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My old heatsink fan broke and I'm trying to reconnect its plugs to a new fan. My Dell CPU fan has some custom Dell plug. I snipped the old fan's wire in half and kept the plug on the end of it. I want to connect it to the Dell fan wire to the plug.

The motherboard is a P5Q-e, the stock Core 2 Duo fan was .20A and the dell is .70A. Is that going to matter?

The wire from the fan has four wires, the wire with the plug has four wires. They share three, of the four colors: red, black, and blue. Dell's fourth wire is white, while the plug's fourth wire is yellow.

Is it safe to assume that I just connect the yellow and the white plug together and match the rest up?

I don't want to take any risk of damaging anything. It runs fine passively without a fan, but I have speedstep on, so I would like to use this fan and just fasten it to the heatsink with some twist ties and paperclips and call it a day.

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Most common Dell fans use 5 pin 4 wire PWM: Black=Ground Red=12v White=RPM Blue=PWM So says the web. Many people who changed to a different fan on the dells the computer would not boot, till they put the dell fan back. because their dell was expecting a specific RPM and might have a specific Sence or divisor or whaever for the fan they use. The Power specs no problem, but a delta is usually very high rpm. So this is just a note , if you dont get boot, it is just that the dell doesnt think the fan is working (or fast enough) – Psycogeek Oct 2 '11 at 23:50
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It's a Dell component, it's not intended to neatly work with any non-Dell system. You are better off purchasing a new one.

Here's further reasoning:

Dell manufacturers every component for their systems (that are not PCI style riser cards and that are not drives, CPU or RAM) to be specific to their systems.

The wiring is often non-standard, the PSU mounts and connectors are often non-standard, and they are intended to make it difficult for you to purchase non-Dell components and install them into your system. This ensures that Dell continues to make a profit.

Sidenote: Yes, that does suck. In the future, don't purchase Dell and support them. However, for the needs of 90% of the population (statistics, that field where all numbers are approximately made up) this is a viable solution, because customers want fixes that work and not fixes that save more money in the short term.

EDIT

Additionally, the manual for that board says that the five headers support 1A - 7A of fan at +12V so as far as amperage you should be fine. That's on page 2.34 (number 8) of the latest English manual for that board from their website.

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So you're saying that if I do what I have outlined above the fan will not work? It's a Delta fan model EFC0912BF. – user647345 Oct 2 '11 at 23:29
What I'm saying is that it's not likely to work. I'm not saying it won't work. I'm also arguing against "just stripping the wires and mating them up" because it's designed not to work in your system. – jcolebrand Oct 2 '11 at 23:41
I don't think you know what you're talking about. Someone else please help. And thanks for chucking me in the common denominator pile with that snobby post. I have been building my own PCs for more than a decade now and I have never owned a Dell. I am not sure what you think they do to their fans besides change the connectors on them. Anything more than that would not make business sense. I have never learned about electrical engineering and looking for someone who has, not just someone using specious reasoning. – user647345 Oct 2 '11 at 23:47
actually, no, most dells these days seem to have dropped the stupid non standard parts thing. The case is still a PITA to work with, but i have not found one non standard part in the older dell i use as a spare system – Journeyman Geek Oct 2 '11 at 23:59
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After doing some research and learning how 4-pin PWM fans work I have went on and did it. I have connected white and yellow wires, which seem to be the 'control wire' used to vary the speed of the fan. Everything works, even mobo's fan speed control. – user647345 Oct 3 '11 at 2:00
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