As with any project that involves electrical wiring, please play it safe. It is important to work on electrical components only when they are completely unplugged - not just switched off. If you are uncomfortable performing wiring yourself, ask an electrician. In most cases, you can purchase items from this website that have been pre-wired so that you do not have to perform electrical wiring.

In order to wire your cooling system, you will need the following:

1. (2) or more 12vdc cooling fans (80mm diameter are used in our designs)
2. A 12vdc power supply ("vdc" = volts direct current)
3. electrical tape
4. Wire strippers or pocket knife

Some important items to note are that most cooling fans are polar, meaning the will only run if you have them wired correctly (otherwise you'll need to flip the wires around), and also that you can use a lower voltage power supply if you wish. The fans that we sell run very quietly, but one technique to get them to run even quieter is to use a power supply that provides only 9 volts of power. This will make the fans run more slowly, decreasing their cooling power, but also decreasing the noise that they make. In most cases, using the full 12vdc power supply will be fine, and the fan noise will already be minimal.

First, use your wire strippers or knife to snip off any end connectors that might be on the fans or power supply. Remove only as much wire as you have to - you will generally need all of the wire provided. Next, carefully strip about 1/2 inch of the insulator from each wire, exposing the bare copper wire.

Next, you will need to determine which way to wire your fans (which power supply wire corresponds to which fan wire). Try wiring a single fan to the power supply by firmly twisting the black wire of the fan to one of the power supply wires, then twist the red wire to the other power supply wire. Now plug in the power supply, making sure that you are not in contact with the exposed part of either wire and that the two sets of wires are not touching each other where exposed. If the fan turns when you plug it in, then you can wire the next fan to your current setup using the same color matching scheme. Otherwise you need to unwrap the wires and switch the red and black wires. 

Finally, use some electrical tape to cover and insulate the exposed portion of wire. It is a good idea to overlap the tape onto the non-exposed portion of the wire also to avoid the tape slipping off later on.

© 2006 DIY For Life Inc