Hey all, apologies in advance for the newbie question, but it's been bothering me for a while.
Among others I installed two three-pin Zalman 120mm fans into my case sometime earlier this year. They run 1800rpm naturally, but this is a little excessive (and whichever one I place in the side slot of the case makes a very audible whirring noise); they both have voltage limiters to drop them to 900rpm. Until now i've always just used the front-slot fan with the voltage limiter and no other control, and left the side fan with no voltage limiter but dropped the duty rate to 40% in the bios instead. This served me well enough for the most part, but earlier this evening I got round to switching my stock CPU cooler out with a much quieter and more efficient one which works like a charm, and after turning the CPU fan's PWM on, the side fan noise stood out as a solitary, annoying noise. To counter this, I installed the voltage limiter on it and after some experimentation ended up setting it at 50% duty in the BIOS too, making it 450rpm (50% of 50%, I presume). This makes it quiet enough, and as long as I power-off at the back after shutting down so it starts the fans at full when I boot next, the fan spins up ok (from a normal boot the voltage is too low to spin the fan up at anything lower than about 40% of total).
That waffle aside, my question is this; will running this fan at such a low speed damage it? It seems to be working normally, but it's too low a voltage to spin up from that speed (though starting at full it's fine), and it no longer registers its RPM on software monitors, usually registering the fan then dropping to 0rpm. I'm fine with that as long as it doesn't make a physical difference, but I don't know much about electronics and motors, so I have no idea if running it slower than "intended" will damage it... and endless googling hasn't helped.
I'm not exactly losing sleep over this, but i'm thoroughly curious, and any insight would be appreciated.
Thanks a lot
Among others I installed two three-pin Zalman 120mm fans into my case sometime earlier this year. They run 1800rpm naturally, but this is a little excessive (and whichever one I place in the side slot of the case makes a very audible whirring noise); they both have voltage limiters to drop them to 900rpm. Until now i've always just used the front-slot fan with the voltage limiter and no other control, and left the side fan with no voltage limiter but dropped the duty rate to 40% in the bios instead. This served me well enough for the most part, but earlier this evening I got round to switching my stock CPU cooler out with a much quieter and more efficient one which works like a charm, and after turning the CPU fan's PWM on, the side fan noise stood out as a solitary, annoying noise. To counter this, I installed the voltage limiter on it and after some experimentation ended up setting it at 50% duty in the BIOS too, making it 450rpm (50% of 50%, I presume). This makes it quiet enough, and as long as I power-off at the back after shutting down so it starts the fans at full when I boot next, the fan spins up ok (from a normal boot the voltage is too low to spin the fan up at anything lower than about 40% of total).
That waffle aside, my question is this; will running this fan at such a low speed damage it? It seems to be working normally, but it's too low a voltage to spin up from that speed (though starting at full it's fine), and it no longer registers its RPM on software monitors, usually registering the fan then dropping to 0rpm. I'm fine with that as long as it doesn't make a physical difference, but I don't know much about electronics and motors, so I have no idea if running it slower than "intended" will damage it... and endless googling hasn't helped.
I'm not exactly losing sleep over this, but i'm thoroughly curious, and any insight would be appreciated.
Thanks a lot
