Artic Air Personal Cooler, Silent Fan Hack

I recently purchased this Artic Air Ultra fan from home depot and it works very well however it is very loud. I live in Las Vegas where the summer heat has already begun and the nights are already icky hot. I wanted to use this fan at night however it is so loud even on the lowest setting that I simply turned it off and had to sleep uncomfortably. I woke up this morning and remembered I happened to have an extra pc fan from a silent pc fan kit I had just purchased on amazon. Its from Artic ,a Pc fan cooler company, and it looked like the same size. Determined to sleep and stay cool I went to work figuring out how to disassemble and reassemble this fan. It took me about 25 minutes total to complete and now its silent at last! I really hope this helps other people and its a very simple project.

I'm not sure if I really need to say this but I don't want anybody acting surprised this will definitely void your warranty.

Yes I know its a modification not a hack, but hack is searched more than modification!

Artic Air Ultra personal fan

ARCTIC F12 PWM - 120 mm Very quiet motor, Fan Speed: 230–1350 RPM

A metal file

A magnetic tip Phillips head screw driver would be best

Gorilla glue or super glue

Crimp tool

2 Blue Crimp Connectors

Pull the filter tray as far out as the unit will allow.

Remove the filter.

Angle filter tray up and filter tray tabs should slip out of the track, I don't know what else to call it but its very straight forward you shouldn't have any trouble removing this.

There are some tabs that you need to un-clip ,you might need a small flat head for this but I didn't.

It comes apart very easily and its made out of high quality plastic so don't be afraid to use force if you feel its appropriate to separate the bottom panel.

You do not need to remove or unscrew this part it has nothing to do with the upgrade.

You might see in pictures in other steps that I unscrewed this but there is no need to do this as you can comfortably upgrade the fan without ever touching this piece.

Unscrew the 6 screws holding the left and right plastic panels to the fan.

The screws are hard to put back in without a magnetic screwdriver, you can choose to only partially unscrew the screws as the panels can be removed with them only half way unscrewed.

Peel the top of the instructions back on the right panel to the seem where the panel meets the top panel.

The side plastic panels have two easy tabs to un-clip on each panel and then they come right off.

I would advise against removing the filter instructions.

Once the plastic panels have been removed the fan unit and plastic back panel will be stuck together and the wires for the fan go into the control housing which simply slides out of place when you remove the fan.

Remove the fan by just lifting it up and setting it next to the control board and its housing, it wont be screwed or clipped into anything besides the back plastic fan guard panel, separation of these will be covered in the next step.

*note the fan has positive and negative leads connected to the board *

To access the control board just slide the dark gray plastic shroud, that has the fan speed button, up from the plastic housing.

Unplug the fan leads from the board.

File down the gray nubs that are holding the fan in place.

The fan will slide off the gray posts of the plastic fan guard panel when the nubs have been filed down enough.

You will need to splice the original fan's adapter to the new fan if you are using the same model as I did.

The negative wire on the f12 was a black wire with gray dashes along its side .

The positive wire will be the one wire directly next to the negative wire. Please refer to my pictures or message me for clarification.

Before reassembling this unit I highly recommend testing the device to make sure you spliced the right cables.

Since we filed the nubs off the gray posts the new fan will need a dab of super glue on each nub to hold it.

Let dry for a few minutes outside so the smell doesn't seep into the plastic housing of the unit.

Now just put it back together by following the instructions in reverse.

ENJOY!