Corsair H100i tiny guide confusion !

[Ahmad Mansour]

I was casually installing Corsair H100i into my system when I had a small contradiction of information, I though you were supposed to connect the two radiator fans to CPU_FAN and CPU_OPT headers, but the installation guide says "connect the 3-pin pump RPM wire to any motherboard 3 or 4-pin header", notice "any", and the next page tells me to connect the two fans into the pump itself.
My questions are:
- Say I followed the installation guide (I probably will not), how is the pump supposed acquire the CPU temperature and act accordingly ?!
- And is it OK if I ignore the instructions and connect the the two fans to CPU_FAN and CPU_OPT headers and connect the pump RPM to any motherboard fan header ?

 

[Gam3r01]

I would connect the fans to the pump. The pump and whole h100i system gets its info from the USB header on the motherboard connected via micro usb to the pump waterblock itself. Hence the i in the name, it uses corsair link.

Mine is setup using two fans on the rad, through a y splitter, to one port on the waterblock, then the waterblock is hooked up to USB, and to the CPU_FAN header on my motherboard.

 

[Ahmad Mansour]

But what if I don't want to use Corsair Link ?!, what about during boot or using UEFI, where Corsair Link isn't running ?!, and what about during installing Windows ?!, how is the pump supposed to know the CPU temperature at those situations ??

 

[Gam3r01]

Corsair link works passively, even when the software isnt installed.