Replacing a noisy A3000 PSU fan - the elegant solution?

[First Ninja]

Hi everyone.

As any owner of the Amiga 3000 probably can vouch for, one of the machine's shortcomings is its loud PSU fan. Compared to just about anything available on the market today, the original A3000 fan is anything but quiet.

Since my A3000 is in need for some minor maintenance, I'm willing to part from my original PSU fan - and here's where some help might come in handy. Browsing through some old threads here on Amiga.org and other forums, I've realized that...

• ... the A3000 uses a standard 80 mm fan.
• ... replacing it is a matter of cutting the original power wires, and (somehow) latching the wires from the new fan onto the original wires from the A3000 PSU.

Here's a couple of photos showing what the process might look like:

Although I'm sure that the process shown on the photos makes for a solid replacement, it all seems a bit too "hacky" to me. I'd much rather go for a a more elegant solution that uses a proper set of suitable male/female connectors on each end of the two wires (so you'd be able to disconnect the fan from the CPU, in case you'd ever want to replace the fan at some other point in the future).

All of this being said, here are my questions:

• What sorts of connectors would be best suited for this project? (product links/example photos are appreciated!)
• Am I right assuming that the polarity of the Amiga 3000 wires determines whether or not the fan will blow air outside of the A3000 PSU or suck air inside it?
• Seeing that both solutions are in fact a thing, does the A3000 PSU fan blow hot air out of its casing, or suck cool air into it?

Any help is much welcome - thank you in advance!

[First Ninja]

kirk_m, NorthWay and Oldsmobile_Mike - thank you for all of your inputs and for sharing your own experiences. kirk_m - I think you misinterpreted my original post. Those photos I posted aren't mine, and fortunately not I can't take credit work the modification that has been made to that PSU. Like I said, I found that particular solution way too "hacky" for my personal taste. Since I was looking for a more elegant solution, I reached out here for some ideas.

NorthWay - I sort of went down the same route you've taken. Instead of opting for a 4 pin Molex, I chose the 2 pin variant (also known as "Tamiya plugs" - a matching pair was around €2.53 at an R/C hobby shop). The replacement fan in question is the PureWings 2 by Be Quiet! (around €9.65). Just like the A3000's stock fan, it's a 12V 80 mm fan. After a bit of tinkering, cleaning my dust-ridden PSU and installing Kickstart 3.1.4 in the process, I managed to get everything back together in working order. I can't stress the difference enough - with Commodore's old fan out of the way, the most noisy component of my A3000 is now the SCSI disk by far.

For anyone interested in seeing parts of the process, here are a few photos I took of said surgery!

Oh, and to anyone who comes across this post looking for the same solution I did - just like others have already mentioned in this thread, the Amiga 3000's original fan does suck air out of the case (and not the other way around). Closer inspection of the fan Commodore chose reveals that the direction of the air flow is shown on the fan by a tiny arrow. To make sure that the replacement fan spins in the same direction, be careful to:

• Hook up the new fan to the right wires (i.e. red wire from the A3000 PSU to the wire that connects to pin 1 on your new fan, and blue wire from the A3000 PSU to the ground wire from the new fan).
• Mount the new fan in the right direction - again, the air flow arrow should be pointed outwards.