Here is a awesome little cable I’ve made. I changed computers as I was having troubles with the old one. When I was browsing for what I wanted the last thing I thought about was a fan jumper to plug my cupboard mounted 12 volt fan into. But fortunately I’ve been lucky my fan will run (slowly – yet perfectly) on the usb 5 volt rail.
I did do some tests once it was running. These included running and stall current draw. I found running draw was around 150ma and when I stopped the fan it registered 300ma. So all within usb’s 500ma abilities.
I used the pointy end of the usb cable that I had spare. I made the red and black wires longer than the others and soldered them onto 3x PCB pins. Check your fans wiring but mine was black center and red left. Now before I shunk the heatshrink I applied a small amount of hot glue on and round my work. This way when I applied heat to the heatshrink it made a tight join. I continued heating until I got it to the right size and some excess glue was expelled from the pins end.
I have heard not all fans turn on 5 volts. This one is a 90mm fan just in case you want to duplicate my results. Being that my fan is center negative if I do get the plug the wrong way around, it’s no problem. But you may need to mark yours.
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