Get More Out Of Your Thermaltake Fan

Date Written: February 5, 2002
Written By: Jason Rabel
Company: Thermaltake

Time For Plan B....:

If you peel away the sticker, you can see all the wires going to the fan. The three on the right on the right are for power & RPM sensing, we don't want to mess with those. The two on the left though are the temp sensor wires. So an easy fix was to remove those wires and solder in some longer ones.

Just heat up a solder pad and pull softly on the wire and it will come out with ease. Then solder back in your new longer wire. Be careful not to short out anything by connecting two of the solder blobs together. Now in the right picture you can see that we can connect all our wires to the new pair we soldered on the fan and we shouldn't have any problems mounting the fan flush. You will note that I had to remove some of the plastic to get to the other solder point, it is easiest to just melt it with your soldering iron (be sure to wipe it off afterwards).

Since the wires I used were slightly larger I had to notch the end out a little on the fan, and I used hot glue to hold it in place. Now I can just flip the switch to go between normal fan operation and full blast! You can always use longer wires so you can mount a switch externally, this is just what I had laying around to do the demonstration real quick.

Or, if you just want that fan screaming all the time, you can remove the two temp wires and just solder the joints together. This is for you people that want max performance all the time, and don't want to have to mess with a switch or anything.

If I Did It Again:

Okay, now that you know the basics of it, let me explain what I would of done differently. First I would NOT of clipped off the temp probe from the wires, instead just unsolder it from the fan so you have the longer extensions on the probe. Also I would of mounted the temp probe closer to the fan instead of the switch (though I normally leave it at full speed anyhow).

If I was going to remove the temp probe completely, you can get a potentiometer rated around 8-10k Ohms and wire that in instead of the switch / probe combo and you can just adjust the fan speed to whatever you want. Increase the resistance to slow it down, decrease it to speed it up.

You can find potentiometers at CaseEtc, MECI, All Electronics, and of course your local Radio Shack should have them, to name a few. Cost less than $0.50 probably.

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