AGA Fan Upgrade w/ Tutorial [UPDATED 2/19/15]

Question

2/19/15 Update Got the parts in and unfortunately the adapter didn't work. I wasn't going to let this slow me down. So you may be asking.. 'Hey man why are you doing this?' good question! The fan that comes with the AGA is really loud and pretty low quality and I just can't leave stuff alone if it bothers me. If you do this, you'll have a MUCH higher quality fan and a MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH quieter running AGA. Unfortunately, the adapter on the stock fan is some obscure tiny 2 pin that I couldn't find anywhere. So what you are going to have to do is splice wires together. Don't worry though! it's super easy and the entire process will take you about 30-45 min. Disclaimer - You are on your own if you do this. This is just a guy not affiliated with Dell giving information to other AGA owners. Myself and or Dell are not responsible if you hurt yourself, others, somehow toast your AGA, blow up the world, etc... Basically, do it at your own risk if you continue on and it's your own fault if you mess it up. Required Tools Phillips Screwdriver Required to remove screws around fan and video card. Same size for both. Electrical Tape New Fan! 92mm X 92mm I used a Nactua NF-B9 Fan but any 92x92mm fan of your choice will work. I went with something quiet and fairly high quality from reviews on Amazon. Getting nothing from Nactua and only showing you for reference of what I, PERSONALLY used. Scissors Wire stripper if you don't have 1337 Scissor skills. Process Disconnect everything from the AGA and disconnect power. Remove the 4 screws around the existing fan. There is another thicker black cable kind of bundled with the fan cable. This is for the Alien head on the front of the machine. You may need to unplug both cables from the motherboard in order to untangle them from each other. Take the existing fan and cut the red/black power chord. Leave yourself some room since you may mess up while stripping the wires and will need to re-do. I cut about halfway. Take one of the 3 pin adapters that came with the card (You can also buy one or just use the regular fan cable if you want) and cut it the same way. If there is a yellow wire, don't worry about it as it's only for fan speed control and the AGA doesn't have that anyways. Strip about 1/4->1/2 inch off each wire and twist them together Red -> Red Black -> Black   ... May be a Black/Red --> Black depending on the fan. If you have Red-->Red then just twist the other 2 together. Using your electrical tape, make a few passes around each twisted pair. Yeah.... look at this beast! You now have a 3 pin (female) to tiny obscure hard to find if it even exists outside of Dell 2 pin (male) adapter. Here it is hooked up to the new fan At this point, I recommend just plugging the fan into the motherboard on the AGA and using the power button on the back to verify that your fan is indeed wired up and working. If it turns on while holding in the power, you did it! If not, you may have to re-twist the wires together to make a better connection. It really is difficult to screw this up as it's just metal on metal and some electrical tape. Make sure you notice the airflow direction on the new fan. Most fans blow the direction that is guarded. The Dell fan blows air INTO the case from the outside.  Notice how the guards point the same way. So in this case, we put the fan in the same way. Place the new fan into the slot. Should fit easily and put the 4 screws back in. Now that the fan is installed, do whatever kind of cable job you need to hide cables. I just taped it down with electrical tape. Who is gonna look inside your AGA anyways?  That's all there is to it! Enjoy the hopefully much more quiet fan.

Milena M458 · Answer

We haven’t tested any other fan than that one so there is no way for us to provide you a good reference.

raysz · Answer

Try Corsair, they're very quiet and I have two of them in my system attached to my cooling system. I can't even hear them.

CTopher84 · Answer

Yeah I actually went and bought a fan and you have to get one that has a tiny 2 pin connector (which 99.9% of them don't). The PSU in the AGA only has PCI-E power and nothing else so you can't use a Molex connector like you could in a normal case and the only connector on the tiny "motherboard" is for the 2 pin connector.

Original AGA Fan Pictures:

Original Fan (92mm) -

AGA Fan Plugin Slot (in white) -

You are kind of stuck with this fan unless you can find some kind of adapter that will go from 2 pin to the 3 pin like this version D:

Ordered a 3 pin -> 2 pin adapter and the Nactua 92mm fan and will update when I get it this week.

CTopher84 · Answer

bumping now that I have a new fan installed. 2/25 update... Been running for a few days now with 0 issue. Highly recommend this process. People can no longer hear the fan on the mic :)

juanqui283 · Answer

Hi there, I just got my GA and was looking online for 3 - 2 pin fan adapters. I've seen various types of adapters and not so sure as which one to get. Do you still have a link of the one you purchased?

Thanks!

mathieulh · Answer

I found one on amazon (France though) that should suit your needs: I just ordered it, I'll see how it goes.

mathieulh · Answer

It's the wrong connector, the diameter of the original one is much smaller, unfortunately I don't have the references for it

mathieulh · Answer

Hum.... this might be a Micro JST PH 2.0 2-Pin connector, can anyone confirm this ?

Owowosowoss · Answer

This looks like a fit for a 4 PIN fan And 3 PIN fan www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1707073&page=22

Frankbooth · Answer

I think it's either Micro JST 1.25 or 2.0. I've ordered some of the 1.25 so I will confirm when they arrive.

Frankbooth · Answer

Received my cables from Japan and can confirm it uses Micro JST 1.25

Owowosowoss · Answer

@Frankbooth : can you provide a link to the working JST 1.25 cable ?

My google searches did not find a converter cable equivalent to the ModDIY ones, and most links calling themselves JST 1.25 connectors have 4 pins not 2 (and are lots of 20 connectors + wires)

Do you think the ModDIY cables would be equivalent ?

Frankbooth · Answer

There are tons of them on ebay. Here is one with 10 sets for like $5.00 and free shipping.

Ming4u2 · Answer

Thank you @CTOPHER84 for this post thread. It came in handy when I was looking at a solution to reduce the sound on this beast.

So, I ordered the Noctua NF-B9 with PWM from Amazon. This was overkill of course since there is only a ground an +-12v power (black and red wires) that matches the JST 1.25 as mentioned above. So instead of ordering all of these fancy connectors. I just went with the spice and dice method and reused the fan/motherboard connector and stripped the wires. And then the issue was the Noctua with PWM management does not have the standard red and black color schema for wires so you have to figure out what is the power and ground. The black wire was the ground of course since this is standard, but I found the "yellow" wire to be the power +-12v. I had to search the image repository in Google to get Noctua's wire schema but this should help anyone who is going to splice the wires with this 4 pin configuration on this fan.

Solution worked great and just tidying up and your Graphics Amplifier will sound like a purr. Now to get a better power supply with a quieter fan. Dell really needs to fix this product and make it quieter since many of us are using it in the living room as our Media Entertainment device and having fans that sound like a plane taking off is not so great in this environment.

Locked Topics – Alienware General

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