Yate Loon D12SM-12 won't spin with Zalman ZM-MFC1

Megaweapon · Post by **Megaweapon** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 6:56 am

I feel like I'm missing something fundamental, but I'm stumped as to what it could be. Here's how I set it up:

YL 120mm fan from PCtek as seen on this thread (male 4-pin molex)

4-pin (female) to 3-pin (female) molex adapter

3-pin molex extension cable that came with the Zalman (blue ended - not one with a voltage monitor pass-through)

"FAN1" on the ZM-MFC1

I plug the fan in as shown above, turn all of the knobs on the Zalman to maximum and hit power. The fan does nothing. I've got power running to the Zalman (flipping the toggle switches lights the LEDs appropriately) but the lights above the knobs remain dead and no amount of twisting changes that.

Now I realize that the Zalman only produces 10.55V on the knobs (not the 12V written on the fan) but these fans have gotten good reviews around here so I figured it wouldn't be an issue. Am I wrong? What do I need to do?

ultraboy · Post by **ultraboy** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 7:27 am

I would first recheck all the connection points, if everything is ok and still doesn't work then try connecting the fan direct to PSU to see whether fan is ok or not. Then try other known working fan on that Fan1 channel.

It must be one of these three that cause the problem.

Megaweapon · Post by **Megaweapon** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 10:31 am

Upon closer inspection I noticed that the "4-pin (female) to 3-pin (female) molex adapter" was actually 3-pin to 4-pin.

So...anybody know of a site that sells a proper adapter?

ilh · Post by **ilh** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 10:41 am

Just buy some 3-pin female plugs and pins, strip the wire, and make the fan have a 3-pin (only two used) connector. Your wiring will be much cleaner.

I think I bought a 5-pack of these plug/pin kits from www.siliconacoustics.com for $3. I modded a PCTek D12SM-12 this way.

I also used these for my VF700 and 7000B fans. I have them connected to fanmates which are connected to molexes, but I wanted to pull off the RPM signal to attach to the motherboard.

yeha · Post by **yeha** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 10:44 am

i would make one myself - get a fan you don't care about and cut the wire off. strip about half an inch of plastic from the end of the wires (making one wire an inch shorter than the other is a good idea too), do the same with the wires coming from the yate loon, twist the bare wires together (matching 12v/ground up) and voila, your fan will work from any normal 3-pin male header. make sure to wrap the bare wire sections in non-conductive tape.