Powering Aio

[xenon_4012]

Situation:Relatively new at pc building and im currently thinking of getting an Aio. I'm currently looking at cooler masters ml240p mirage. I notice that the pump and fans are powered by the cpu fan header, my mother board (asus prime b450m-a) doesn't have a cpu opt header for the pump.

 

question: Does the cpu opt header help power the aio or does it only control the pump, and if I only use the cpu fan header, can my mother board handle it?

[Bombastinator]

Can it handle it? Probably.  My desire to try to talk you out of a 240mm AIO is strong though.  They do have their uses, but it’s kind of special case.  You might be one of those cases though.  They get overused imho because one of those special uses is motherboard and CPU testing so they’re all one sees on the internet.

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, Caroline said:

looks or sff builds

 

Otherwise a big air cooler is better

There’s also a somewhat narrow power band just above 250w where they can be more useful, but generally yes.  Also “built for watercooling” cases where the airflow is such garbage they’re the only viable choice.

[Spotty]

Moved to liquid cooling

 

The pump will require its own header on the motherboard. You will want to set that to 100% in the motherboard BIOS fort the pump to work properly. You can use one of the available case fan headers on the motherboard for this, doesn't really matter where it is plugged in as long as it runs 100%.

 

Then each fan will require their own headers. You can get away with using a Y splitter to put the two fans on a single header. Preferably use the CPU fan header so the motherboard will control the fan speed based on CPU temperature.

[xenon_4012]

Thank you for the quick replies and recommendations everyone, I'm just going for looks at this point, I'm using thermaltake versa h18 which seems to have pretty good air flow.

[Marbo]

3 hours ago, xenon_4012 said:

Situation:Relatively new at pc building and im currently thinking of getting an Aio. I'm currently looking at cooler masters ml240p mirage. I notice that the pump and fans are powered by the cpu fan header, my mother board (asus prime b450m-a) doesn't have a cpu opt header for the pump.

 

question: Does the cpu opt header help power the aio or does it only control the pump, and if I only use the cpu fan header, can my mother board handle it?

Think of your pump as a fan. If you have at least 2 fan headers you can plug your aio into one and fan(s) into the other. You can then control the speed of each separately.