I modded an exhaust fan in the top of my CoolerMaster WaveMaster Tower where some USB and firewire ports were. However, the exhaust fan cord was too short to connect to basic mobo fan connector, so I switched my Athlon 3800 fan up to the mobo fan connector and the exhaust fan to the CPU fan connector. Is this ok? Does CPU fan connector produce more RPMs or do fan RPMs simply correspond to individual fan specs? I have Cool-N-Quiet but disabled it and am just running the CPU and NB fans at full speed. Temps without gaming are 36C CPU and 23C SYS. Looks good to me hoping to be better b/c I'm installing a ATI 9800 XT 256MB video card later this week (to replace a ridiculously horrible nVidia FX 5700 256MB). I understand the Radeon 9800 XT runs rather warm. Well, should I keep this connection or should I modify my mod so exhaust fan is connected to mobo fan connector and the CPU fan to the CPU fan connector? Thanks in advance for any advice and recommendations.

"I modded an exhaust fan in the top" - Good modding. Heat rises. Top is always exhaust/blowhole.

"I switched my Athlon 3800 fan up to the mobo fan connector and the exhaust fan to the CPU fan connector." - Ok.

"Does CPU fan connector produce more RPMs or do fan RPMs simply correspond to individual fan specs?" - From my exp, it seems they're the same. The RPM is controled by the fan and fan controler. If there's no controler, the fan runs at full speed.

"36C CPU and 23C SYS" - Decent temps.

"ridiculously horrible nVidia FX 5700 256MB" - Would you dump it in my garbage can?

As for your current setup, if you don't need BIOS to control CPU fan speed, it's ok. Only a handful of mobos can control CPU fan speed. Mine does. But I use TT11+'s rear bracket knob to control the speed. Also, your BIOS CPU fan speed will report differently and may trigger an alert if the rpm is below a threshold.

You might want to replace the 9800 HSF with Artic Vga Cooler.

The fan RPM for my exhaust fan is around 2600 which seems low since the NB fan is at 4900. I may turn the exhaust fan a 1/4 turn and I think it would then reach the basic mobo fan connector--but this will take tedious work.

As far as the nVidia FX 5700 card--I just had a Radeon 9600 XT which I left in my old computer I sold--it was 10xs the card for FarCry than this 5700. I got the 9800 XT for $128 @ CompUSAauctions.com--I figured with that price what a sensible upgrade--and I've been fed up w/ the 5700's poor overall graphics and freezing periodically during FarCry and HL2. If you want I would be willing to negotiate minimal $ to recoup some of the cost of getting a new card.

As far as changing 9800's hsf, I'll wait see how high my sys temp goes up. I understand anything in the upper 30sC is not particularly good-- is that true?

"I understand anything in the upper 30sC is not particularly good-- is that true?" - I don't monitor the GPU temp. No idea. There's no such thing as too cold. I have had my 9550 with crappy cooling frozen up due to heat & o/cing. My mobo would reboot in the middle of a game. So I'm leaving things at stock speeds.

9600 xt is not too bad. 9800 is better. It'd be the mid-range card. I am keeping an eye on 6600GT price.

my fx 5700 256mb is fine, plays HL2 and CSS fine, but theres an error screen that sometimes comes up causing my computer to crash. im not sure what causes it but anyway. blue screen with something lik usb_bug_???? wtf is this? i dont see how USB can have an error.