Just bought a Venomous X and now I am looking at Fans, Need help please.

I bought a Venomous X and I am looking at fans. Recommended so far has been Yate Loon 120s High or Medium speeds. I have seen that they are not PWM fans. I see 3 pins. Don't I need a 4 pin fan for my CPU HSF in order to control the fan?

Also I am trying to keep the price low to moderate but have a good fan that is not too loud. I was looking at the Noctua Cooler Fans but they are like 23 dollars a piece and I have been told they are just too expensive.

Are the Yates the right way to go? Or is there something I am missing about the whole 3 or 4 pin fans?

Also I have seen someone say how to modify the fans so they can be run off of two different headers, but still be monitored/controlled by the CPU header. Is that necessary on my motherboard. I have 8 different fan headers, can't they be controlled off my motherboard?

4pin fans are backwards compatible, and 3pin fans will work in a 4pin header. There is a key to it so it can only fit in there 1-way.

If the header is 4pin and the mobo doesn't detect the PWM wire it will use varying voltage (older method) on the red/black wires instead of the PWM signal to control the fans.

The Yates are a good cheap solution, but I prefer high-powered 38mm fans and a good fan controller to keep them quiet for everyday usage. That way I can crank em when I want to!

You don't have to use the CPU fan header. You can turn off the CPU-FAN warning, and use any header(s) you want.

You can use the CPU fan header to control more than 1 fan, but it will only really work if you have PWM fans (4-wire), and do some creative wiring so that power is drawn from elsewhere and you just use the PWM wire to control the fans and the RPM sensor wire to monitor 1 of them (don't splice RPM sensor wires together, but you can splice several PWM wire together). You could use 3pin fans, and run more than 1 fan off a single header, but you run the risk of overloading the header and burning it out.

Let me know your end goal, and I can suggest a solution to fit it. Also provide the wattage or amp rating on the fans you want to use.

http://www.jab-tech.com/PWM-Fans-For-LGA775-Motherboards-c-273.html
Heres some pwm fans....

I am looking for two 120mm with 60-70 cfm (quiet as possible) I use a controller, but will be upgrading it. Something Moderately priced. High end I was already looking at the Noctua fans, but they are $24 a piece plus shipping. Looking for something between 5-10 plus shipping, but with the quality of the Noctua. I will be attaching it to my Motherboard headers, I kinda wanted to keep the CPU fan on to shut down the computer if anything ever happened to the fan. I am familiar enough to wire the two PWM and Sensing wires, but would prefer a pre-fab method, because after I buy the neccessary stuff to do the job, I might have just as well bought it done already. I guess I could just run them through the fan controller and put the sensing on the Motherboard for it.

Ok I went and went ahead with the Noctua NF-P12. I found them at Amazon for $18.95 each with Super Saver Free shipping.



This seems to be a winner. Most of the other quality fans cost between 12-17 dollars so I figured I might as well get what I want, rather than what I can afford to pay. I always hear good reviews about Noctua.

If my math is correct, thats 54.3 cu.ft./sec @ 19.2dB(A) with 1.6mmH20.

Panaflo are twice the Speed, Twice the CFM, but also twice the noise and a little more expensive AND you have to modify them to get them to fit well. I hope I am making a good judgment.

You don't have to modify the Panaflo's at all for them to fit well. But you do have the added expense of getting a decent fan controller.

The Panaflos have a lot more pressure which is good for dense-finned designed HS's.

Overall you should be happy with those Noctua fans, though, but I don't trust those specs.

In my experience with the NP-P12 Noctua fan I think they over-estimate the cfm a little bit and under-estimate the noise just a hair. But they aren't way out in left field like some companies do with their numbers (Thermaltake anyone? ).

If you had done a simple search you would have found a thread where I recently tested a whole bunch of fans on several heatsinks, including the Venomous X.

Personally I find the price of the Noctua fans to be a bit high priced for their performance. But they do give a couple of resistors to reduce fan speed in the package too, which will be pretty useless for heatsink usage. Your math is a little wrong (or you typed your post wrong) as you typed the following:

54.3 cu.ft./sec @ 19.2dB(A) with 1.6mmH20

Click to expand...

I hope you meant "54.3 cu.ft./Min. @ 19.2dB(A) with 1.6mmH20" because what you typed would work out to 3258 Cu Ft/Min and that just isn't possible in a 120 mm sized fan.

My personal choices for everyday cooling usage on heatsinks of this caliber are the Panaflo L1BX or Scythe S-Flex SFF21-F fans, which are a little noisier than the Noctua but flw a lot more air with better static air pressure too. But then your tolerance to fan noise and airflow might be lower than mine too. The Noctua fans do use a very good bearing package, similar to the Panaflo and S-Flex bearings. I also saw some good results from the Scythe Gentle Typhoon fans too (1850 rpm versions) and the noise they make was very easy to live with.

Yeah I meant cubic feet per min. It was late . I also figured the Panaflo would have been my choice for all but the fact of noise. I definitely took your suggestions into consideration and I think your statement that my tolerance to noise is lower is the key point. I use this in my Living Room as a HTPC as well. Noise is a definite no, no. I use a fan controller on the case fans, but I want to let the Motherboard do the work with the CPU fans. Like you also said, the other manufactures are a little off on their claims as well, so the Noctua should be at least as silent if not more so then the others.

Also the Noctua had two different fans, one was recommended as a case fan and this one as a CPU Cooler fan (with dense fins). I could not find any fan specs. to compare the mm H20 though.

Been running two NF-P12's on my copper awhile now.

Stuck two of the others on the rear of the 1200, NF-S12B FLX, the non restrictive Noctuas.

That and replaced all the Tri Cools in the front and side with AC 12025 PWM's, the thing runs moderately quite for 4Ghz now at any rate I guess.

Works for me I guess, they are pricey I guess but pretty quiet.

I use mine for a HTPC also myself and they work pretty well just humming off to the side.

Looks like we have very similar setups. Good to hear. Although your on a 1366 platform, but otherwise SLI and i7. My only set back will be my case now. I will be getting a HAF 932 in a couple weeks.

I like the HAF's, I built a computer for a friend of mine awhile back and was tempted to steal it and use my case for his and give him a discount.

But I'd all ready changed all the fans in this 1200 to where I like them, and had put the CP-850 PSU in there.

Those Yate Loon D12SH-12 are overachievers. Just grabbed a second one from Jab-Tech. A fine fan. It is sensitive to bad fan controllers, though. Makes noise in that case. Otherwise, reasonably quiet when undervolted.

Now, if you really want a fine PWM fan, there are a few of these left. Mine undervolts down to 4 - 4.5v easily and not too loudly. Specs say it will get down to 1000 rpm at 0% duty on PWM. I'm still working on that, but at full throttle it's my best reasonable fan. Of course, I have an unreasonable fan, but it's way too loud.