panaflo fan with 4-pin connector

[hawkeye_wx]

I was considering buying a panaflo 39 cfm fan to go on my alpha 8045 heatsink, but I'm unsure about the connector provided. The fan only comes with a 4-pin power connector. I need a 3-pin connector to plug into the mobo to measure the rpms. Is there anything I can do with that fan or do I just have to buy a fan with a 3pin connector?

[Intraveinous]

One of the really cool things about the Panaflows is the tails are plug in... You can get a 3 pin tail for a 4 pin fan or vice versa... I'll look around for pics of what I mean and a source for the tails...
Peace
John

Oh yeah... and a Warm Welcome to the Forums, get ready to be addicted. :D

[Intraveinous]

OK... In the attached image.
You can see on the inner hub that white plastic piece (I know it's a small photo, but it's what I could come up with while at work...) that is where the 'fan tail' plugs in. This is a nice feature of the Panaflos beacause it allows you to change the connector (3 pin, 4 pin, or 2 bare wires for hooking to a baybus) without haveing to cut, splice, solder, heatshrink etc etc etc... :D
http://www.pccasegear.com/92a.jpg

At the bottom of this page (http://www.pccasegear.com/fans.html), you'll see the tails. I'm not sure if all Panaflows support RPM monitoring, but the only real way to find out is to hook up a 3 pin tail and find out, right?

Hope this helps, and enjoy your stay... Have one on me.. :beer:
Peace
John

[hawkeye_wx]

How important is it to be able to measure cpu fan rpms?

[Jeff Bolton]

its not the most important thing. most fans, as long as they are running, are probably doing their jobs. i don't have my delta plugged into the 3 pin header and i've never really had any need to measure its rpms...i can hear them :D

jeff

[Intraveinous]

With a Panaflo, you won't be able to hear it more than likely. However, they're excellent fans and will run pretty much forever as long as they're plugged in. :D Some motherboards had a "feature" where they wouldn't POST if they didn't detect a fan on the 'CPU_FAN' header, but they later had BIOSes released that gave you the option to disable that. So all in all, it's not terribly important unless you're worried about your fan failing and using a hardware monitor to shut you down if that happens...
Peace
John