Can i put a fan on my case which is meant to go in SYS Fan slots into a CPU OPT slot- which is meant for a water-cooling cpu?

[RagBagRover]

Hi, i am 90% there on building my pc and because my motherboard a Gigabyte Z97X SLI only has 4 fan power inputs one of which is for the cpu fan, so three. because i have 4 case fans, is it ok if i put the last of my fans power supply into a socket meant for a cpu water-cooling fan as the sockets look identical.
Also another separate question, all the fan headers are 4 pins whereas all the fans that i have brought or that have come with the case have 3 pins. I discovered that the fourth pin is for fan control however that pin is in the middle of the 4 and so either the fan won't be plugged into pin 1 which is GND?? or pin 4 which is VCC??? will this matter? is there perhaps an adapter?
Thanks in advance.

 

[kanewolf]

The CPU fan should be either attached to the pump if you have an all-in-one water cooling solution like an H100i or should be connected to one of the fans on the air-cooled heat sink. This way the motherboard can alert you to shutdown IF the fan/pump fails.

 

[unksol]

fan headers are fan headers. plug your fans into what you have. the only difference will be how the motherboard controls them. there is no such thing as " a socket meant for a cpu water-cooling fan"

" I discovered that the fourth pin is for fan control however that pin is in the middle of the 4 and so either the fan won't be plugged into pin 1 which is GND?? or pin 4 which is VCC??? will this matter"

WHAT? the 4th pin is by definition the 4th pin. it CANNOT be in the middle. It goes GND, VCC, TACH, PWM CONTROL. Further more there is only ONE possible way to plug a 3 pin into a 4 pin. You can't do it wrong without cutting off/ forcing something. just like all PC cable connections. just plug it in the way it fits

 

[hypergon]

Let me help you:
4-pin fan headers are called pwm headers and can control (depending on the implementation) the speed of a fan via pulse wide modulation (pwm). A 3 pin fan can only be controlled by voltage -> higher voltage=higher rpm
The motherboard knows if there is a 3pin or 4pin plugged in, you can't do anything wrong...

The cpu-opt header uses the same signal of the CPU header and can't be controlled separately.
My Maximus 6 gene has 3+2 fan headers (3x 4pin, 1cpu, 1cpu-opt) and i connected my pwm pump to CPU, on 2 of the 4pin i got 2 gentle typhoon each and the last header has a single fan. To do so I used simple 3pin y-splitters.

Only put fans on fan headers, don't touch the jumpers

 

[pimpanther]

i have nothing connected to my cpu 4 pin,the pump came with a 3 pin connector and can i find a connector to fit from a 3pin to a 4? no i cant.iv looked but tono avail.can anyone help pleASE