More Z2 G4 Front Fan Questions

[jferguson]

Z2 G4 pinouts for front fan connector?  Alas, reliable sources for a new/used front fan for my Z2 g4 seem to have dried up.  On advice found elsewhere, I bought a noctua fan which is the right size and has a 4 pin connector which needs some trimming to fit the connector in the board.  

I'm going to design and 3d print a cage and as Mr Grove has so kindly revealed the fan blows into the case.  I wonder what effect this will have on the Nvidia GTX 1070 which has its own fans.

[SDH]

You can imagine it helps to know what Z2 G4 you're asking about...

Tower? SFF? Mini? Each is very different. Assuming it is a Z2 G4 Tower then the option part kit from HP would be what you want and it can end with AA or AT:

Kit has 2 parts, fan and holder

The normal option part number ends with AA but if the kit is from a HP promotion it will end with AT... exact same kit:

Label on kit box...

The fan part of the kit will have a OEM part number on it... you can use this to find one on eBay. The fan label may also have a little HP part number subscript that indicates the wire length and plug end used. The front case fans don't need long wires. The HP case fan types generally have a reddish-brown plastic plug end, use standard 4-pin header PWM fan wire ordering, and the plug generally will have only 2 outside-edge orientation ridges (one on each side). Conventional PWM plugs are usually white with one side orientation ridge and one offset-from-the-other-side orientation ridge. This kit's Foxconn fan is shown below, is a 92x25mm fan, has high RPM value if no HP PWM braking is applied, and draws 0.4 Amps max. The same kit might have another OEM's equivalent fan instead, perhaps from Delta or AVC. Those are fine too as long as their label shows about 0.4 Amps max also:

Other 92 x 25 HP case fan would work equally well...

Yes, you want the fan's label to face inward... that is the direction of air flow. That will provide more cooling for all parts inside your case, and your video card will appreciate that.

HP generally has two part numbers for each part, an Assembly P/N and a Spares P/N. The AS P/N is often embossed in the black plastic of a part, or on a part label. This often is the easiest way to find the part on eBay because it is visible to the seller. The SP P/N is what you see instead when you look up your computer in the HP PartSurfer but that number sometimes is also shown in eBay ads. Here is your AS P/N:

This view is from the front of the case... looking inward

You can use 4 corner industrial strength Velcro tabs, zip ties, etc. to attach the fan to the inside of the case but I'd surely want to add a fan grill to the inside face of the fan to prevent wires from getting rubbed by the fan blades. Use Google to look up "HP Ghetto Mod". We have used Noctua fans in the past when HP had some of their OEM fans running faster/louder than needed but that has been improved by HP in more recent workstations. More recently the advice is to use the fans HP engineers chose for optimized cooling and noise management.

Important: Noctua fans are engineered to run slow, and the HP PWM braking applied via the motherboard's front case fan header will cause those to run too slow. I'd get an eBay HP 92 x 25 fan instead with 0.4A max current draw and the right type of red brown plug end (sometimes white), always with only the two edge orientation ridges for these workstation front case fans. 

[SDH]

1XM33AA is the equivalent option part number for the Z4 G4... you never know. That black plastic fan holder/PCIe card guide might also fit in the Z2 G4 tower. I don't have both workstations here to check on that. I know the one for the Z6 G4 won't fit in a Z4 G4.

Oops... I thought this issue seemed familiar. Read all of THIS . Ghetto mod looking good to me.

p.s. DGroves has both the TWR and the SFF versions of these IIRC. He wisely avoids the Mini.

[jferguson]

Thank you SDH for this incredibly informative reply.  Yes, it's a tower.  Regretably, I cannot find the kit you identify on Ebay.  There is one on Amazon, but the seller is unreachable and the single review reveals that the kit is not for a z2 g4 but maybe his machine was not a tower.  I suppose I can buy it and return it if it isn't corrrect.  I also appreciate the advice about the correct fan.

In the end, I looked high and low and there is not one such kit available, even HP spares says they are on back-order.  i can guess that the kids (anyone under 40) have sucked them up by buying used Z2 g4 Towers and converting them to gaming machines with big GPU's which trigger the missing fan alert.  Maybe there's a minimum order from HP's vendor which is too many for HP to feel comfortable ordering more.  My Nvidia GTX 1070 has two fans and a vent on the back. I assume it sucks in air from within the case and ejects it our the vent holes. 

this is a quadruple boot machine, Win 11, Win 10, Ubuntu 22.04, and Debian.  It's a new installation with migrated file systems form the old Elite 8300 tower which, alas, would not run Win 11 to the satisfaction of one of my application providers.  I must say, it's a whole lot quicker and will eventually have all the local data on NVMEs.

I suppose I shlould mark your response "solved" but i'd like to keep the thread open until I have whatever I do, done. 

BTW, how do you come to be so sharp on this stuff?

best regards

[SDH · Accepted solution]

Happy to help. You don't need the black plastic part... it is pretty easy to affix a fan to the inside face of the front of the case and get the benefit of it. It is very easy to find a replacement 80 or 92 mm recycled PWM fan from eBay to do the ghetto mod approach. Any standard wired PWM fan will spoof the motherboard if you just plug it in to that 4-pin header.... even a Noctua 40mm tiny PWM fan would do (but not get you the cooling).

Time, experience, compulsion, and a need to help out our IT guys who are always too busy to invest the time I did. I'm a one-trick-pony, however, and they run the whole circus otherwise.

[jferguson]

Well, there are two 3D printers crying out for something to make, so proper bracket here I come.  i think I'll record temps before and after.  The Z2 seems to have more temp sensors than anything I've ever gotten into.  I'm 82, retired after a career mostly attemptin architecture, but most interesting was 5 years as a Sun VAR,  386i to Sparc10's.  I still have an operating Sparc 10 which runs an app, I couldn't afford to buy today.  

Thanks again,

John

[jferguson]

Hi SDH,

This is what I did.  I had to do a bunch of iterations before I got the geometry right; hard to measure at the bottom of the case, but it fits and will be screwed to the two holes which were already in the chassis.  They're 6-32 instead of metric.  Material is PETG although PLA  would have worked equally well.  

I went with the Noctua fan because the cord was long enough. Even though I'd ordered the Foxconn fan with the same part number which shows in your photo, what I received was a short one.  

The two screws are SS FH 6-32 x 5/8 and the green collars are thick PLA washers I printed because it was so hard to handle the screws  alone because of their location inside the case.  

I'm probably going to post the STL and STEP files to Thingiverse, an online repository of designs of interest to people who have 3D Printers.

[rusidtz]

Hi,

Did you manage to print this?

Could you please share a file? I need it but it's not available for purchase in Bosnia?

Thanks,

[SDH]

Jferguson,

Nice work! That is far beyond a Ghetto Mod. I like your solution to getting a screwdriver down to the machine screws, and that Noctua fan looks great. I see you already have a forum member asking for the file(s) so he can print one himself. If you can please follow up with a link to a download site I'm sure many would appreciate that.

I just checked... HP PartSurfer does not have any of those original kits left and I bet they never will. So, your way is the best way to go now for a good safe install.

[SDH]

John,

I forgot to mention... I like stainless fasteners too, but if you've got a long vertical reach the ferrous ones work great on the tip of a magnetized screwdriver. Some quick swipes with a strong magnet (all the same direction) will give a regular tip some strong holding power for a while.