Hey everyone! As the title states, I've succeeded in the long and tedious process of sleeving my fans with paracord and I wanted to share my experience with you all. Think of this as kind of a guide, or a supplement. I highly recommend newbies to read Lutro0's sleeving guides because I'll be skipping over a lot of necessary sleeving techniques to keep this short and sweet.
Basically my endeavors began during my project build, Arete. It's a military camo build, and after painting my radiators mud brown I found that the stock black sleeving clashed with the radiators too much. Understandably, there aren't very many companies that produce a brown sleeving (and I can't blame them). The only sleeving that was going to come close to brown and remain weaved sleeving was MDPC. I love MDPC sleeving a lot, but with Nils' minimum order price and shipping from Germany it was going to be a little too costly. So the next best thing was paracord. It's a lot harder to sleeve in, but comes in so many different colors. If you're thinking about doing this, I'll tell you right now it takes tons of patience. It's long and tedious, but worth it depending on your build color. I apologize in advance for the excess of pictures; I'm linking this thread on my build page in an attempt to not be redundant on both threads.
Alright well first I had to start with the stock sleeving on the Noctua's. It's pretty decent stuff, and I know out of experience it's flame retardant
To remove it, I cut both pieces of black heatshrink off the ends, stuck my exacto blade in one end and pulled down on the sleeving.
That brings you to this point. If your fan has wires that are sort of "melted" or fused together, leave them this way. It will help drastically with the paracord sleeving later.
To get the paracord over the connectors, the fan pins have to be shortened in height. If you own a crimping tool and some fan pins, I highly suggest you cut the pins off and re-crimp them later. If you don't, bend the bottom folded piece of the fan pins completely straight out. Make sure you leave a little piece still folded down so the paracord doesn't catch. Follow the picture below and you'll be golden.
After bending the fan pins, the next part is routine paracord. Cut the length of your paracord, take out the innards and briefly hold each end under a lighter to prevent fraying.
This picture just shows off the heatshrink I purchased to match the fan color. The most common fan heatshrink is 1/4", however I highly recommend 3/16", which is what I purchased. I feel that it looks cleaner and with some slight stretching fits over the paracord without any troubles. If you're using MDPC heatshrink, disregard that. MDPC has a higher shrink ratio than standard.
After preparing the paracord, being feeding it over the connectors. On three pin fans, you may be able to use heatshrink to cover up the pins, but on four pin PWM, it won't fit. However if you bent the fan pins right, you won't need to cover the pins. Slowly and carefully feed the paracord down the wires, being cautious to only go in one direction. Don't attempt to remove the paracord in the opposite direction once it's on, it will get caught on the pins and stuck, resulting in a huge mess and frustration. If you made it all the way, congratulations! Slide on your heatshrink and fit the connector back on. Here are some pictures of my results:
Now a tan colored sticker to cover up the Noctua label, and these fans are all set for my rig!
Hope you guys enjoyed. Let me know if you have any questions!
Basically my endeavors began during my project build, Arete. It's a military camo build, and after painting my radiators mud brown I found that the stock black sleeving clashed with the radiators too much. Understandably, there aren't very many companies that produce a brown sleeving (and I can't blame them). The only sleeving that was going to come close to brown and remain weaved sleeving was MDPC. I love MDPC sleeving a lot, but with Nils' minimum order price and shipping from Germany it was going to be a little too costly. So the next best thing was paracord. It's a lot harder to sleeve in, but comes in so many different colors. If you're thinking about doing this, I'll tell you right now it takes tons of patience. It's long and tedious, but worth it depending on your build color. I apologize in advance for the excess of pictures; I'm linking this thread on my build page in an attempt to not be redundant on both threads.
Alright well first I had to start with the stock sleeving on the Noctua's. It's pretty decent stuff, and I know out of experience it's flame retardant
To remove it, I cut both pieces of black heatshrink off the ends, stuck my exacto blade in one end and pulled down on the sleeving.That brings you to this point. If your fan has wires that are sort of "melted" or fused together, leave them this way. It will help drastically with the paracord sleeving later.
To get the paracord over the connectors, the fan pins have to be shortened in height. If you own a crimping tool and some fan pins, I highly suggest you cut the pins off and re-crimp them later. If you don't, bend the bottom folded piece of the fan pins completely straight out. Make sure you leave a little piece still folded down so the paracord doesn't catch. Follow the picture below and you'll be golden.
After bending the fan pins, the next part is routine paracord. Cut the length of your paracord, take out the innards and briefly hold each end under a lighter to prevent fraying.
This picture just shows off the heatshrink I purchased to match the fan color. The most common fan heatshrink is 1/4", however I highly recommend 3/16", which is what I purchased. I feel that it looks cleaner and with some slight stretching fits over the paracord without any troubles. If you're using MDPC heatshrink, disregard that. MDPC has a higher shrink ratio than standard.
After preparing the paracord, being feeding it over the connectors. On three pin fans, you may be able to use heatshrink to cover up the pins, but on four pin PWM, it won't fit. However if you bent the fan pins right, you won't need to cover the pins. Slowly and carefully feed the paracord down the wires, being cautious to only go in one direction. Don't attempt to remove the paracord in the opposite direction once it's on, it will get caught on the pins and stuck, resulting in a huge mess and frustration. If you made it all the way, congratulations! Slide on your heatshrink and fit the connector back on. Here are some pictures of my results:
Now a tan colored sticker to cover up the Noctua label, and these fans are all set for my rig!
Hope you guys enjoyed. Let me know if you have any questions!
The Raven
(16 items) |
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The Raven
(16 items) |
