A fanmate or other thingie to get 6-7volts

[AEmer]

Hey guys.
I'm the soon-to-be proud owner of 4 nexus black-and-white fans.

I'm not rediculously bad with electronics...I could probably wire-in a resistor to eat up 5 volts on the fans themselves...but I would like to avoid it by getting a fanmate, or possibly, a static resistor solution with as little bulk as possible. Call me crazy for wanting to throw perfectly good money after other people for this, but it's how I feel. (this also means I'm not wirering them up to go from 12 volts to 5 volts, kthx =P)

Thing is, most fanmates don't give any indication of how many volts they actually suck up...sure, I reduce the speed of the fan, but how close am I to the point where the fan might not start?

I figure that with my system monitors, I can probably get me a drive bay slot fan-mate for 4 fans, and then adjust untill I get a set number of rpm's that people report is high enough that the fans should always come on, but really, if I could get one that gave me some indication of how many volts were sucked up? that'd be terrific.

Any recommendations are bound to be useful...unless they tell me to stop being such a dimwit snoot and get out my pliers, pincers and cutters and just wire the fans up in 2 side by side serial circuits...in which case, feel free to make them, but only for laughs =P

[kuzzia]

This seems very apparent, but, couldn't you adjust the Fanmate to make the fans start reliably. You know, start at the lowest voltage. Then, if it doesn't start, you could turn off the computer and increase the voltage... ?

It would probably take about 5 minutes or so.

[ces]

Take a look at these:
http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/ ... s_id=25981

http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/ ... s_id=21287

[CA_Steve]

When reviews say "the fan started up at 5.2 volt" - that's just an indicator and not a reliable number to judge ALL fans of that model and make. There's bound to be some variability. Your fan might start up reliably at 4.8V or 6V. So, you'll still end up doing some start-up experiments of your own.

[AEmer]

ces: Thankyou, that's exactly what I was looking for!

And yes, obviously I could run some experiments of my own, and CA_Steves point means I couldn't rely on exact voltage figures anyway...

Eh, I think I may have articulated the "real" problem poorly in my first post...which is getting reliable undervolting that I can't screw up, really.

I'm gonna think a bit about exactly what solution I should take.