CAT5 for fan wire?

[shawkins]

Hey all, Im about to buy a fan controller that has no wire leads for fans. You have to make your own. But it has screw erminals for wire. So I was thinking, that since CAT5 has 8 wires in it and I only need 2 wires per fan, that I could use CAT5 to wire up my fans and it would look alot cleaner. Anyone else ever do something like this?

[bchur83]

It should work fine. Just make sure you don't run too much current through the CAT5. I used speaker wire to wire a few of my fans.

[Son1990]

Also, make sure not to let any of the wires touch eachother. Use heatshrink or electrical tape if possible.

[squasher]

I really like that idea, I might try it myself one time.

[ƒÓÒl]

It's a small conductor, so check it for overheating. The amperage that a high speed Delta runs at is much greater than the cable was designed for, so do it, but check it a couple of times before you trust it fully.
If it does heat up, you can always match up the pairs to lighten the load, like using blues/oranges for positive and green/browns for negative. That should have no problem.

PoE (power over ethernet) equipment only sends 12.95 watts (@48 volts) for a reason.

[ghettocomp]

Never really thought of that either, I think I will be using this on my Big Box Mod.

[telexen]

I've thought about something like this. For my next system I want to build a system for fan control that would give me a small box mounted hidden that I could connect the fans to, then run cat5 wire up to a fanbus to control the fans.

I've never done anything with it though.

[ƒÓÒl]

Hey guys, just a tip..
The jacket on cat5 wiring makes a handy small sleeve for existing cables too. Just cut off a piece to length, strip a bit, then pull out the pairs one color/pair at a time.
I'll be using Lucent "cable sleeves" for my case's front wires because it's bright yellow and matches the sockets on my Lanparty 250gb.
Use a paint marker or something to denote where the positive wire goes before you pull the pins out of the connector.

It's not too flexible, but it's purty.

[Tony420]

It's a small conductor, so check it for overheating. The amperage that a high speed Delta runs at is much greater than the cable was designed for, so do it, but check it a couple of times before you trust it fully.
If it does heat up, you can always match up the pairs to lighten the load, like using blues/oranges for positive and green/browns for negative. That should have no problem.

PoE (power over ethernet) equipment only sends 12.95 watts (@48 volts) for a reason.


I was going to type a responce then I seen this, I could not have said it better.