It's my understanding that lowering the voltage on electric motors
generally increases the heat buildup in the motor windings and leads to
a shorter life expectancy of the motor. There are motor speed
controllers that chop the wave. An interesting question would be: "How
is the speed of a household fan controlled. I don't think they have
true speed controllers. Most likely they just add a resistor in series
with the fan motor. However, I'm just guessing, as I don't really know
how they work. I do know that they tend to be very cheap, so whatever
the solution is, it can't cost too much.
Jim Roby wrote:
Last night on slashdot was a link to water cooling,which leads to many
interesting sites...total kit for $200 on one,also saw a page from a guy
who says the fan can be quieted with out significant proformance loss
by simply lowering the voltage from 12V to 7V...he does it by placing
diods in line,observing curent flow(two in,two out)Commercially they sell
a little inline gysmo that allows you to dial the fan RPM,believe $7.
Wonder is /. reading our list? :-)
Be really careful with desk/room fans as they have really ugly magnetic
fields and can cause total EMI chaos in your comp.
...
--MonMotha
