Question Fan setup and connection. (help)

Oct 12, 2019
2
0
10
Hey guys, i hope there are some clever people here who can/want to help me out.

First of this is what I am working with:

Case - Corsair Crystal 570X RGB Black (has 3x SP120 fans in the front of the case with a corsair rgb fan led hub along with it.)
CPU Cooling - Corsair Hydro H100i Pro RGB (will replace 2x ML Series fans for SP120 which will be mounted at the top of the case)
Standalone Fan - SP120 RGB (mounted at the back of the case)
Motherboard - Asus Prime x370 pro

1.
Corsair seems to recommend that the top and back fans push air out of the case while the front ones suck air in.
Is it decent enough for the CPU cooler to push air out of the case instead of sucking fresh air in? (Will the cooling be as good?)

2.
Correct me if i am wrong, but for my 6x SP120 fan setup all i need is a Corsair Commander Pro, which I can connect the Corsair RGB fan LED hub to and the fans themselves? And it gets power directly from the PSU through SATA i believe, and connects to the motherboard for control.

Anything to be aware of here? Power usage, or anything motherboard related?
Saw someone talk about splitting the power or something like that. Is that going to be needed?
 

kaehligj

Prominent
Mar 15, 2018
335
28
695
I'm defo not an expert on builds.
But i do have many years of technical experience in general.

1) If the CPU fan has its own exhaust, then it must be provided with best possible fresh air supply from inside the cabinet. This will most certainly give the best CPU cooler air flow.
This again means that both front and rear fans should push air into the cabinet, and any top fans should of course blow out (up).

2) power sourcing is always a concern, when you are hub'ing on several hubs downstream.
In my book you should add a separate power to each hub or split point to avoid overheating (burning) of the connectors.

If the mobo supports more than 1 RGB connector use them all to spread the power loading.

Does that make sense to you ?
 

Karadjgne

Titan
Ambassador
1. Standard doctrine for optimal airflow and cooling is air in low front and exhaust out high rear corners.

When it comes to aios thats no different, a fan is a fan, you are still pulling air in the front, into the case and exhausting out the opposite corner. If the radiator is in front, it'll see lower air temps coming through it, which only drop cpu temps a couple of °C vrs top mount using case air temps which are warmer. Because the radiator diffuses the airflow (not air amount) it can affect the gpu a few °C if front mounted as air has a harder time reaching it. Overall there's really not much difference worth bothering about, you can mount either way since temps bounce all over anyways according to cpu/gpu usage and fps etc.

Much will depend exactly on how the rad fits, Corsair might recommend top mount as best, but often it's really not as top mounts can conflict with the motherboard connections, even ram slots if the case isn't tall enough. Often many cases do not even have 240mm capability on top, only 120mm, making front mount the only option. It's a generic recommendation that really doesn't mean much.

2. Honestly, the ML fans are considerably better than the SP's, especially for the radiator, and sleeve bearing fans aren't well designed for upside down horizontal use. So you'll loose performance at the radiator by that move. Yes the Commander Pro can handle all 6 fans no worries, standalone using motherboard input would be a better solution vrs using the case node as too many switches tends to get confusing to software. Set the case for pulse red, software commander to solid blue and your fans blink purple.

It's rgb. There's double the amount of fan wires, add in control wiring and things can get messy. All you really need is power in, control wire in and fans out. The simpler you keep things, the easier it'll be to deal with. Also, if using the case hub, it only has fan outputs, so anything coming from that is going to affect the inputs to the commander.

As far as splitting power etc, that usually only applies to aircoolers where the fans are powered by the cpu_fan header. With the pump of the aio header there, you'd not be controlling heatsink fans by the header, so no need for splitters etc.
 
Oct 12, 2019
2
0
10
Thank you both for your inputs. <3

I get the gist of what you both are saying, however I am still not confident of how set up my fans correctly.

To make this as simple as possible, can you dumb it down for me? :)

If the mobo supports more than 1 RGB connector use them all to spread the power loading.

The Commander Pro uses the RGB connector on the mobo, right? Doesn't it only have 1 cable to connect to the Mobo?


standalone using motherboard input would be a better solution vrs using the case node as too many switches tends to get confusing to software.

So what exactly do you mean by that?

By case node, i assume you mean the LED Hub, right?
A LED Hub connecting the RGB to a Commander Pro is a fairly normal setup for multiple fans, isn't it?

Like shown in the top picture below. (With 6 fans though)

Drawing931271.png





I am not sure the Mobo has enough available pins if i cut out the LED Hub. Or if that is even what you meant?

It has the following with 4 pins:
Cha_fan1
Cha_fan2
AIO_pump
W_Pump+
CPU_fan
CPU_opt