Cpu Cooling Fan 3 Pin Vs 4 Pin

2 advantages to 3 pin vs 4 pin fans 3 pin computer fan.

Cpu cooling fan 3 pin vs 4 pin. I wouldn t be surprised if everything moved to 4 pin eventually but we re still in the early stages. For custom cooling usually the pump is contrlled by the motherboard cpu fan header 4 pin and the radiator fans are controlled either by the case fan 3 pin motherboard headers or by a module eg corsair h100i. A lot of motherboards have one 4 pin header for the cpu and 3 pin headers for any other fans. Now 2 pin cooling fans have been less to use because the fan of 2 pin cannot meet the requirements in terms of shifting etc in contrast 3 pin 4 pin fan is the main stream now.

A four pin connector is a little different than the three pin connector since it has the extra fourth wire used for controlling and sending signals to the fan which likely has a chip on it that tells it to slow down or speed up in addition to the other wires the three pin connector has. The 3 connector fan is very common use in laptop it can adjust the fan speed according to the cpu. I finally replaced my cpu fan from a 3 pin to a 4 pin connector to hear the difference in sound. They use variable voltage speed control.

Any option can be made to work though.