H110i GTX Fans on Asus Z170 Deluxe

Wing Fat · January 23, 2016

I think this is more of a motherboard question than a cooling question so I'll post it here.

I have a H110i GTX. The two stock fans are running off the splitter that is coming from the pump as per the installation instructions. (I am not using Corsair Link however.) When the CPU is under full load the fans create an oscillating hum that's really annoying.

I bought four Noctua NF-A14 PWM fans that I want to use to replace the two stock fans in a push/pull configuration. What I want to do is use three splitters to run all four fans off the CPU_OPT header instead of plugging them directly into the pump. This would allow me to control their speed through the BIOS.

Can the single CPU_OPT header handle all four NF-A14 fans? The motherboard specs say the CPU_FAN connector supports a maximum 1A (12W) fan power. The specs for the NF-A14 PWM says max input power is 0.13A and 12V. Technically this should work (right?), but is this a bad idea? Am I giving myself enough margin of error? Running all four fans off a single header would ensure they're running at as close to the same speed as possible.

This particular motherboard has a W_PUMP header near the CPU_FAN headers, and as far as I can tell in my research this is just like a normal fan header except that it's configured to run at full RPM all the time by default. If I plugged the H110i monitoring cable into this, then plugged two fans each into the CPU_FAN and CPU_OPT headers, would this be a better strategy? I can't find much documentation on the W_PUMP header and I am wondering if the BIOS monitors it like it does the CPU_FAN header. I would hate for the pump to fail and me not know it until it's too late.

The other option is to use two splitters to plug the four fans into the splitter coming out of the pump. This would probably be the preferred option if I was using Corsair Link but since I'm not I wonder if one of the other configurations is better.