im looking into buying a fan controller for my case, and was wondering how to find out the wattage output of the 3 fans my case has: how many watts my- 2x 120 x 120 x25mm, 2000rpm, 21dBA 1x 90 x 90x25mm, 1800rpm, 21dBA
Wattage i believe does not really matter here. the overall wattage of your system / hardware or seperate devices does not really matter, what you really need to look for is the voltages, you see it is a common misconception that buying a 600W powersupply is a good thing, each powersupply is labeled with "XXXWatt PowerSupply" IE: 400W PowerSupply 350W PowerSupply e.t.c The actual wattage that your powersupply supposedly boasts will only be the max output of your powersupply, and powersupplies (even good one's will not tend to last running at max output all the time, as there will obviously be fluctuations) What really counts on your powersupply is what the Amp capabilities are of your powersupply on the different rails ie: +5V +12V -5V -12V +3.3V Anyway sorry about that, onto your case fans, case fans do typically use quite alot of power, as for measuring accurately the voltages of your individual case fans, i am unsure.. i presume that it would take some mathematics.. IE: put all your fans on a seperate rail, then add the total of all your fans RPMS, now using your bios or if you do not have the option, find a program that will show you your voltages per rail, in a real-time state, such as motherboard monitor.. take the average for say an hour of computer use for the voltages on the rail that is controlling the fans, and nothing else. And work out the percentage of the voltage being used by each fan.. however just a theory, as i have never done this suspect you could use a multimeter to do it, however you would have to have connection to live wire, which is always VERY dangerous, to your hardware and most importantly to you, so i would not do that. just hope that there is an easier way than what i have suggest *anyone else know away?
Volts x Amps = watts, so 12V x (X)A = W. 12V is what these fans run off of, and the Amps should be on the fan's label. If not, don't worry, as fans don't take a whole lot of wattage up.
I had a 350W Antec in my old system which had: Amd Baron 2500+ 4 x 256mn Dual Channel DDR PC3200 Gigabyte7N400PRO2 ATI 9600XT 128mb + Graphics Cooler Haupauge TV Card 2x 160GB Sata 7200rpm 8mb cache 1 x 60GB 7200rpm 2mb cache DVD-RW 8x DVD-ROM 16x Floppy it ran quite stable however when i added 2 120mm case fans and an extra fan to my heatsink 2x120mm + 1x80mm case fans my 12V went straight under.. hence why i say for what they do.. they take up a considerable amount of power, however depends what fans your using.. mine were loud and about 5,000rpm. lol
Yup, that's very true. I'm trying to find this link that shows how much each typical component takes up, but I'm not finding it. The parts that suck the most juice are the CPU and video cards---not a real surprise though. Everything else is pretty much pittance in comparison...unless you're bringing some low-voltage or mobile CPU's into the mix, or something like the Via C3.
i suppose the reason for it all is, different fan controllers support certain wattage levels per channel. I will give u guys an an example, comparing to my 3 fans in the first post: these are the 2 fan controllers im deciding on, please tell me which one will suit me best...btw my psu is: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=17-103-914&depa=1 the two fan controller choices are: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-999-504&depa=0 and http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-999-216&depa=0
watts aren't really a good measurement for power. because there are various types of watts, and watts is just it's ability to work. What you really need to know is amps. But the vantec has better reviews. I'm pretty sure case fans are around 3-5watts.
