I bought a new case for my existing system and the PS has so many more plugs.

Where there are two strings of connectors for disk drives. Is it better to have all the drives on one string, or to balance the drives across the strings?

Also my motherboard's post doesn't seem to like the new case fan. insisting that it has failed. The new fan is 120mm, old is 92. I wouldn't care about the error message except the post stops the boot at that point. (hit F2 to continue)

My suspicion is, the new fan just can't get to the rpms the smaller fan achieves.

I don't think it matters with the power plugs. If they put two connectors on one set of power wires, they intended it to be used that way. Internally to the power supply, I think they're all wired together to the same power rails anyway.

The fan RPM issue could be simply because the fan needs to have the extra "monitoring" wire that sends the RPM pulses back to the correct pin on the motherboard. If the fan doesn't have three wires, there's yer problem.

It's also possible that you plugged your case fan into the dedicated CPU-fan-only plug on the motherboard. That might tend to make the BIOS stop on you.

If your case fan is correctly plugged in and everything is working, there should be a BIOS setting that lets it ignore that fan's speed and boot without complaining.

You can also get adapters so that the fan runs from the power supply instead of the motherboard.

They're probably commoned inside the PSU anyway. You might as well use both tho unless it really restricts your airflow.


Does the case fan actually have the 3rd sensor wire connected?

You should be able to disable the fan FPM check in the BIOS.

58 seconds. :-)

Boooo

Some modern PSUs have more than two 12V rails. In that case, very power-hungry devices should be split across the supplies -- but that really means graphics cards rather than hard drives.

Peter

The fan sockets on the MB are clearly labeled as cpu and system. The error is complaining about the system fan. Besides I didn't have to unplug the CPU fan during the transplant. The new case fan does have 3 wires same as the old. (New Fan = CoolerMaster A12025-12CB-3BN-F1)

There must be something plugged into the system fan jack, or I get the error. For now I've transplanted the old fan.

The transplant is from a HP media center box. The MB is made by ASUS, but its bios is lame, no options for RPM check.

I don't have a graphics card that requires additional power, So I guess I'll just coil the unused lead and tuck it out of the way. Actually, I'm tempted to just chop it to 4in, and put a molex on the stub.

I prefer to spread power-hungry devices (hard drives) across multiple power lines when possible. It shouldn't matter, because PC PSU designers fully expect folks to string multiple drives together, but I do it anyway.

My rationale is that distance from the PSU capacitors is significant. So with two drives on one set of wires, one drive can generate brief spikes/dips in voltage that could affect the other drive, due to their long distance (over the wires) from the smoothing caps in the PSU.

Pure superstition of course. Really.
But I do it anyway.

-ml

I also do what Mark does, sometimes because it's also more convenient and/or because I'd otherwise have to bunch up the extra wires around somewhere when putting everything away.

I also outline my hard drives in green magic marker (felt tip pen) which I think makes MP3s sound better.

What? Are you crazy? That's ridiculous. Anybody knows that green magic marker will bias the output towards too much bass, destroying the acoustic balance of the signal.

Blue magic marker is the only proper way to do it.

tanstaafl.

I just make sure that I've got enough drives in the case, so that I've run out of spare connectors. There's no ambiguity in that situation.



I like extra bass, so I'm willing to take the risks that Doug outlines. What thickness nib?

That's why WD now has a line of "Green power" drives for the less technically inclined.

I never thought the color mattered, but you do have to leave a gap in the outline or the bits stored on the drive can't get out.

I was looking at the old PSU, it didn't have a power switch. The only way to completely shut it down was to pull the plug.