Overvolting fans possible? If so how.

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M1dknight

Limp Gawd
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Nov 2, 2003
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As it says above is it possible to overvolt a fan in a similar fashion to undervolting?
 
M1dknight said:
As it says above is it possible to overvolt a fan in a similar fashion to undervolting?
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Sure. Just put a higher voltage over the fan. It will spin faster and fail sooner (depending on the voltage this can be anywhere between MTBF and 0.1 seconds).
 
How do you go about getting a higher voltage than 12V I know there is a -5V wire somewhere if but don't know where it is.

If I connect the fan ground to this will that work?
 
Get a compress air can and spray it at the fan. :D

You should try to find a laptop plug then tape the wires to it. They give out 15v.
 
You'd be better off getting better fans, but otherwise use a DC to DC converter from Mouser. Don't use the -5V, as it won't supply the current needed for more than 1 or 2 fans.
 
Some fans seem to live quite happily at 17v while others die in minutes or seconds, so you are really taking a risk. You can tap into either the -12v or the -5v wire on the ATX connector to make this work. -12v is the blue wire, -5v is the white wire.

The -12v line usually has slightly more amperage, so it is probably your best bet. Just connect the black (earth/ground) wire from your fan to the blue wire on the ATX connector. Then connect the red wire on your fan to the red (+5v) wire on a molex connector.

Just a warning, some people say that if the fan fails in the right way (wrong way!?!), it could send 5v to the -12v line on the mobo. Though I've never heard of this actually happening.
 
Oh yea get a vantec tornado fan those things can chop off your fingures.
 
Cheers I did the mod and it works.

I already have 2 tornados in the machine and it was not really for the performance anyway I have ordered a new machine and though now that it does not matter if something goes wrong with this one I would start doing things I decided not to before.

No funny smells yet - but I am waiting :eek:
 
There's actually a HardOCP article that says how to do this, way back in the Pentium 2 / Celeron A days (for some reason I think the article was about Pentium 2 HSF's though).

Erik
 
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