Install a Case Fan

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There are multiple reasons as to why you'd need to install a case fan in your computer, but we can all agree that they are there for the sole purpose of making your PC all that much cooler. In my case, I'm installing a fan to keep my graphics card from overheating as my previous card had overheated and burnt out. This was probably due to lack of good airflow in the case and the amount of stress the card was under. Now, to combat this problem, I've decided to install a case fan. As you can see in the photo below, for this tutorial I've decided to go with the standard Dynex 80mm fan.

To install the fan you'll need a few things:

1) A Fan (screws included)

2) Scissors (to open the near impossible plastic packaging)

3) A screwdriver

There are only two reasons that I went with this fan over any of the other fans I could have chose from:

1) It's a small and cheap fan. (it doesn't need to be huge to be effective)

2) No LEDs! There's nothing I hate more than computer parts full to the brim with LED lights that burn your eyelids as you try to sleep.

OK, now lets move on to getting this fan into the case, first what you'll want to do is power off your PC and unplug everything from the back of the tower so you can put it on the floor and get working on it. Now lay your case down on the floor and open up the side. First and foremost, if you have an anti static band connect it all together and go straight ahead, if you don't, simply touch the bottom of the case to release whatever static buildup you have in you and continue. The reason we do this is because if we happen to touch any of the chips in the PC with static charge in us, it could damage the chips.

Now if you look at the back of the case you should see a slot at the back of the case where a fan can go. Depending on your case, you could also have a slot on the siding of your case. Here is what mine looks like:

Now before we go about installing the fan we need to figure out what we want to do with it. Do we want it to blow air in? Or blow air out? It all depends on your situation, in my case I'll have one fan blowing in cold air but eventually that will get hot and raise the temperature in the case, so I'll want this back case fan to blow that hot air out. Now here comes the hardest part of installing a case fan; figuring out which way the fan is blowing. In most cases the fan will have arrows indicating which way the air is being blown, unfortunately for me this particular fan didn't. The best way to go about finding out which way the fan blows is to plug in the fan into the PSU and find out for yourself.

Depending on what fan you have, you might have to go about a different route but in my case the fan can with two connectors, a Molex male and female.

Simply plug either of the connectors into their opposite Molex connector coming from the power supply unit and see which way she blows, of course you'll have to plug the PSU back in to the power socket and turn the PC on to find out. Once you've figured out which way the air blows, unplug the PSU again and unplug the Molex connector from the fan. Now you'll want to take the screws that came with the fan and continue to screw in the fan.

Once the fan is secured, plug it back into the PSU and your ready to go!

~Natasa Shepherd

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