[MitchC]

Hey everyone,

So I replaced my power supply today and I was doing some cable management. I realized that for some case fans, LEDs, cathodes, etc I had quite the 'train' of male to female molex connectors. I order to lessen the mass of connectors I was wondering if it is safe to do this:

In Molex1 image you can see the two plugs for the fans, for example. One is taking power and ground from the red and black and the other is taking power and ground from yellow and black. These would be connected in 'series' and be taking power from the PSU.



In Molex2 image you can see what I am trying to eliminate. Is this safe to do? Am I making sense? I can take pictures if you want but didn't because I didn't want to turn on the computer until I knew this was safe. Thank you for your time,



Mitch

Edited by MitchC, 09 July 2006 - 03:29 AM.

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I have wired up 2 fans to a single molex on the yellow 12 volt and black ground wires with no problems. You will notice that case fan wire sizes are about 1/2 the size of the molex wire size. If you wire it up using the red 5 volt line and a black ground wire the fan will run at a much slower speed. Some fans will not run at 5 volts. At 5 volts the fans that will run are running so slowly it may negate the fan from doing any cooling. I have run a fan off the yellow 12 volt and red 5 volt lines to get 7 volts and the fan runs about half speed.

http://www.dslwebser...-7-adapter.html

I buy these fans so i can adjust the speed to where i want for the least amount of sound while still getting the cooling i need.

http://www.directron.com/uc8fab.html

SRX660

[SRX660]

I have wired up 2 fans to a single molex on the yellow 12 volt and black ground wires with no problems. You will notice that case fan wire sizes are about 1/2 the size of the molex wire size. If you wire it up using the red 5 volt line and a black ground wire the fan will run at a much slower speed. Some fans will not run at 5 volts. At 5 volts the fans that will run are running so slowly it may negate the fan from doing any cooling. I have run a fan off the yellow 12 volt and red 5 volt lines to get 7 volts and the fan runs about half speed.

http://www.dslwebser...-7-adapter.html

I buy these fans so i can adjust the speed to where i want for the least amount of sound while still getting the cooling i need.

http://www.directron.com/uc8fab.html

SRX660

[Samm]

Aplogies for being pedantic Mitch but I think you'll find that the fan connections on the molex are actually wired in parallel. If they were in series, you would experience a voltage drop!
Also the fan wires would have to be reversed in order to create a series circuit - i.e the return from one connection becomes the input for the next, and so on.

[MitchC]

Hey,

I did what I pictured in the second image and everything seems to be operating fine.

On another note, I was replacing some molex connectors to make them blue and I accidentily swapped the red and yellow wires. Now my DVD drive is shot.

Better than than anyother component in the system. Thanks,

Mitch