VA3000SNA Fan controllers

[DaveSW]

A friend of mine has a VA3000SNA case, where the two fans are rated at 21dB. However they make a noise like a hurricane, which is amplified by the honeycomb grille of the case. The grilles will be replaced, but I'd like a fan controller to lower the speeds slightly - this is a normal system (2.6 gig Celeron) but it's used for band recordings so it needs to be quiet.

http://www.thermaltake.com/xasercase/tsunami/sna/sna.htm
- the advert calls them silent, and that's a lie if ever I heard one!

The fan connectors are strange though:
They draw power from the 4 pin connectors that are available on CD and hard drives, but they have the three pin connector with just the feedback (?) wire attached.

What fan controller can I get that will accomodate this?

[alc6379]

You will have to get a 4-pin to 3-pin adapter:

http://www.heatsinkstore.com/4to3ad.html

Then, you can use any adapter that uses a 3 pin header on it. That additional 3-pin cable running off of the fan is a Tachometer wire, which you can connect to the fan header on the motherboard, for RPM speed monitoring.

21db isn't that loud, really... I mean, I've got 3 fans running at nearly 60db apiece-- THAT's loud!

[DaveSW]

ah thanks for that - I've just found a uk supplier
http://www.thecoolingshop.com/product_info.php/products_id/879
incidentally their vantec fan controller appears to provide the two connections I need!
http://www.thecoolingshop.com/product_info.php/cPath/100_37/products_id/920

[alc6379]

Hey! I have one of those in my system!

The only thing I can tell you about that controller is this: It didn't matter to me, but sometimes when adjusting the speed of one fan, it would cause the speed of the others to change ever so slightly. It seemed like when you lowered the speed of one fan, the current was redistributed to the other fans, speeding them up maybe 100-200 RPM. It's not much to worry about, I guess, but I just wanted to make you aware of it.

[DaveSW]

Thanks Alc.
It's sitting on my desk right now waiting for some missing cables that they forgot to pack with it (a bad start!), but hopefully I'll be installing it next week.
The only thing that bothers me is that it's going into a top end case that uses sliding rails for the drives, so I may have to do some drilling. It also has a door, which will interfere with the dials, so it'll have to be recessed lol. What fun...