Basically, I did some reading, found out that to adjust the voltage supplied to the fan bus, you can use an LM317T Voltage Regulator chip, a small, cheap potentiometer, and a resistor or two. (Be sure to put a substantial heatsink on this chip !) A trip to the local Radio Shack (only thing we have), produced the electronic parts I needed, I had the rest (we'll say 'scavenged').

$ 2.00

$ 2.00 ?

  It's fairly self-explanatory from this pic, I hope. Using a pre-drilled Circuit Board to mount the Voltage Regulator, the Resistors, the Common Points, and little jumper wires where needed, not only holds everything in place, but gives it a nice 'professional' ghetto look.

  If you have a spare face plate to practice on, that would be cool. Since mine are black, I don't have a lot of them lying around, but I did have some white ones to test with. You can find out what size you'll need for drill bits, and prefit all the parts before you're committed to the real one. I have a swinging cover door on my case, and originally the knob wouldn't allow the door to close all the way. So, out with the Dremel, hack off more of the pot's shaft, and slice a nice little chrome knob in half, and that took care of that.

   I again used Mr. Dremel and the cutoff wheels to make the board narrow enough to fit on the bay cover. Don't know whether it was late, I got a bad batch of cutoff wheels, or it was the crack, but I think I went through about 12 or more of them. That was a record. Then after all was soldered, and TESTED**, I used a Hot Glue gun to secure the board to the back of the cover. Very slick, too. And, from first hand knowledge, you can easily pop it off to, um, maybe move a resistor lead that somehow got soldered in the wrong place, preventing anything from working, and reglue it.

   TESTED** I would suggest putting it all together with alligator jumper clips or something to see how the parts go together. I used an old 200watt psu I have jumpered to allow me to use it without being plugged into a motherboard. Then, when you have it all soldered, test it once more before glueing, and mounting. It's a lot easier to fix something before it's mounted than to take it all apart and do it right the second time...not that I would know or anthing.

   One thing: At first I used a flimsy little heatsink I'd scavenged, until I actually touched it ! Whew, that bad boy was HOT. So I cut up some stout aluminum ribbed heatsink I scavenged from a powersupply (you can see it in the picture above), and used some good ol' Arctic Silver II (that was all I had available... where's that cheap crap when you need it?) - and it's a LOT cooler. Looking forward to evenings and mornings. Maybe I can just siesta out when it's toasty, not have to listen at all. hahaha.

   Anyway, I think we have a winner. I can turn my fans all the way off, or wide open. I believe there is a 1.25 voltage drop, but in all actuality, it doesn't seem to make much difference. They might not be spinning at the top of their lungs, but almost. I also have not incorporated an On/Off switch, I couldn't see the need for it in my situation. That's up to you. My psu has plenty of power to kick everything in at the beginning.

   That's about it. Whole project took about 3 hours the first time. I think I could knock one out now in less than an hour. Not only that, it doesn't look totally ghetto, fer a change. heh.....