I disassembled an AMD CPU Wraith Cooler, meaning, I took the fan off of the heatsink, because I want to attach the fan on top of a Raspberry Pi that I'm using as a router. The Pi runs quite hot because it transmits several hundred megabytes per second, non stop, and I want to give it some cooling. (It already has its own heatsinks on its various chips inside the chassi and I don't want to use the little shitty Okdo fan, because it's loud.)
Is there any smart solution to how I could power this 4-pin fan? It needs 12V DC.
This is the Pi with its chassi.
And I'm considering something barbaric like this.
~~Are there perhaps conveniently positioned GPIO pins on the Pi that the 4-pin connector could just slide on to and just work?~~ Never mind this. The Pi 4 that I'm using can only output 5V:
Or would I need to cut off the 4-pin connector to expose the individual wires and attach them to a 12V DC adapter?
Or any other genuis solutions? :)
fourth pin is an output i think.
https://glkinst.com/cables/cable_pics/4_Wire_PWM_Spec.pdf
if you bypass it you don't get a signal from the rotation speed sensor and the fan should run at 100% given 12v.
easiest solution is probably one of those 12v inverters for cars but that seems overkill. 5v fans are most likely cheaper.
Right! I have no reason for it to run art full speed on a Pi anyway. I'm leaning towards buying a 5V USB adapter.
does it work at all on 5v?
I guess I have to try. It either stalls and doesn't turn at all, or I get a comfortable breeze.