Summer time project RALF

[barovelli]

R A L F

Repetitious Assembly of Little Fans. Summer's here and what better use for a few old case fans than to cool off the room? Same theory of PC cooling should carry over to human cooling - next project might be a liquid cooled task chair.

http://www.barovelli.com/comp/ralf/ralf1.jpg

First find several fans and mechanically join them. These are attached to one another with cable ties.

http://www.barovelli.com/comp/ralf/ralf2.jpg

Next we need a suitable power supply. What did this thing run at one time? States 16VDC.

http://www.barovelli.com/comp/ralf/ralf3.jpg

No load, the power cube gives 19.67v

http://www.barovelli.com/comp/ralf/ralf4.jpg

Tie all the red fan wires and power supply's + lead together and all the black wires together and the power supply's - lead. Get the polarity right, the fans won't spin with reverse polarity.

With load, it drops to 16.83v

http://www.barovelli.com/comp/ralf/raplh5.jpg

Dress the wiring. We don't want any fans chopping off their own power supply lines.

http://www.barovelli.com/comp/ralf/ralf6.jpg

Put R.A.L.F. in a northern facing window, apply power and there you have it - a cooler computer room.

[Ceezer]

How much did it actually cool? I can't imagine it would be that much, with so little blade surface to draw a current.

[DRock4WC]

Yeah, maybe if you had like 30 fans sitting around and just wanted to see what you could do with a few it'd be ok. Personally I'd rather leave them alone and just use them for computers I build.

[[GF]Burke]

i have all the items to do it.. and i wanted too.

but how would i get a stadard PSU to turn on w/o mobo? i assume i can just bridge a couple leads together .. but wich ones?

[barovelli]

but how would i get a stadard PSU to turn on w/o mobo? i assume i can just bridge a couple leads together .. but wich ones?

Pin 14 (green wire)& any ground (black wire on either side of green wire) on the main ATX power connector - that should bring one up, making the other molex connectors live at 12 and 5v (don't have it hooked to any mobo).

Standard disclaimers - be darned careful!!

I used the power brick that was in the junk pile. At first I had a single 80mm fan held to the desk with duct tape and a power lead tapped of of a connector. But I had to have that PC running all the time so I found different power source.

Insparation was half from Afrotech (http://www.afrotechmods.com/), the other half from the display at Fry's Electronics with about 20 different case fans blowing away - keeping the CPU/RAM/HDD staff cool.

[ewen]

Yeah, maybe if you had like 30 fans sitting around and just wanted to see what you could do with a few it'd be ok. Personally I'd rather leave them alone and just use them for computers I build.

Could you imagine the annoying whine of 30 case fans all on at once?! Ouch LOL :lol: