[SOLVED] What is this connector and where do I plug it in?

fall3n

Distinguished
Sep 29, 2010
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The connector in question:
View: https://imgur.com/NnOM28v


what is that and where do I plug it in? My cpu fan had two connectors coming out of it. The fan had the expected 4-pin fan connector which I just plugged in to the normal spot on the motherboard and it also had the plug above. The fan has RGB so it may be for that, but the CPU fan does not even move when I power on the computer if this second plug is not plugged in. What is that and where does it go?
 
Solution
Plug in your picture is 5v. Do not plug it into your motherboard.
Your motherboard has 12v header. In manual it is referred as LED_C (RGB led strip header).

He would not be able to plug it into the 12V connector anyway. This is because the regular 12V connector has 4 pins, whereas, the header he is showing in the picture has one of the holes filled in on purpose. See image below:

gOCkfGt.png


Anyway, you should always refer to your motherboard's manual. Hope this helps.
Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z390 DESIGNARE LGA 1151 (300 Series) Intel Z390 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard

PSU: CORSAIR RMX Series, RM750x, 750 Watt, 80+ Gold Certified, Fully Modular Power Supply (get new one)

CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K Coffee Lake 6-Core 3.7 GHz (4.7 GHz Turbo) LGA 1151 (300 Series) 95W BX80684I78700K Desktop Processor Intel UHD Graphics 630

RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 2400 MHz DDR4 DRAM Desktop Gaming Memory Single 8GB CL16 BLS8G4D240FSBK (Gray

HD: Seagate BarraCuda ST2000DM006 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive Bare Drive

Graphics Card: I need a new one, the one I have does not fit
 
This connector seems to me like a connector for an LED strip. Is one of the pins filled? Because normally, you would have a pin for red, green, blue and power. Anyway, your PC should boot even without this cable being plugged in. Are you able to get into BIOS? Depending on your cooling curve, the fan does not need to spin until it reaches a certain temperature. You should find this setting in the BIOS as well.
 
@d239919 I cannot get to the BIOS because of a graphics card issue, but soon that will be fixed. And yes, as you can see from the pic the third spot where a hole would be is just flat plastic. I'm glad the computer does not need this plug to be connected to start, but what if I do want to connect it?

Possibly related: There is an empty 4-pin header on the mobo right underneath "CPU_FAN" where I plugged in the other CPU plug called "CPU_OPT".
 
After a bit of searching online, I found out that the same connector is used for addressable LED strips which means that each addressable LED has an integrated driver that allows the brightness and color of each LED to be controlled individually. They differ from regular LED strips by having only 3 pins instead of the regular 4 and so, they also take a lower voltage. Regular 4 pin LED strips take 12V, however, you must be looking at 3 pin connector with only 5V output.

Here is an example of how the connectors should look like on your motherboard. Make sure you look for the one circled in red. According to your motherboard's manual, the connectors should be on the very bottom and so, I do not know whether your cable is long enough from the CPU cooler to reach all the way to the bottom of your motherboard. Hope this helps.

gOCkfGt.png
 
Last edited:
@d239919 The image in your previous post is an error from imgur saying the image does not exist. Can you fix the image in your previous post? That is the answer so I’ll mark it but the image needs fixing first.
 
Plug in your picture is 5v. Do not plug it into your motherboard.
Your motherboard has 12v header. In manual it is referred as LED_C (RGB led strip header).

He would not be able to plug it into the 12V connector anyway. This is because the regular 12V connector has 4 pins, whereas, the header he is showing in the picture has one of the holes filled in on purpose. See image below:

gOCkfGt.png


Anyway, you should always refer to your motherboard's manual. Hope this helps.
 
Solution