Case Fans - Motherboard or PSU?

[Flemminr]

Good day everyone.

I'm curious, what way do you guys hook up your case fans? Do you hook them up to the motherboard via a 3-pin connector, or do you hook them up to the PSU via a molex connector? What are the advantages/dis-advantages of each way?

[jcmaz]

Both.

If you hook them up with your mobo, then you can monitor them through HWMonitor or any type of monitoring tool.

The only thing I don't like about hooking fans via Molex is that it's a pain in the @$$ to take off if you have a crappy power supply with no assists to help you push them off.

[Soultribunal]

I'll give you the 3rd Option. Fan Controller.

It has the advantage that you can monitor it, and you can control all your fans from one central Hub. Without worring about if your board has enough connectors, and in some cases for high powered fans making sure you don't burn out your MB's connectors :)

Molex - Fan = Full Speed (Unless it comes with an Undervolting adaptor)
MB - BIOS Control of fans, a lot of times the COol and Quiet is very conservitive in its control.

ST

[Flemminr]

In case anyone was wondering, the reason I ask is because I because I'm trying to figure what would be best for the fans in my case. I have three 3-pin headers on my motherboard plus the CPU fan header. Everything else I'll just have to be hook up to the PSU. Does this configuration look fine?

Bottom 120mm fan - Motherboard
Side 140mm fan - Motherboard
Rear 120mm fan (Corsair H60) - Motherboard (CPU header)
H60 Pump - Motherboard
Front 140mm fan - PSU
Top 140 x2 - PSU

[chubaka]

One advantage of hooking up to mobo headers is that you can monitor rpm and adjust speed.
be aware of the amperage though (some exotic fans pull really high amps that will damage ur mobo)

So from what you listed, it looks good since you connected the critical components to your mobo which allows you to throttle base on usage and possibly with the right programs warn you if the fan/pump on the h60 stalls/stop working.

You want to connect fans that you wanna run at full speed 24/7 to the psu. you have no control over these fans and they will run at the rated 12v unless you use one of those step down resistors to 7 or 5 v.