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Drawing power from inside PS4 to power peripherals

Shepanator

Nov 19, 2015
2
Joined
Nov 19, 2015
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2
Hi, I want to do a small project for fun and to also make my ps4 run a little cooler and quieter.
I have 2 80mm fans lying around from some RAM I bought and they happen to be the perfect thickness to stick to the back of a ps4 system. It would be trivial to power them with a usb cable (albeit at 5v) but I want a slightly more elegant solution.

Ideally I want to draw power from somewhere inside the ps4 to a fan splitter cable which will come out of the back of the ps4 (the vents are big enough to accommodate this), and then just plug the 2 fans right into them (I don't mind running the fans at 100%, the ps4 is far enough away that I won't hear it.)

I see 2 ways of doing this:
1) Splitting the single fan header already in the ps4 and running 2 cables to the fans. This would be preferred as then the fan speed would be controlled by the system. The downside to this is that the header in the system is a miniature 3-pin and I'm not even sure if it conforms to any kind of standard I could find a splitter for. (It looks exactly like the fan headers found inside laptops) Plus would this fan header even be capable of providing power for 3 fans when it was designed for only 1? I really don't want to be left with a burned out fan header.
Pic of header (left hand edge near the top)
Pic of fan

2) Draw power directly from the ps4 PSU. It would be a quick and dirty method, just draw power from the 2 motherboard power pins that the power supply directly sits on. However I'm a bit of an electronics novice and I'm not sure if it's safe to just directly hook up the fans to the 12v rail, would the fans introduce any interference I should worry about?

Thanks in advance for any help.
 

Martaine2005

May 12, 2015
4,932
Joined
May 12, 2015
Messages
4,932
Hi Shepanator,
I think trial and error for the 12v rail..The ps4 might detect immediate current draw and shut down thinking a short is present..possibly?
I would try the 12v from the HDD. At least a current draw would be expected by the system.
But I really don't know. I can't imagine it would make much difference.
Try it and let us know!

Martin
 

Shepanator

Nov 19, 2015
2
Joined
Nov 19, 2015
Messages
2
I found a splitter that takes a 4-pin gpu fan header and splits it to another gpu fan header and a normal desktop 3-pin header.
I might have to modify it slightly to get it to fit the ps4's 3-pin header but shouldn't be difficult.

If that doesn't work then I'll start looking for alternative power sources.
Taking power from the HDD is a good idea, I didn't think of that.
 
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