Build Advice Trying to control EVGA Pump, Three Radiator Fans, and Kraken G12 VRM fan without connecting to motherboard - Complete isolation of GPU cooling

[BiggityBates]

Hello everyone,

This is my first post so please forgive me if I am breaking any rules, but I am desperate for some help. I know there are easier ways to do this, but I am trying to control the EVGA pump (3 pin female, supposed to plug into CPU header), three Radiator fans, and the kraken G12 vrm fan, all from the GPU fan header on the 1080 FE. I have a splitter that connects to the GPU fan port, and has a 4 and 3 pin male standard PWM connection. I also have a POWERED PWM hub and a couple of PWM fan splitters if needed. Also, nothing is plugged into the AIO's three fan ports, one of which is 4 pin.

The way its currently hooked up, is the GPU fan port is connected to the small VRM fan with the 3 port connection, and the four port connection is going to a PWM powered hub. In that hub, I have the PWM signal port populated with one Radiator fan, and the the other two fans are plugged into two other non-PWM ports. This is fine and it kinda works, but with the VRM fan being smaller, the PWM signal its receiving and the radiator fans are spinning and two different speeds, so theres some confusion there. And both afterburner and Precision are wonky in general. Basically, I would like to completely isolate the cooling of the GPU from the motherboard as much as possible. I have thrown together a really crappy diagram of what I am trying to do, and was hoping for some advice. I would like to have everything run off of the GPU (besides power), including the AIO pump. The diagram here is an idea I had to accomplish this, and I was wondering what your thoughts were.

Since I put this diagram together, I have done some more research, and maybe it would be a better idea to actually plug the 3 pin AIO cable into the FOUR pin header, swapping the connections of the kraken fan and evga pump coming off the GPU, so the pump RPM would be monitored by the GPU directly. In that configuration, that would leave the PWM pin not connected to anything though, correct? Also, with the kraken fan being a different size than the other three radiator fans, I think I may have to connect that separately completely somewhere else.

I also have the three fan ports on the AIO itself, one being 4 pin, that I could utilize somehow with a splitter if needed. Its very convoluted, but my objective is to have everything controlled by the GPU directly and not plug any pump or fan, with the exception of maybe the kracken since it's smaller, into the motherboard. I think with the right setup of cables, powered PWM hub, and connecting things the right way, it could work. There has to be some combination of connections, that I am just not able to put together in my head, to do it. Maybe I could plug a splitter into the three pin side of the GPU fan head splitter, and connect the pump to the four pin side of that, and then connect the 3 pin side to the powered PWM hub? Would that work since the PWM is on pin 4 and would have a connection to the hub? I I would just lack RPM readings on the fans, but they would be modulated correctly I believe. I would like to just have the radiator fans plugged into the pump's fan ports, but then everything would be powered by the GPU fan port and I'm sure that would overload it. So I need to involve the powered PWM hub somehow, I am just not sure what to incorporate into the hub, what to plug into port 1 which controls the rest of the things on the hub, and the pump three pin connector.

I know this is definitely the hard way to do things, I know I could plug things in and involve MoBo headers and everything and it would work, but I'm really wanting to completely have all of the cooling components, including the pump, 3 radiator fans, and if possible, the kraken VRM fan all controlled and receiving status and instruction from the component it is cooling, which is the GPU.

So with all of that said, anyone have any ideas? This is the diagram I threw together, but I left out the fact that I also have nothing plugged into the three fan ports connected to the AIO, one is a PWM port. I also have two traditional PWM fan splitters I could incorporate somewhere as well. Hopefully someone smarter than me can figure out how to connect this all together and have it be accurate and controlled via GPU and afterburner/Precision X1. I don't mind having the kraken fan plugged into the MoBo if it needs to be due to it's different size if there is no other option, nor do I mind running EVGA's pump software, and having the usb port of the pump plugged into the USB header. Its just everything else I would like controlled and informed directly by the GPU.

Any input or help would be greatly appreciated. And yes, I know this is making things way more complicated than they have to be. You can critize the setup, but if someone could help me make this work I would be truly appreciative. I have searched far and wide and definitely found useful info, but one post I found on here suggests having the pump plugged directly into port 1 on the PWM, since it is the vital part of the AIO, but I am not sure how that would work or if it would even work.

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

The idea/concept and execution might be fruitful but the only downside I see is that the pump will be made to run at the same RPM as the fans on the GPU and the AIO...which might not be a good thing considering how the pump often times needs to be at it's own RPM regardless of what the fan's RPM is/are.

If I were you, I'd have simplified it by plugging all PWM fans to the fan hub and the pump on a header on the motherboard, provided your motherboard has a PWM fan header available for a pump.

Perhaps you can list your current specs like so:
CPU:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:

 

[BiggityBates]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

The idea/concept and execution might be fruitful but the only downside I see is that the pump will be made to run at the same RPM as the fans on the GPU and the AIO...which might not be a good thing considering how the pump often times needs to be at it's own RPM regardless of what the fan's RPM is/are.

If I were you, I'd have simplified it by plugging all PWM fans to the fan hub and the pump on a header on the motherboard, provided your motherboard has a PWM fan header available for a pump.

Perhaps you can list your current specs like so:
CPU:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:

Hi! Thanks a lot for the welcome. I've been a long time lurker and this place has been a goldmine of information. Its sometimes tough to sort through how much content there is, you really have to get your serach terms (or what I like to call Google-Fu) down to get down to some specific scenarios like mine.

So here are my current specs, if there is a way to add this to my profile so it automatically shows up, I will make sure to get that done ASAP.

• CPU: Intel i9 9900k, stock clock speeds with boost, for now. Plan to overclock once I get everything settled. Cooled with the Corsair h100i RGB Elite (newest line I believe with the capellix LED pump head and the new ML120 RGB Elite Fansx2 - Top mounted as exhaust
• Motherboard: MSI MEG Z390 Ace
• RAM: 16GB Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB (black) 8gbX2, XMP enabled and runnning at 3466mhz
• STORAGE: Four 4TB HDD's set in a hardware RAID10, One 1TB NVME (WD Black 750 or something like that), and one 2TB NVME (Samsung 970 Evo Plus)
• GPU: ASUS branded Nvidia GTX 1080 Founders edition (Stock cooler removed, replaced with Kraken G12 bracket/VRM fan and using the EVGA 360mm CLC AIO for cooling, mounted in front as intake. Replaced stock fans with three Corsair SP120 RGB Elites. Just finished this and trying to get the cooling setup completely independent of the motherboard like the stock cooler was.
• PSU: Corsair 850W RMx (2018)
• Chassis: Corsair 5000D Airflow
• Additional information:
• 8 total fans, plus one small VRM fan
  • All Corsair, controlled via Corsair Commander Core and a Corsair Commander Core XT. The only exception to this is the three fans mounted to the radiator cooling the GPU
• Corsair Commander Core and Core XT control RGB as well as PWM fan control (With the exception listed above. RGB of these fans is Corsair controlled, just not the speed)

I'll figure out how to clean that up and add it as a possible signature or something like that for future reference, and hopefully have the cooling situation solved
Responding to your points:

The idea/concept and execution might be fruitful but the only downside I see is that the pump will be made to run at the same RPM as the fans on the GPU and the AIO...which might not be a good thing considering how the pump often times needs to be at it's own RPM regardless of what the fan's RPM is/are.
I was under the impression that it was based on percentage, not actual RPM speeds. So the pump would be running at full speed, which is fine. There is also an application EVGA makes that allows software control of this if I want to override. Remember, it's only a three pin female connector to the pump, so the pump speed would be published, but it wouldn't receive a PWM signal to modify the speed. This is fine, but ideally, I would like the pump to modulate on its own based on the coolant temp (which it does seem to capture and show in the EVGA Pump application). It may do this regardless of how it's hooked up, but I'm not sure. But I do know that having it hooked up to one of the two available CPU/AIO motherboard ports is causing the CPU temp to show up instead of the GPU temp. I'm hoping by connecting the pump through the hub directly to the gpu, that this temp will be the GPU temp, but probably still labeled in the app as CPU temp since it won't know the difference.

If I were you, I'd have simplified it by plugging all PWM fans to the fan hub and the pump on a header on the motherboard, provided your motherboard has a PWM fan header available for a pump.
I could do this, but this doesn't completely decouple the cooling of the GPU from the motherboard like the stock air fan blower did. The stock card was capable of obviously software control via afterburner or precision or whatever, but it was all self contained as well. The stock blower didn't need to be plugged into any sort of headers or anything. That's what I am trying to do. Is it overcomplicating things by billions of times? Yes, absolutely. I could have this hooked up and running mostly the way I want and have it controlled through software since the GPU temp is published. I just think that once I have this whole fan configuration layout correct, and plug things in correctly and utilize the the PWM hub, A PWM splitter or two, and possibly even the three untouched fan ports that come from the pump head, that I could just set it up that way and the cooling would perform at a lower hardware level if it ever needed to and be self contained. With the pump connected to the GPU somehow, things may show up labeled as CPU temp when it's actually the GPU in certain applications, but I really do think this is possible and probably been done already. I can't think of a reason preventing it from being set up to run all based on the gpu as long as you don't overdraw power from the GPU fan port, and you don't screw up and introduce more than one PWM signal in your loop. The smaller Kraken fan may need to be plugged into the motherboard since it is a different size and will report different speeds than the others even if it is running at the same speed percent, but I would be fine with hooking up the small VRM fan to a MB fan hub and running it at 100%. It's everything else I am trying to get isolated as if it were similar to the stock cooling system.

Thanks again for the reply. If I am wrong about the first part, please correct me. I was just under the assumption that things like that worked on a percentage basis and not an RPM basis. Like if things get warmer, speed up the fans by 15%. That would be different speeds for different sized fans and pumps, which isn't isn't ideal, but it wouldn't break anything. As far as I know.

Thoughts?

 

[BiggityBates]

I found this thread, which PaperDoc provides the answer to my questions I believe. https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...-with-a-kraken-g12-fan-hub-questions.3474228/

The thread is a few years old but so is my equipment. So I think I am going to go ahead and utilize the GPU fan header splitter/converter, and connect the four pin connection to the hub as described. Then I will plug the 3 pin AIO pump cable into port 1 of the hub, which reports back to the GPU the pump speed. As far as I can tell, since it's not receiving a pwm signal, the pump will just run at 100% and send that to the GPU and report it as the "Fan speed". Then, on the same powered hub, I can connect the three rad fans, which WILL receive PWM instructions from the GPU, but the GPU will NOT receive their RPM data back. Only the pump will be seen by the GPU. Everything would be controlled by the GPU at that point. I would be able to hopefully set fan curves in afterburner or precision x1 that would affect the three rad fans but not the pump. The problem is I am not sure if the GPU needs to see the speed increases of the fans for the fan curve to be effective. It will only see one flat speed, which is the pump. So will fan curves work in software?

I'm starting to question this setup as being optimal, and being more like "sub-optimal", having to only do this if you dont have enough fan headers available elsewhere. Maybe that's why it's hard to find results on this exact setup, because people don't TRY for this, they seem to be FORCED to do this if they want to do the G12 conversion. I have a mostly corsair ecosystem, maybe I plug the three rad fans into the powered PWM hub, and plug the hub into a port on a corsair commander core xt, and have the speed based on the GPU temp reading in icue somehow? Plug the pump into the MoBo as suggested as CPU_Fan?

If there was a way I could utilize the three fan header cable, which one port is PWM coming from the pump head, that might be better too, that way the AIO is all connected the way it is expected to be.

I dunno, I think that I have so many options that I am not sure which would be best for my goal of trying to have the GPU natively control it's own cooling through the EVGA AIO. I want to overclock the card, I want it to know how to properly ramp up and down the radiator fans and ideally the pump (not sure if thats possible being the pump is three pin) based on heat and load and such like it would with its normal cooling system. I want to be able to control it as well via afterburner or precision or icue or something..... I just don't want it to HAVE to depend on software just in case. I guess I will just experiment and see what works and what doesn't. I think I have a basic enough understanding of PWM/DC, header amp loads, etc that if I experiment, I won't necessarily BREAK anything. It just may take a while for me to hook things up to where they work the way I'm intending.

I will hope for a reply with some options that would work, but for now, I will keep the pump plugged into the motherboard CPU header, and the fans plugged into the PWM Powered hub which connects directly to the GPU and have the kraken 92mm fan on the three pin side of the splitter so it will probably just run at 100%. I don't think there is a way I can configure my motherboard to have a particular header in DC mode and modulate based off GPU temps for the kracken fan so might as well just have it at 100% on the vrm. My only options are "CPU" and "SYSTEM" which I assume is the motherboard temps... I think that will work but I don't know if its the best way of achieving a safe overclock when high temps start taking place.

I can see the coolant temp in the EVGA Pump software, and I can control pump speed through the USB connection as well, so I guess if I run that, along with afterburner or precision, I can use that software for radiator fan modulation based straight from the GPU, and that should work. I guess.

 

[Paperdoc]

I'll get a more complete reply together soon, but some preliminaries.

You have some complexity here. At the root of most of this is that the common automatic fan control systems on a mobo are really TEMPERATURE control systems. The each have a target TEMP measured by a particular sensor, and each manipulates the speed of a header's fan to keep that temp on target. There is one sensor built into the CPU chip to guide CPU cooling, and another on the mobo for case ventilation fans. However, there has never been any standard way for a VIDEO CARD added into a PCIe slot to send out any temperature info to the mobo, nor any standard way for the mobo to send cooling info to the vid card. Thus ALL video cards do their own heat management in a manner similar to what the mobo does. That is, it uses its own temp sensor (usually in the GPU chip) and controls its own fan to keep that temp where the designers specify. Many such cards come with software utilities to let you examine and configure the card's cooling system. so the card makers have used proprietary techniques for communicating that into with the card. BUT the user has no way to access that info except by using the utility. The result, then, is that you can NOT use mobo BIOS Setup or any third-party software tool to manage cooling on the Video Card. If you want to do your own automatic management of the video card's cooling, about the only possibility is if you can somehow tap into the RESULT of what the card would do for itself, and rely on the card's own internal temperature and fan control tools (via the card's utility) to do this work. That is, IF you can access the power and control signals for the card's own cooling fan, and IF you know the electrical characteristics of those signals so you can use them elsewhere, maybe you can rig something.

OP, you have made a substantial re-design of the video card's cooling. As supplied it has one fan that cools the GPU chip and associated vid card hardware (like its VRM system). You have removed that fan and replaced it with an adapter that has a new VRM / card general cooling fan plus a way to mount on the GPU chip a pump and cooling block of an AIO cooler. That AIO system has its own fans for GPU cooling. ONE possibility for creating a new automatic GPU cooling control system is IF you can access the signals for the ORIGINAL fan on that card that you have now removed. Re-examine carefully the video card and the fan and shroud system you removed. I assume the old fan was plugged into a fan header on the video card. Look carefully at the header, at the wires from that old fan, and at the connector on the end of those wires. IF it happens that the card makers used "standard" computer case fan connections and connectors this might be done relatively easily.

Computer fans now come in two standard designs. The older ones use three wires with a standard colour code and pin layout like this

https://allpinouts.org/pinouts/connectors/motherboards/motherboard-cpu-3-pin-fan-connector/

Note the two ridges running down one side of the connector. These slip around a plastic "tongue" that sticks up beside the three pins of the male mobo header so there is only one way to plug in. In the photo in that link the ridges are on the bottom face of the connector. In this system the speed of the fan is altered only by changing the VOLTAGE supplied to the fan from Pin #2 (+VDC) and Pjn #1 (Ground), so these are called Voltage Control Mode fans. The voltage varies from 12 VDC for full speed down to about 5 VDC for slow speed without stalling.

The newer design are called PWM Mode fans and use 4 wires, like this

https://allpinouts.org/pinouts/connectors/motherboards/motherboard-cpu-4-pin-fan/

Note there that there is one colour code system widely used, bit a second system for some fans. For backwards compatibility this new system is VERY similar to the older one using the same electrical power and pin mechanical layout as much as possible so you CAN plug one system into the other. On the female 4-pin connector the external ridges are still there just outside the space of Pins 1 - 3, while Pin #4 is outside the ridges. There are two electrical differences. First, the power on Pin #2 is now always 12 VDC (not varying). Secondly, there is the new PWM control signal sent from the header to the fan on Pin #4. A Pulse Width Modulation signal likes like a square wave, except that a square wave is ON exactly 50% of the time always, whereas in a PWM signal the "% On" value varies. For computer fans, the PWM signal is at about 20 kHz frequency, and 5 VDC peak voltage. The new PWM fan has a small chip inside that uses that signal to modify the flow of current from the fixed 12 VDC supply though the motor windings to vary the fan speed.

In BOTH systems, the signal on Pin #3 is the speed signal generated by the fan and sent back to the header. It is a train of pulses, 5 VDC high with 2 pulses per revolution so the header can count those and calculate fan speed.

OP, examine the wires from the old fan you removed. Are there 2, 3 or 4? Examine the connector on the end. Is it exactly the same as ones on a standard case cooling fan that plugs into a mobo header - either 3-pin or 4-pin? How many pins are there on the small fan header on the video card where that old fan plugged in? As I said, IF these details are the same way a standard mobo case fan is done, we may be able to use those signals for your purposes. Otherwise there is more detective work to be done.

 

[BiggityBates]

I'll get a more complete reply together soon, but some preliminaries.

You have some complexity here. At the root of most of this is that the common automatic fan control systems on a mobo are really TEMPERATURE control systems. The each have a target TEMP measured by a particular sensor, and each manipulates the speed of a header's fan to keep that temp on target. There is one sensor built into the CPU chip to guide CPU cooling, and another on the mobo for case ventilation fans. However, there has never been any standard way for a VIDEO CARD added into a PCIe slot to send out any temperature info to the mobo, nor any standard way for the mobo to send cooling info to the vid card. Thus ALL video cards do their own heat management in a manner similar to what the mobo does. That is, it uses its own temp sensor (usually in the GPU chip) and controls its own fan to keep that temp where the designers specify. Many such cards come with software utilities to let you examine and configure the card's cooling system. so the card makers have used proprietary techniques for communicating that into with the card. BUT the user has no way to access that info except by using the utility. The result, then, is that you can NOT use mobo BIOS Setup or any third-party software tool to manage cooling on the Video Card. If you want to do your own automatic management of the video card's cooling, about the only possibility is if you can somehow tap into the RESULT of what the card would do for itself, and rely on the card's own internal temperature and fan control tools (via the card's utility) to do this work. That is, IF you can access the power and control signals for the card's own cooling fan, and IF you know the electrical characteristics of those signals so you can use them elsewhere, maybe you can rig something.

OP, you have made a substantial re-design of the video card's cooling. As supplied it has one fan that cools the GPU chip and associated vid card hardware (like its VRM system). You have removed that fan and replaced it with an adapter that has a new VRM / card general cooling fan plus a way to mount on the GPU chip a pump and cooling block of an AIO cooler. That AIO system has its own fans for GPU cooling. ONE possibility for creating a new automatic GPU cooling control system is IF you can access the signals for the ORIGINAL fan on that card that you have now removed. Re-examine carefully the video card and the fan and shroud system you removed. I assume the old fan was plugged into a fan header on the video card. Look carefully at the header, at the wires from that old fan, and at the connector on the end of those wires. IF it happens that the card makers used "standard" computer case fan connections and connectors this might be done relatively easily.

Computer fans now come in two standard designs. The older ones use three wires with a standard colour code and pin layout like this

https://allpinouts.org/pinouts/connectors/motherboards/motherboard-cpu-3-pin-fan-connector/

Note the two ridges running down one side of the connector. These slip around a plastic "tongue" that sticks up beside the three pins of the male mobo header so there is only one way to plug in. In the photo in that link the ridges are on the bottom face of the connector. In this system the speed of the fan is altered only by changing the VOLTAGE supplied to the fan from Pin #2 (+VDC) and Pjn #1 (Ground), so these are called Voltage Control Mode fans. The voltage varies from 12 VDC for full speed down to about 5 VDC for slow speed without stalling.

The newer design are called PWM Mode fans and use 4 wires, like this

https://allpinouts.org/pinouts/connectors/motherboards/motherboard-cpu-4-pin-fan/

Note there that there is one colour code system widely used, bit a second system for some fans. For backwards compatibility this new system is VERY similar to the older one using the same electrical power and pin mechanical layout as much as possible so you CAN plug one system into the other. On the female 4-pin connector the external ridges are still there just outside the space of Pins 1 - 3, while Pin #4 is outside the ridges. There are two electrical differences. First, the power on Pin #2 is now always 12 VDC (not varying). Secondly, there is the new PWM control signal sent from the header to the fan on Pin #4. A Pulse Width Modulation signal likes like a square wave, except that a square wave is ON exactly 50% of the time always, whereas in a PWM signal the "% On" value varies. For computer fans, the PWM signal is at about 20 kHz frequency, and 5 VDC peak voltage. The new PWM fan has a small chip inside that uses that signal to modify the flow of current from the fixed 12 VDC supply though the motor windings to vary the fan speed.

In BOTH systems, the signal on Pin #3 is the speed signal generated by the fan and sent back to the header. It is a train of pulses, 5 VDC high with 2 pulses per revolution so the header can count those and calculate fan speed.

OP, examine the wires from the old fan you removed. Are there 2, 3 or 4? Examine the connector on the end. Is it exactly the same as ones on a standard case cooling fan that plugs into a mobo header - either 3-pin or 4-pin? How many pins are there on the small fan header on the video card where that old fan plugged in? As I said, IF these details are the same way a standard mobo case fan is done, we may be able to use those signals for your purposes. Otherwise there is more detective work to be done.

Thanks a lot for your thorough reply. I actually have done the research that you are referring to, and, yes, the 1080 Founders Edition card uses the same 4 pin PWM layout as a standard PWM case fan, it's just the connector itself isn't the same. However, I have the cable that I show in the diagram that plugs directly into the 4 pin PWM GPU fan port, and then splits into the standard 4 pin PWM Male and a 4 Pin (RPM 3 Pin missing) splitter. So right now, The fan that cools the VRM is a three pin fan, so I have that plugged into the three pin side of the PWM splitter, so if I am correct, the RPM's aren't reporting back, and it is just running at 100% all the time, which is fine with me as it is a small fan and it doesn't hurt anything. On the four pin side that carries all four signals from the GPU, I have that plugged into the Powered PWM hub, the side cable that would normally go to a motherboard header. So the PWM/RPM full signal is being sent/received to the hub. As I understand it, Port one on my particular hub is the one that sends back all four signals, reporting RPM speeds and such. So I have three identical fans plugged into that hub, one of them being in port one.

So I believe I have that part set up fine. When I use afterburner or just let the card do it own fan modulation, it modulates all three radiator fans that cool the radiator for the AIO that cools it. Which is perfect.

Now, if we talk about the Actual AIO pump, It currently has two cables connected to the motherboard. The three pin fan style cable is plugged into the 4 pin CPU port, and it also has a usb connection to a USB header on the MOBO. EVGA FAQ says this connection isn't necessary if you don't care to change pump settings, it also no longer allows for dynamic adjustment of the pump based on anything, including temperature. Whatever you set it to in the EVGA pump software, gets written to the firmware, and that is what the pump does regardless if you disconnect that USB connection. Also attached to the AIO are the three fan ports that the radiator fans are supposed to go. Nothing is plugged into those, so the pump software sees no fans, which it doesn't seem to have a problem with. I can still control the pump manually. The EVGA Pump software reports the coolant temp correctly, but it is also reporting the "CPU temp" and it is not being used to cool the CPU. So right now, with the pump connected via usb and the three pin connected to the 4 pin CPU header, the coolant temp which cools the GPU is accurate, but it is also reporting the CPU temp, not just the GPU temp labeled as CPU, but the actual true CPU temp. I think this is being done because of the non-optional 3 pin pump header being connected to CPU on the MoBo.

So I was thinking of instead of plugging it into the CPU header, I could maybe utilize the powered PWM hub somehow, and plug it in there, so it gets full power, but should I plug it into port one so the GPU sees the pump speed as the "Fan RPM" and the EVGA pump software reports the "CPU" temp but it's actually the GPU temp? if I do that, then the PWM pin on port one is not populated, so I don't know how that would affect the hub and it's ability to control the radiator fans. If I plug the pump into another port other than port one on the PWM hub, it will most likely run at 100% all the time, correct? I would be fine with that because I could software adjust if needed. but then I would have a three pin pump connected to a powered PWM hub with three 4 pin PWM radiator fans, and one of those fans would be in port one. How would that affect the pump, if at all?

Hopefully all this makes sense. Let me know if I need to clarify anything. I also have an alternative cable, which instead of splitting the GPU header to a 4 pin PWM case fan, it's just a single 4 pin out. I think using the spliter and having the VRM fan connected to the gpu directly as well as the other radiator fans is the better option so I am not using the 1 to 1 conversion cable. I'm using the GPU fan head splitter to PWM 4/3 pin for this setup.

What are your thoughts on the pump being connected to the PWM hub? Either in the master port (port 1) or non master port.... Do you know if it would be able to read the gpu temp if plugged into the non master port? or even the master port? Thats where I am a little confused. I have also noticed that when I have my OSD up, my GPU fan TACH, not % readout, will vary 1000something to 2000something and flip back and forth and sometimes momentarily hit 6000000... The % always seems accurate and stable though, which seems to control things fine. I just have to make sure I go into the EVGA pump software and turn it all the way up if I am going to benchmark or game because I don't think it has the capability to read the GPU temp the way it's currently hooked up. At least not on a hardware level.

Hope that makes sense and thank you so much for your time and willingness to engage with me on this. Sorry for the novel but I also try to be thorough so things are hopefully more clearly communicated.

Really appreciate it.