Tech Olive

I’ll have to thank Craig for this one, as he was having some trouble coming up with a way to variable control an extra fan he had. A quick explanation later to him, and I realized I should share the knowledge with everyone.

Parts: You’ll need a 12V computer fan, A potentiometer of about 1k ohm (the higher the more variability, but I wouldn’t go above 100k ohm.) The tools you’ll need are as usual: soldering iron (and its compliments), electrical tape, and a multimeter wouldn’t hurt either.

On your fan, you’ll notice it has either 3 or 4 wires coming out. The only two we care about are (99% of the time) red and black (check with a multimeter to make sure those are power and ground). You can cut off the (usually) yellow or blue extra wires as we won’t need them.

Next, solder two wires to your potentiometer. One will go to the middle pin, the other wire will go on the outer pin (it doesn’t matter which outer pin).

Wire it up as following:
- 12v molex to red wire on fan.
- black wire on fan to whichever wire on potentiometer.
- unused wire on potentiometer to whichever black ground on molex.

You’re done! Enjoy the comfort of a raging fan during gaming or a quiet environment when sleeping. Just don’t forget to turn it on when gaming and accidentally overheat something!