I just upgraded to a Vantec tornado case fan and its loud as hell. I need it for gaming, but not when im just cruising the internet. Can i use a household dimmer style resistance switch to control the speed. I am running 500W with two lines at 18A each. Any suggestions will help. thx
July 6th, 2010 on 5:33 pm
what jim said you can do..but why work so hard? they have fans that have switches to control your fan speed, i recently bought one with 3 speeds. if you want a quiet one dont buy the cheap ones also, make sure you spend a lilttle bit of money for it! here’s the fan with the switch speed control http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835220015
hope u find one you like…just search like case fan speed control !
July 6th, 2010 on 5:33 pm
No, you should go to radio shack and get a potentiometer for DC current. Fans take about 1 – 3 watts of power, and a standard AC switch will not work. The better thing is to buy a potentiometer (like a dial knob which has like 1, 2, 3, 4 etc) as a sliding switch. Then all you have to do is splice the wires from the fan and solder them to the potentiometer. You can buy little plastic boxes to house the potentiometer for a couple of bucks. Then, just buy some additional wire and you can mount the switch outside of your box for easy control.
1). Buy the correct potentiometer rated for the DC watts
2). Buy a knob to fit on the potentiometer
3). Splice the hot wire currently going to the power supply.
4). Get same guage wire (also from radio shack)
5). Solder additional wire to extend outside the box
6). Insert potentiometer into small box, put knob on potentiometer
7). Run hot wire to potentiometer IN lead and solder
8). Run hot wire to the other side of the power supply hot wire you just snipped. Solder to OUT on the potentiometer and solder lead to the power supply side of the wire which came from the fan.
You are now in business.