Batteries dont live forever. I think you can better use a Universal adapter (which can be found at your local hardware store. On such adapters you have to make shure its a AC to DC adapter. Then its easy. Unbox the adapter, find out whats the + and whats the - and solder your fan wiring (red = plus, black = min) to the correct cables. Also make shure the soldered pieces are insulated (heatshrink/electrical tape).
The unit will only be on once a week for backup's but will be left overnight. I was thinking i could re-charge batterys.
Most 120mm molex fans run at 5v. With that said get an 5v adaptor to run it. But then you can't adjust fan speed.
pretty much every 120mm fan i've seen in a PC is 12v. i'd do what BlackWhizz said and buy a AC-DC "wall-wart" not going to cost much more than the batterys and will not need to be recharged. if it's only running a few hours a week do u really need a fan? also is the unit still under warranty?
huh, that's odd, most fans I've seen are 5v.. Then again I don't remember if they were 120mm.. So my apologies.
That would be my first guess. How old is it? Maybe its normally passively cooled - its 9/10ths hard drives, no?
@ dark avenger Nope, out of warranty. @ Pure silver It is supposed to have a fan spinning, 2 years old - maybe; bought it second hand. Can hold two harddrive and has one in at the moment.
This ones easy. If it has hard drives inside, they recieve power from somewhere. Power your fans from this source. Doesn't this thing take 12v in, you can just tap into that source to power your fan. There is no need for batteries or external sources of power. Use hdd power leads if you want the fan to run when the disks are on. Use the 12v input of the device if you want the fans to always run when plugged in.
Exactly. The unit's psu is meant to be able to handle the load of the fan, and i'm guessing the fan will work fine since it does spin up initially. You could tap into one of the 12v lines that go to the hdd's for example, or use one of the spare molex fittings in there. If you don't have a lead to attach the fan to a molex plug, then visit any pc shop/swap meet/recycling centre and get one for next to nothing, or maybe even for free! There's no need to spend any money! Or if you just wanna make this really easy, get a fan that already has a molex plug at the end of it's power lead. One thing that you should definitely mod however, is go over all of the air inlet and outlet holes with larger drill bits, like how i've done in the little router link in my sig
I'm with him on this. I do mods like this all the time on Linksys routers. I add an 80mm fan to the top of the router to cool it (I overclock the broadcom CPU in them) and just solder a fan header (3pin or 4pin male) to the DC input of the router which is 12V. All PC fans are 12V, they can go down as low as 5V on a fan controller but they are designed to run at 12V. This is a 10 minute mod, and there really is no need for batteries or external power supplies of any sort.
As for Airflow direction, you need to consider all the ventilation available, and the size of the fan in relation to the vented area. If there is a way to get good airflow through the case (Bottom to top or Side to side), then have the fan pull ait OUT of the case. If there is basically just the TOP vent area shown in your Pic, I would set the fan to blow INTO the case, forcing the air to come back out around the edges of the fan. Best of luck...
