP Green Power PSU with a Yate Loon D12 SL - you have to pull the plastic fan socket off the PSU PCB (with a pair of needle nose pliers), then as long as you line the right wires up you can just plug a 3-pin header onto the pins. If you want quieter I'd go for a sleeve bearing model, ball bearing fans are generally noisier. I bought a D12SM and a D12SL, but I didn't really need the SM in there, so I put the SL in instead and it's been fine since.

hope that helps!
matt

mb2 · Post by **mb2** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 5:39 pm

i've had the same experince as matt; every PSU i've ever owned has had a 2-pin connector, which can be used with a 3-pin fan once u take off the little bit of plastic- which isn't even glued on and can usually be removed with just a knife or flat-head screwdriver.

just look at which is the red wire and which is the black before u take out the old fan, and then orient the 3-pin connector so that the black and red wires are in the same positon.

Vulcan · Post by **Vulcan** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 4:02 pm

mattthemuppet wrote:I'd go for a sleeve bearing model, ball bearing fans are generally noisier. I bought a D12SM and a D12SL, but I didn't really need the SM in there, so I put the SL in instead and it's been fine since.

I don't think sleeve bearing fans are supposed to be run horizontly, or atleast thats what I have been told. Anyone know for sure?

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 4:12 pm

Hello,

I can't think that running a sleeve bearing fan horizontally is a problem -- many fans seem to float the fan on the magnets; a kinda' mag-lev thing seems to be goin' on! A well designed sleeve bearing can be a wonderful thing.

BTW, just about every internal combustion engine in existence uses sleeve bearings! Granted, this is with an active flow of oil, but the idea is the same; besides they have significantly more stresses and much higher heat, too.

cotdt · Post by **cotdt** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 4:22 pm

well internal combustion engine or not, the Seasonic Super Tornado fan gets noisier and noiser as the years go by, so I'm assuming that all horizontal sleeve-bearing 120mm fans have that same problem. Ball-bearing seems louder than sleeve-bearing, so that isn't an option either. I think the best option would be to mod the PSU into a fanless one, since you're losing your warranty anyway by opening up the PSU. The Seasonic is very efficient and can be modded into a passive solution in a way similar to the Phantom 350.

The Phantom 350 is the best PSU ever!!!!!!!

teapot · Post by **teapot** » Sun Aug 21, 2005 1:45 am

thanks for replies, had forgotten about this post..

the pin on the PCB in the power supply is a 3 pin one, but it is smaller than motherboard headers and has a shroud. I am going to try and find out the volume of air that the adda fan pushes, and if that is about the same as the akasa replacement I will assume it will still function okay, is this a reasonable assumption?

My only worry is how the fan controller will function with an electrically different fan, will it be calibrated for the adda fan specifically, or will it just ramp up the voltage until the temperature stabilises. I expect it works according to a table of internal temperatures against fan voltages and as the temperature rises it supplies these voltages. Is this likely to be okay with another fan?

The akasa fans are quiet and the noise they do produce is reasonably pleasant so I would be happy to run these instead of a sleeve bearing fan