DELL PC Fan question
Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 10:13 am
I'm re-purposing a dell fan (4.75 inches in diameter about 1.5 inches thick) for an exhaust fan in a small painting booth I'm constructing. The fan has 4 wires wired to it, red, black, white, blue.
Red and black are of course + and - as I have successfully hooked it up to a power supply. My problems is its noise... It's VERY loud and moves far too much air. The other problem is the size can't be more perfect unless I had someone custom built me one.
My standard response would be to hook up a rheostat to the fan, but then I got to thinking... There is no way dell would let the fan run at it's full speed all the time, they would be able to hear it from their corporate hq. So this leads me to the other two wires, blue and white.
I've done quite a bit of searching on this, and found the datasheet for the fan in question (Delta AFC1212DE), but it only tells me about the running specs, not the wiring specs. My question should be obvious by now... What are the other wires used for, I'm almost certain one is for speed reporting as on most other 3-wire fans, but that 4th wire is new to me...
If anyone has an idea I would really appreciate it.
Alternatively... If using a standard rheostat won't hurt the fan or the PSU (re-appropriated 100w atx) won't hurt it, that would be the best way to do it...
Red and black are of course + and - as I have successfully hooked it up to a power supply. My problems is its noise... It's VERY loud and moves far too much air. The other problem is the size can't be more perfect unless I had someone custom built me one.
My standard response would be to hook up a rheostat to the fan, but then I got to thinking... There is no way dell would let the fan run at it's full speed all the time, they would be able to hear it from their corporate hq. So this leads me to the other two wires, blue and white.
I've done quite a bit of searching on this, and found the datasheet for the fan in question (Delta AFC1212DE), but it only tells me about the running specs, not the wiring specs. My question should be obvious by now... What are the other wires used for, I'm almost certain one is for speed reporting as on most other 3-wire fans, but that 4th wire is new to me...
If anyone has an idea I would really appreciate it.
Alternatively... If using a standard rheostat won't hurt the fan or the PSU (re-appropriated 100w atx) won't hurt it, that would be the best way to do it...

