I am in the midst of planning my new build. So my conclusions are a small form factor build, gaming/HTPC all in the Lian Li A01 (black).. With limited space, a Modular PSU would help dramaticly, but im also low on funds, so creating my own seems like a "fun" idea. building/modding things is more fun than spending £££. The questions on this little experiment are: 1. Would cutting wires short, then correctly soldering and taping/heat shrinking them back up ruin efficiency or damage reliability? 2. Using the salvaged connectors on my old modular Hiper PSU, could i re-solder the new PSU's molex wires without the risk of anything blowing up? (when completed properly) 3. Could fans be put on a switch rather than a fan controller even when the power is on? eg: power is on, everything working... switch on fans/switch off fans. would this mess anything up to suddenly add a another thing to the circuit? 4. Could i completely cut a set of connectors off? I only intend to remove/alter the following.. molex, floppy, 6pin, sata, NOT the main ATX connectors. i am also aware PSU's still hold charge when off for a long time after they were last on answers, or advice are appreciated as always, and yes, im a complete electronics noob. thanks.
Everything you want to do is fine Making wires shorter is good as it reduces resistance a tiny bit, and switching fans on and off is no problem. If you were switching a high current device on and off, like 100 fans at once, or 10 hdd's at once, etc, then you'd notice a dip on that voltage rail when they are switched on. One potential problem is if you took a cheap connector from a low power psu, and soldered that up to a high power line which then powers something like a gtx290 gfx card for example. Not all connectors are the same quality, some have cheap thin plastic & cheap thin metal pins. Another possibilty is if you don't solder the wires nicely, and they have a frosted joint which can quickly become cracked = intermittant cuts in power. Wires have to be clean, bare at least 1cm of wire on each lead and tin/coat both wires. Then align the two tinned leads, use blu-tak, helping hand clamps, whatever to line them up securly and then solder. Let the join cool slowly. Not heatshrinking connections well which can mean possible shorts - the heatshrink should be run up the lead away from the hot joint before you start soldering of course, and a hairdryer up close works perfectly for shrinking. Not soldering the correct wires together or removing pins and not putting them back in the correct places... edit: and the completely cut off leads are fine, aslong as they are all individually heatshrinked/sealed off. etc
One thing you need to remember is that documentation is needed on these forums. Good luck with it though.
By documentation you mean... *guesses* a project log? if so, its will be started over easter, still planning atm.
Yes indeed, although unless it has a case mod to go with it, it will need to be in the modding section.
ya huh, full project log, Lian Li A01, with a watercooled DFI p45 lanparty JR. my "little" HTPC project. looking forward to it.
We'll take just pics here for starters. Just one question regarding #3 and fans... you're not planning on turning off the fan on the PSU, right? That one's pretty important to keep running.
@modminded PSU fan will be replaced with hopefully a noctua (if my budget allows) it will constantly be running, but probably quite slowly on a fan controller. My fan switch idea went something like this, |||||||||||..........................{'''''''''''''''''''''}---------------/switch/---------fan |||PSU|||-----molex--------{ fan hub }--------------/switch/-----------fan |||||||||||..........................{________}--------------/switch/----------fan (excuse my poor diagram) so when the PSU is on, it supplys constant power to the fan hub, splitting it down into x3 3 pin connectors, on the fan wires are a switch. This allows me to cut off the power on the fans, or turn them on whenever (i hope) would there be any thing wrong with doing this? my electronics knowledge is...limited to say the least. thanks again
That should work fine, are you going to have speed control? If so how are you going to do it? Adjusting voltage or adding resistance? Adding resistance is the easiest way, just put a variable resistor in-line with the fan, adjusting voltage is a bit more difficult.
Good to know! Your plan sounds fine, and the ascii diagram is pretty nice too! It might be good to have a variable speed controller built in-line with the on/off. I like being able to control the speed and noise of the fans.
A small Akasa fan control jr will be getting naked and receiving a face lift for the 3 main system fans...which renders the fan switches useless (unless more than 3 fans excluding PSU are installed) thanks for all your help! *zooms over to scan.co.uk*
