Yet another Panaflo question

I bought a bunch of Panaflo M1A's off eBay recently and they came with 3 10" wires coming from them. I want to put 4 pin molex connections on them but the wires that are on there now are about as thin as a strand of hair. Would I be better off buying one of the retail 4 pin fan tails like the ones at http://www.frozencpu.com/cgi-bin/frozencpu/cab-02.html since they look to have much thicker wiring or just use the thin wiring on them now and put the 4 pin molex connectors on myself? Would I lose any of the rated cfm for the fan by using the thin wiring?

So long the wire can handle the proper power then there shouldn't be a problem. You probably bought from the same guy I did as it seems he has a monopoly on ebay panaflos , they should be fine.

I have the same fan and yes, the wires on that thing are THIN! What I did to connect the fan to a molex connector is I soldered the wires on the fan to some thicker wire I bought from Radio Shack. The reason I did this was to extend the wires from the fan as they were not only thin but kinda short as well. Using a thicker gauge wire might make it easier to secure the wires inside a molex connector when you clip the thing though.

Are you are going to buy some non-assembled molex connectors and clip them on the wires to do this? Or are you going to connect the stripped ends of the wires directly to a molex connector coming from the power supply? Or are you going to cut a molex connector from an old power supply and solder the wires from the fan to it? If you are going to solder, you don't need to worry about the thinness of the wires. On the other hand, with the other 2 methods I mentioned above, the wire might be too thin to be properly secured unless you solder it to a thicker type wire first.

I ran my Panaflo overvolted at 24V for a while to see how much air it pushed at that speed and how much sound it produced. At that voltage, interestingly, the wires were completely fine and I had no problems whatsoever. As a result, since my Panaflo ran fine at 24Vs with those hair-thin wires, I wouldn't worry about connecting them directly to a molex connector at 12Vs if your concerns were about voltage and whether the thin wire could carry it.

I was going to buy non assembled male molex connectors and connect them to the thin wires. I was then going to plug them into 4 pin female molex connecters running from a baybus. I think now though I am just going to avoid the molex connectors altogether and just solder on some extension wires that are long enough to reach the baybus.

@Animal982:
Just out of curiosity: where have you managed to find a good deal on just the non-assembled molexes? (I've never had much luck in finding them.)

At casecoolers.com, you can find the 3-pin and 4-pin tails for $1.00 each, and they have reasonable shipping. Otherwise, soldering on extension cables also works quite well, and with some heatshrink tubing around the individual wires, it can look very neat. (I'm doing that tomorrow, as a matter of fact. )

@Black_Paladin:
That's quite an interesting point on running them at 24V! Were you happy with your results? Indeed, those fans do draw a refreshingly low current.

-- Paul

I havent really looked too many places for non assembled molexes. Only place I saw them was at frozencpu.com but it was 50 cents for the connector and 50 cents for the plugs. I have 10 Panaflos and I decided that spending $10 just for a couple pieces of plastic I could really do without wasnt worth it when I can just buy some cheap wire and solder on extensions to my baybus.

there shouldnt be a problem just add a thicker strand connecting to it

macklin01 said:

@Animal982:
Just out of curiosity: where have you managed to find a good deal on just the non-assembled molexes? (I've never had much luck in finding them.)

Click to expand...

Sorry, I know this question is not addressed to me but you can find unassembled molexes here:

Male Molex pins ($0.30):
http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/malemolexpins.html

Male Molex Connector ($0.30):
http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/mamoco.html

Female Molex pins ($0.30):
http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/femopi.html

Female Molex Connector ($0.30):
http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/femoco.html

Sidewinder computers has a whole bunch of useful stuff like this for good prices.

macklin01 said:

@Black_Paladin:
That's quite an interesting point on running them at 24V! Were you happy with your results? Indeed, those fans do draw a refreshingly low current.

-- Paul

Click to expand...

Hehe, the Panaflo moves QUITE a bit of air at 24Vs and even at that voltage, it's pretty darn quiet. I mean it's noisy BUT quiet.

You DO know what I mean by that. What you hear is mostly the air moving. Unfortunately the 24V mod was kind of a ghetto mod (have to connect one of the wires to -12V on the ATX connector) and since then I replaced the fan with 2x120mm YS Tech fans (this is for cooling my radiator) and even though the YS Tech fans are rated at 45 dBA at 131cfm, they sound more annoying than the Panaflo at 24Vs!!

I wish Panaflo made some high CFM fans but they don't (at least there is no 120mm Panaflo that provides 100+ CFM)...

EDIT: What I would LOVE to have would be a fan controller allowing me to overvolt my fans as well as undervolt them.

Unfortunately, I do not see a way around using the - rails on the ATX connector for accomplishing this - and I just don't feel comfortable soldering anyhing there. But then if you don't solder, it's diffucult to secure the wire. I was simply sticking the wire into the ATX connector but if I ever moved the computer, I'm sure it would become loose.

3pin and 4pin tail adapters can be bought for $1 each at CaseCooler.com. They are cheaper than Frozen Cpu, but they don't have the sleeving option.

If you only need a couple molex plugs go to molex.com and you can get up to five sample pieces at a time for only shipping, you need a UPS/other delivery service account. For example I sampled full setups: male plug, female plug, 5 pieces of male inserts, 5 pieces of female inserts. That covered my sampling for one order and I had enough to make a complete molex. It takes a while to find what you need on their site but it's wort it.

If you can connect all the fan wires together, and then you only need a single female molex connector.

anvil82 said:

If you can connect all the fan wires together, and then you only need a single female molex connector.

Click to expand...

so many reasons why i would feel uncomfortable doing this... any basic knowledge of power dissipation and parrallel/series circuitry would inform you that its not the best of ideas...

i think you would actually be giving less power than the fans want... greatly reducing their performance!

edit: talking of power dissipation.... the thin wires will get hotter than the fatter ones - maybe increasing the ambient temperature of the case... but probably not by anything noticeable! - just a thought!