Where do I connect all the fans?

[Sense]

Hi there,

 

I am planning to build my first PC next month or so, but im unsure where i have to connect fans and to which header.

 

Components:

 

Case: NZXT H440

MoBo: Asus z270-a Prime

CPU Cooler: H115i

 

The case has fan hub at the back which is not controllable (max. speed) , i will be using 4 case fans and the two on the radiator.

 

Where should I connect the fans? (Fan-Hub or Mobo) and if mobo to what headers?

 

Thank you in advance

 

[Ordinarily_Greater]

Woah about the fan headers i can not seem to tell without pictures (i am not mastered in this category)

[Oshino Shinobu]

The H115i has its own system for connecting and controlling the fans (read its manual)

 

Are the fans you have PWM? If not, you may as well just connect all the fans to the fan hub. If they are PWM, connect them to the case fan headers on your motherboard, likely labelled something similar to "CHA_FAN"

[Ordinarily_Greater]

Forget about that before, i have the picture

[migeo]

Look at the picture you have a lot of fan headers (EDIT looks like the picture didn't upload weird):

 

 

(don't bother with the 5-pin one). I personally dislike using the hub in my case since I like to have my system as silent as possible. You can connect the two fans for the radiator with the first two connectors in the picture and the pump with last one shown in the picture. For the chassis fan you can get some 4-pin y cables and thenuse the two chassis fan connectors to connect them to the motherboard. I would personally do this. I always like to connect the fans to my motherboard in order to make them as silent as possible

 

 

[Ordinarily_Greater]

3 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

The H115i has its own system for connecting and controlling the fans (read its manual)

 

Are the fans you have PWM? If not, you may as well just connect all the fans to the fan hub. If they are PWM, connect them to the case fan headers on your motherboard, likely labelled something similar to "CHA_FAN"

Follow this person's instruction, and know if you excuse me i am going to learn that motherboard (and where to plug things)

[migeo]

Yeah what the other said as well. If you're using 3 pin fans, just connect them to the hub and power the hub. If you have pwm fans connect to mobo

[LogicalDrm]

Asus has really good fan support in general. Connect pump to CPU fan and rad fans to pump with included splitter. I would say get 1-2 Y-splitters and connect all fans directly to mobo. I'm on mobile so I can't verify that hub isn't controllable. Also, why so many fans? You'd be fine with 4 total, 2 intake and 2 exhaust (rad fans counted as either one).

[AV Techy]

I've answered a fair few of these questions before, and no complaints yet so here goes:

 

The motherboard you have chosen seems extremely well setup for PWM control. Pretty much all the fan headers are PWM compliant. 

 

For the sake of simplicity I would utilize the fan hub to the rear of your case for pretty much all the fans* (bare in mind the more fan headers your using on you motherboard the more PWM fan curves you'll need to set - this just becomes a pain). Plug the fan hub into the CPU_FAN header to be able to set a PWM curve to react to the CPU temperature. And plug a SATA power connector from your PSU with the SATA power connector on your fan hub (this provides the power to run as many fans on the hub as you want). Then plug all your fans into the fan hub, they will all react in the same way to your single PWM fan curve.

 

*Unless you specifically want to set the fan curves differently for different fans - which doesn't make a lot of sense, unless you are going for a super quiet build and you want to start up some fans on a lower fan curve and others on a higher fan curve.

 

It's good to know that the PWM speed is set by the first fan (plugged into the white header on that fan hub), it's just good to know as if you plug a PWM fan in there the hub will dish out the same "PWM pulse" to all the other fans on the hub. Meaning you can plug in 3 pin fans (not PWM) into the rest of the headers on the hub and they will react like PWM fans - which is always good.

 

Then you can plug your AIO pump into the AIO_PUMP header (funnily enough). This will show up as an AIO PUMP in your BIOS and you can set that to a lower PWM curve than your fans (as the speed of the pump doesn't make a massive difference to temperatures). Just don't start the curve at 0% speed as you'll want some flow - starting at 15-20% will do.

 

And that's all you need to do, it's a very simple setup compared to a lot of others. Since your motherboard has more than 1 PWM header and is designed with water-cooling in mind - nice choice!

 

Best of luck with the build, I hope it goes smoothly!

 

P.S.: Fan hubs are really good to use, I would only recommend splitters if you had a motherboard with only 1 PWM header, and you wanted to use a pump with a fan hub (note that not all 4-pin headers are PWM compliant - but in your case nearly all your motherboard headers are). Fan hubs have the ability to take the same control of all your fans with one setup.

 

Fan splitters do the same, however they don't have extra power available like the SATA power connector on the hub. This means with a splitter you'll generally only be able to have a maxiumum of three supported fans under full power. And a hub will power as many high power (consumer) fans as you can fit. Therefore the ease of use and expand-ability of a fan hub is far better than that of a splitter.

 

However a lot of premium fans require very low amperage's and the rule changes slightly in respect of splitters.

 

And finally a hub is a lot neater, as in tidy. You'll have all the fans cables going to the back of the motherboard where they won't be seen instead of connecting to all the fan headers on the motherboard (that are all over the place!). Hubs all the way, apart from a few very specific scenarios there are no benefit to splitters over hubs.

[Sense]

On 22.6.2017 at 0:47 PM, Aloe Vera said:

I've answered a fair few of these questions before, and no complaints yet so here goes:

 

The motherboard you have chosen seems extremely well setup for PWM control. Pretty much all the fan headers are PWM compliant. 

 

For the sake of simplicity I would utilize the fan hub to the rear of your case for pretty much all the fans* (bare in mind the more fan headers your using on you motherboard the more PWM fan curves you'll need to set - this just becomes a pain). Plug the fan hub into the CPU_FAN header to be able to set a PWM curve to react to the CPU temperature. And plug a SATA power connector from your PSU with the SATA power connector on your fan hub (this provides the power to run as many fans on the hub as you want). Then plug all your fans into the fan hub, they will all react in the same way to your single PWM fan curve.

 

*Unless you specifically want to set the fan curves differently for different fans - which doesn't make a lot of sense, unless you are going for a super quiet build and you want to start up some fans on a lower fan curve and others on a higher fan curve.

 

It's good to know that the PWM speed is set by the first fan (plugged into the white header on that fan hub), it's just good to know as if you plug a PWM fan in there the hub will dish out the same "PWM pulse" to all the other fans on the hub. Meaning you can plug in 3 pin fans (not PWM) into the rest of the headers on the hub and they will react like PWM fans - which is always good.

 

Then you can plug your AIO pump into the AIO_PUMP header (funnily enough). This will show up as an AIO PUMP in your BIOS and you can set that to a lower PWM curve than your fans (as the speed of the pump doesn't make a massive difference to temperatures). Just don't start the curve at 0% speed as you'll want some flow - starting at 15-20% will do.

 

And that's all you need to do, it's a very simple setup compared to a lot of others. Since your motherboard has more than 1 PWM header and is designed with water-cooling in mind - nice choice!

 

Best of luck with the build, I hope it goes smoothly!

 

P.S.: Fan hubs are really good to use, I would only recommend splitters if you had a motherboard with only 1 PWM header, and you wanted to use a pump with a fan hub (note that not all 4-pin headers are PWM compliant - but in your case nearly all your motherboard headers are). Fan hubs have the ability to take the same control of all your fans with one setup.

 

Fan splitters do the same, however they don't have extra power available like the SATA power connector on the hub. This means with a splitter you'll generally only be able to have a maxiumum of three supported fans under full power. And a hub will power as many high power (consumer) fans as you can fit. Therefore the ease of use and expand-ability of a fan hub is far better than that of a splitter.

 

However a lot of premium fans require very low amperage's and the rule changes slightly in respect of splitters.

 

And finally a hub is a lot neater, as in tidy. You'll have all the fans cables going to the back of the motherboard where they won't be seen instead of connecting to all the fan headers on the motherboard (that are all over the place!). Hubs all the way, apart from a few very specific scenarios there are no benefit to splitters over hubs.

The motherboard has 4-Pin connectors, can i still connect 3-Pin Fans ?

[Ordinarily_Greater]

10 minutes ago, Sense said:

The motherboard has 4-Pin connectors, can i still connect 3-Pin Fans ?

With a molex connector yes

[AV Techy]

On 6/25/2017 at 9:25 AM, Sense said:

The motherboard has 4-Pin connectors, can i still connect 3-Pin Fans ?

Yes that's no problem, 3-pin fans can connect to 4-pin headers without a problem. Just bare in mind you won't have PWM control over the fan unless you can utilise voltage control in the BIOS.

 

Generally 3-pin fans stick to one speed only, which can be useful for general case air flow or motherboard cooling.

 

You can plug a 3-pin fan into a PWM hub (which is connected to the CPU FAN header), and as long as you have the first connector on the hub populated by a 4-pin PWM fan, the 3-pin fan will operate as if it were a PWM fan - very useful if you have some really quiet case fans that are 3-pin.

[LogicalDrm]

On 25.6.2017 at 11:36 AM, Ordinarily_Greater said:

With a molex connector yes

Why do you reply, when you don't know the answer. He has ASUS board, for god's sake. It can control both 3pin and 4pin fans connected to 4pin headers. Only thing it might need is small change of what header is suppose to do.

[Ordinarily_Greater]

31 minutes ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

Why do you reply, when you don't know the answer. He has ASUS board, for god's sake. It can control both 3pin and 4pin fans connected to 4pin headers. Only thing it might need is small change of what header is suppose to do.

Ok, well i need to know what is molex then

[LogicalDrm]

1 minute ago, Ordinarily_Greater said:

Ok, well i need to know what is molex then

Molex is old power connector. It supplies constant 12V for device. They were used for HDD/ODD before SATA became standard. They were also used for fans, but for obvious reasons mobo headers are prioritized over them. At most you might still see molex as main power conenector for fan controller or hub. But most of them are SATA now since its same style power connector.

[Ordinarily_Greater]

Just now, LoGiCalDrm said:

Molex is old power connector. It supplies constant 12V for device. They were used for HDD/ODD before SATA became standard. They were also used for fans, but for obvious reasons mobo headers are prioritized over them. At most you might still see molex as main power conenector for fan controller or hub. But most of them are SATA now since its same style power connector.

Ok! You are the person that motivated me to learn deep to wiring! Thank you!