Question Aio cooler plug

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jhmc93

jhmc93

Aug 3, 2022
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I have a deep cool gamemaxx l120 aio cooler and my motherboard has 4 pins for the cpu fan where the cooler has 3 pin plug, will it still work?
 
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To be honest, with the lack of available ports and need for such, I'd ignore the factory instructions. They are a one size fits all, and they do fit any of the basic AIO's of any brand.

What I'd do instead is get a molex to fan adapter and plug the pump in directly to the psu. I'd put the AIO fan on the cpu_fan header, and any other fan on the front_fan header.

The pump needs to run 100%, all the time, so direct to psu isn't an issue. The fan is better being controlled by cpu temp, and there's a need for airflow, that's covered by the only remaining fan header.
 
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Karadjgne said:
To be honest, with the lack of available ports and need for such, I'd ignore the factory instructions. They are a one size fits all, and they do fit any of the basic AIO's of any brand.

What I'd do instead is get a molex to fan adapter and plug the pump in directly to the psu. I'd put the AIO fan on the cpu_fan header, and any other fan on the front_fan header.

The pump needs to run 100%, all the time, so direct to psu isn't an issue. The fan is better being controlled by cpu temp, and there's a need for airflow, that's covered by the only remaining fan header.
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Ye I just need to get it to boot first
 
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Cpus will protect themselves from mistakes, as best as they are able. They have built in shutdown procedure if they detect nothing in the cpu_fan header. My preference is a fan there, regardless of aio beliefs, simply because 98% of aios do not need any sort of speed control, but realistically I don't want to listen to a fan at full blast when the pc is idle.

You can hook it up however which way for boot, as long as cpu_fan has something connected. I'd leave off the side panel unless that case has no front fan option available, until you get adapters/splitters to enable the case fans.
 
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Karadjgne said:
Cpus will protect themselves from mistakes, as best as they are able. They have built in shutdown procedure if they detect nothing in the cpu_fan header. My preference is a fan there, regardless of aio beliefs, simply because 98% of aios do not need any sort of speed control, but realistically I don't want to listen to a fan at full blast when the pc is idle.

You can hook it up however which way for boot, as long as cpu_fan has something connected. I'd leave off the side panel unless that case has no front fan option available, until you get adapters/splitters to enable the case fans.
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Still doesn’t run, I have aio pump connector in cpu fan and aio fan in front panel. I’ve been told it may be the motherboard doesn’t like my aio
 
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Motherboard doesn't care. It can't tell the difference between a fan and the pump. All the motherboard sees is something needing 12v plugged in. You could hook up a cell phone charger from a car, uses 12v, it'd be the same thing to the motherboard.

Is all power connected? Everything seated correctly, monitor on correct port?
 
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jhmc93 said:
I have a deep cool gamemaxx l120 aio cooler and my motherboard has 4 pins for the cpu fan where the cooler has 3 pin plug, will it still work?
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A 3 pin plug means the pump is DC controlled. With a 4 pin header the motherboard can properly support EITHER a DC controlled pump OR a PWM controlled fan which uses all 4 pins.

It's generally desireable to run a pump at 100% all the time and it should be quiet enough to do so. So plug the pump connector in the 4 pin CPU fan header - it will fit but one of the header pins won't be connected. Then adjust the CPU fan to be DC controlled, +12V constantly in BIOS. This way you can monitor pump RPM.

If you absolutely must you can set up a profile to make the pump be quieter when temp is low, but don't use less than 6 or 7 V at the lowest since motors need higher voltage to start than they do to run.
 
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My board shows light to say power connected, but it doesn’t start up when I press the button on case I’ve tried a different power switch, I don’t know if it motherboard or psu.
 
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jhmc93 said:
My board shows light to say power connected, but it doesn’t start up when I press the button on case I’ve tried a different power switch, I don’t know if it motherboard or psu.
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Turns out it my psu. The psu doesn’t have a 4+4 connector, so ordered a molex to cpu off Amazon, my aio fan rgb was flickering does anyone know why this could be?
 
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