24 volt power, need to make quiet

This is going to be a little odd but here it goes.

I have a 3Com 4900 gigabit switch and it issues power to the fans at 24 volts. This actually hit me by surprise because up until now all of my enterprise 3Com equipment used 12 volt fans and I just swapped them out with something quieter. Here are some details.


4x 24 volt 3-pin power headers
4x 24 volt 3-pin fans

Now I need some ideas on how to quiet this thing down. It has been a long time since I have played with electronics like this. I have four 12 volt quiet fans also....well....3 now (oops, watch out for that 24-volt!) but I will get another one to replace it. If I can use the existing fans that is fine, I just need to reduce their speed by 50% or more.

Let me know what you think.

I got it, I just used a couple of 12 volt fans in a series and everything is working great now.

good thinking.... what size fans are they.. cus lil ones can get quite loud.... also you sure you have enought airflow for the hardware... espically if they are small fans, they dont push much air when they are undervolted.... anyways good thinking again... you could have also grabed a 12v voltage regulator from radioshack.... put the 24v on the hot side... ground the center lead, and then it would produce a pretty much dead on 12v.