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Question about connecting fans to motherboard

Ollion55
Level 7
So I ordered an ARCTIC Liquid Freezer 360 with a 360mm radiator and 6 fans.
On the Arctic website it states that each fan uses 0.25 A max. Arctic designed the fans so you can plug all of them into one free PWM connector on a motherboard, so that would be 1.5 A at max.
My motherboard is an ASUS Strix Z270F, and in the manual it states that the normal CPU_FAN connector supports up to 1 A and the H_AMP_FAN connector up to 3 A.

Should I plug the cable holding all 6 cooler fans into the H_AMP_FAN connector or would it be problematic to do so with the CPU_FAN connector (I know at least one fan has to be in CPU_FAN otherwise I get a BIOS error)? What about the CPU_OPT connector? Could I plug 3 fans into the CPU_FAN and 3 into the CPU_OPT connector, each having 0,75 max A, or do both connectors only support 0,5 A for 1 A together?
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5 REPLIES 5

kwaka
Level 7
Very good question. Sorry I don't have the answer as have a similar question.

Will tag your post for future info.
Z270F mobo and Kraken x62 + 2 rad fans will be the config I use.
Not sure if the pump goes in the AIO_header or not. Also if cpu_fan header should be used with a splitter for both rad fans.

Hope somebody can help you out with your answer, in turn giving me some in sight for my build when I get time to do it.

kwaka wrote:
Very good question. Sorry I don't have the answer as have a similar question.

Will tag your post for future info.
Z270F mobo and Kraken x62 + 2 rad fans will be the config I use.
Not sure if the pump goes in the AIO_header or not. Also if cpu_fan header should be used with a splitter for both rad fans.

Hope somebody can help you out with your answer, in turn giving me some in sight for my build when I get time to do it.


I posted the same question on r/watercooling with an illustration of what I was thinking to do as nobody seems to have an answer here and got the answer I needed (that the CPU_OPT is separate from the CPU_FAN connector and gives an additional 1 ampere for the fans.
https://www.reddit.com/r/watercooling/comments/6wjuaz/6_fans_in_one_fan_connector/?st=j6wbonsw&sh=a1...

Your question regarding the pump, it is stated in the manual for the Z270F that the pump should indeed be connected to the AIO_PUMP connector. The placement of the connector is relatively close to the pump so no need to lay the cable through half the case. 🙂
For two fans it should be no problem to use a splitter as I've seen people connect 4 fans to the CPU_FAN connector simultaneously without problem, as long as the power requirements of the fans aren't too demanding which they were in my case.

Chino
Level 15
Try looking inside your BIOS to see if you can control the fans connected to the H_AMP_FAN header. If so, go for it. As for the CPU_FAN error, you can disable it.

Chino wrote:
Try looking inside your BIOS to see if you can control the fans connected to the H_AMP_FAN header. If so, go for it. As for the CPU_FAN error, you can disable it.


Yes the H_AMP_FAN header allows me to control the fan speeds. I've decided to put all my fans onto it and put the pump onto the CPU_FAN header at 100% speed, which is basically what the AIO_PUMP header does from the beginning, with the bonus of having a failsafe when the pump should decide to malfuntion. I don't know if the AIO_PUMP header can detect a not spinning pump fan.

Ollion55 wrote:
I don't know if the AIO_PUMP header can detect a not spinning pump fan.


Now that's another good question.
Thanks for other link btw.

Currently have my existing pc running with the H60 cooler pump running off a fan header and rad fans running of cpu_fan header. Seems to work apart from cant split case fans for control via bios so have all fans running 100%. Noisy but cool..lol.