BleepingComputer.com: System Fans Question

Hello again all. I just got done with my first build 3 days ago. (thanks go out to Patriot, DJBpace, Killerx525 for their advice on that build). I put together a phenom II x4 965, gigabyte GA-870A-ud3 motherboard, 8Gb g-skill ram, a western digital 500g caviar black HD, and an EVGA gtx460 gpu. This is powered by a coolermaster 700 watt psu and housed in a coolermaster haf 922 case. The build went flawlessly and everything is running great, however I have a question about my fan set up.

The case has 3 cooling fans that each have large 4 pin connectors. There are 3 spots on the motherboard allocated for system fans. two of them are 4 pin and the third is a 3 pin, however they are the very small diameter pins...probably a 1/4 or less of the diameter of the pins on the fans. So I connected the three case fans directly to the power supply as it came with cables that would fit the fans and there are plenty of hook-ups on the power supply. Fans powered on and run good.

The morning after I got the system running I got up and the computer appeared to be in a sleep state, and none of the fans were running until I moved the mouse to wake it up and everything kicked on. Came home from work and experienced same thing. But now for the last two days the fans appear to run continually. Perhaps I just imagined that the fans were powered off the other day but I don't think so.

Here's my question...Is it okay to have the fans running straight off the psu instead off the mobo? Will it wear them out prematurely if they are running constantly even with computer at idle or sleep? I read in my manual that the mobo will controll the cpu fan speed but will it also controll the case fan speeds? I know this may sound like a silly question, but after spending the money on this set up, and it being my first build I just want to be sure everything is ok. All in all the computer seems to be running great and I'm really happy with the performance, just need some reassurance on the fan issue. Thanks a lot for y'alls thoughts!

The motherboard can only control the speed of the fans connected directly to the motherboard, such as the CPU fan. If your fans are connected straight to the PSU the motherboard will have no control over them and they will run at 100% all the time they are receiving power. The reason they shut off when your computer is in a sleep state, is the PSU shuts down for the most part-causing the fans to shut off. Completly normal. I wouldn't worry to much-yes running 100% does add a little wear and tear and creates a little more noise, but in the end if the noise doesn't bother you it will allow better cooling, and they should still last a good long time, and are cheap to replace to boot.

Thanks patriot11, I just needed a bit of reassurance that it was ok to hook them direct to psu. As far as the noise...I am amazed at how quiet the computer is with 3 system fans, a cpu fan, psu fan, and gpu fan all going. Can hardley hear it!

It still seems a bit weird though, that I haven't seen the psu shut down since that first day, even if the computer is not being used for 5 or 6 hours. Of course it is online the whole time, would that little bit of activity be enough to keep the psu going even if the computer is not actually being used by a person?

Thanks again patriot11! You've been alot of help.

No problem like I said that's probably the system standby mode why it shut down and if you have things running it won't. You can change these settings in control panel in the power options section

Allright, I feel better about everything now. I looked up those settings like you said and it's set to sleep after 30 minutes. I then looked at the cpu usage history in the Norton program and it shows that over the last two days everytime the computer is in idle there is some kind of activity that happens and keeps it from going on into sleep mode. So that would explain why I haven't seen the fans shut off since monday.

Perhaps tonight I will put the internet on standby and see what happens. Anyway, thanks again for all the help, and now I feel good about the system!