Thanks for this info- I’ll try it out tonight when I get home.
So, these proprietary power supplies- is there no 3rd party quality, quiet psu that would do the job, or am I stuck?
As a matter of fact, I just installed the fan last week. It’s on a series of clips. The old one just slid out and the new one snapped in. It was a breeze (no pun intended).
It’s run beautifully since, no noise, no nothing.
It doesn’t need to be plugged into the motherboard, it just needs power. Plug the fan connector and a free 4-pin connector into the adapter. If you don’t have a free 4-pin, the adapter is pass-through. Unplug one from a drive, plug the adapter into the drive, and the connector you removed into the adapter.
Cool (also, no pun intended)- thanks for the update. I may have to bite the bullet on this one and pay the vig to Dell.
Ah! This actually makes sense now! I believe, from your description, that the adapter IS a pass-through- I was wondering why it was built the way it is, but I disregarded it at the time as being “spare parts” that I wouldn’t be needing.
Thanks much!
PC Power & Cooling has Dell-specific power supplies. The have a lookup tool where you plug in the particular model number of your PC and they’ll tell you which one you need.
Just one of the several reasons I dislike Dell - the power supplies they use are **mechanically ** identical to standard PSUs but the **wiring ** is wildly different. Sure, they use the same 5 volts, 12 volts, etc as industry-standard, but on different pins, so you’re guaranteed to destroy a lot of hardware by using a non-Dell PSU.
That’s perfect- I will definitely be checking that more closely when I get home. It’ll be nice to have a quiet machine again.
And I think I’ve gotten to the point that my next PC will be a custom job- whether or not I assemble it myself. I don’t really knock Dell- their machine has performed just fine- but I think I’m at a point in the learning curve that I am ready for a more customizable and lean machine.
smoke,
Kind of late in telling you this, but you should’ve just gone to the Dell Community Forum with your original question. Just do a search on “Dimension 8100 fan” or “8100 noise”. There, you’ll find a lot of very knowledgeable users (who owned Dim 8100s!) with their advice based on their actual experiences. I happen to own a Dell Dim 8100 since 2001. With some upgrades along the way, it’s been a real workhorse and is still going strong.