Powering fans and drives without a PSU and Mobo

[TechRural]

Hi all. I recently bought a server mobo(Intel S2600GZ) which came with no way to power 3 pins socket fans or SATA disks. I'm currently using as workaround a secondary consumer mobo and PSU to power both devices, but this is ineficient to say the least. I was wondering if someone had any idea on how to power the fans and the disks in much simpler and efficient way?

 

Thanks!!

[Kilrah]

Get a USB fan controller, and grab the power supply for it from a connector on the server mobo?

[TechRural]

Thanks for the tip, will look into that! And what about powering the SATA disks, any idea? Regards.

[Grabhanem]

43 minutes ago, TechRural said:

Thanks for the tip, will look into that! And what about powering the SATA disks, any idea? Regards.

If you don't mind having a second PSU, you can get the second board out of the equation by either using a PSU jumper tool (available pretty cheaply) or jamming a paper clip between the green and black wires on your PSU.

 

The real problem is that server boards like this are designed to be used in proprietary chassis where fan mounts, drive bays, etc are all built into the case/backplanes, so they often are missing those features in the way you'd see them on a consumer board.

[H713]

You should be able to find the necessary power rails on the server motherboard. If you feel comfortable doing so, it would not be difficult to tap into those power rails right at the connector where the power supply plugs in. Then you can make your own wiring harness. 

 

As a warning, these rails carry a lot of current (30 amps or more) so that part of the board will have a lot of thermal mass. I've done this a few times (on different boards, obviously). If you have a Metcal, use an STTC-117 tip and you'll be fine. An STTC-136 would work acceptably well too. 

 

 

 

[frozensun]

https://www.amazon.com/3-pin-molex/s?k=3+pin+to+molex

[TechRural]

Great stuff, I appreciate it guys!

[tkitch]

the proper fix, if you can find it:

 

 

But that doesn't seem to be available online anymore.

 

The pinout of the 6 pin was shared online, so you could covert a PSU Modular cable to plug in:

 

[TechRural]

@tkitch many thanks for sharing this! Just one thing that isn't clear. Should I take a standard sata molex power cable and adapt it so it fits the ODD/SDD slot? If so, the pinout shared, shows two 5v pins but the cable only has one. How do we go around this?