Molex, 3 pin, or 4 pin?

FishNuggets01 · July 11, 2020

Earlier I was working on my first pc build ever, and I was plugging in the 2 included case fans with my NZXT H510 when I realized that I only have one case fan header on my mobo. I ended up just running them both of of molex because they are 3 pin fans anyways, so I would not have speed control anyways and I didn't care to much about monitoring them. This made me wonder what most people do for there case fans. Do you guys still use molex/sata, 3 pin, or 4 pin with variable speed fan curves. For me, I don't care to much about not having fan control over the case fan, because they are are really quiet and I would probably have them running full tilt anyways. But I am want to know what you guys use?

The_russian · July 11, 2020

It depends on the fan and the build, most fans are quiet enough to just leave them on full so a molex fan works fine, but for builds that were focused on being quiet, I used 4 pin fans.

FishNuggets01 · July 11, 2020

Eventualy I will end up replacing my fans with 4 pin ones and I will get somthing like this from NZXT https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1561442-REG/nzxt_ac_2rgbc_b1_nzxt_rgb_fan.html/?ap=y&smp=y&msclkid=a5d0d256f04b12f53b798d5fac9487ab. That way I can have all of my case fans running off of one 4 pin fan header and have all of them all use the same fan curve.

Kilrah · July 11, 2020

It's not a problem to adjust speed of 3-pin fans, all mobos support voltage control in addition to 4th-pin PWM.

FishNuggets01 · July 11, 2020

For me, with 120mm fans It really isnt even very loud and I likely would have them close to if not full rpm all the time anyways, so molex is no prolem for me. When I end up replacing my motherboard in quite a few years time I will just run the fans off of the mobo headers, but for rn it doesnt bother me.