PWM for fans and pump.. Can i plug these into my GPU ?

[candymancangt]

Im having a bit of a issue here with plugging in all these fans and pumps..

 

I spent $2200 upgrading my entire system.. Like monitor, case, keyboard, mouse, and my 1080ti as well as my watercooling, i was using a modded Dangerden maze 3 block on my 4790k athlon 64 e8400 so for 17 years i was using the same eheim pump, block and black ice radiator..  Call me nuts but it was easy to mod, just made 4 brackets to extend the mounting system and it worked fine. 

 

I bought a Thermaltake view 71 case, and a 1080ti, and kept my 4790k since there was no point in upgrading that for just gaming the cpu is fine, i also bought a Thermaltake riing 360 AIO for the cpu..  Funny thing is the temps only dropped about 3c from my 17 year old waterblock..  I knew it wouldnt go down much, cpu blocks have always never really differed from eachother which is why i never upgraded my cooling..  But to keep up with times and get into the RGB craze and to eliminate clutter with the seperate pump and so forth thats why i just went with an AIO like this.

 

Now the GPU i bought a Thermaltake waterblock specifically designed to fit the Asus ROG STRIX 1080ti i have, since its PCB design is different from other 1080ti.   I bought a EK 360 Water cooling kit for only $250, i bought the kit because it was misslabled in price by 60$ so it was cheaper buying this kit with the 360 rad, fans, pump/resevoir and fittings then buying them seperate.  I dont plan to use the cpu block it came with, ill just sell it on ebay or something.   The pump and fans of course use 4 PIN power connectors, the intructions say it MUST be plugged into the CPU PWM.  But i think this is because the kit was for a cpu originally.  I plant to use it to cool the gpu,  can i just plug this pump into the GPU's fan headers ?  Or would this fry the gpu fan headers ?

 

The pump is a EK XRES 100, it only draws 6watts of power, the 3 fans together only draw 4-5watts..  I cant find ANY info on the gpu header amp rating "gpu has two 4 pin headers 1 rgb header and two other unknown ones", i called asus and even those idiots said they have no info on the amp rating so he had to email the design department to get that info.. wow.. ok..   But im assuming its probably 1amp like motherboards.    The only issue i can see with this is i believe the gpu only kicks on the fans at 60c ? But looking at the Asus gpu tweak tool i have installed i can manually control the fans at any temperature rating.  So since the 4pin pwm's sync with the gpu fans i can control the pump and 3 fans then

 

 

So what do you guys recomend i do with the pump and fans to cool this GPU, would it be ok to plug it into the graphics card and control it by the software for the gpu OR ? ?  I cant use the cpu pwm as its being used by the TT AIO pump..

 

My motherboard is a Gigabyte Z97 G1 sniper if you need to know

[Alexzz_]

personally i wouldn't risk plugging it into your gpu, i would use something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Wathai-controller-Chassis-SATA-Controller/dp/B07D9JQW48/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1529774940&sr=1-2-spons&keywords=pwm+sata&psc=1

[candymancangt]

That wouldnt work.  Notice the red plug is for a CPU fan interface which is where the pump needs to plug into, all this thing does is expand the number of PWM connections. which i dont have a shortage of.  I do have a shortage of CPU PWMs though, as one AIO is using it, the CPU PWM controls the cpu fan or in this case the AIO pump.. the other PWM connections are based on case temperature i believe.

 

Maybe im wrong though, if ALL those PWM's can act as a cpu PWM then why does it have one labled specifically for the cpu only ?  Thats why i think this wouldnt solve the issue

[Dschijn]

The magic of PWM:

Get a PWM hub or splitter that gets power from the PSU directly. Only connect the PWM header cable to the GPU. By that you will put no load on the GPU fan header. Do you have the correct plug size? There are mainly mini 4-pin headers for the fan on GPUs.

[candymancangt]

Yes the GPU has 5 plugs in total. here is what it looks like.  The two plugs on the left look like plugs for the gpu fans and RGB lighting, they are currently being used with the heatstink still on.  The Red plug is for external RGB to sync with the video cards RGB, the other 2 plugs as yo ucan see are standard 4 pin PWM's, which according to asus, sync with the gpu fans, so you can control case fans based on GPU fan speeds.

 

Default fan speeds kick on at 55c looking at Asus's gpu tweak software, but i can manually adjust them down to say 10c if i wanted.  So i can control the fans on the radiator to turn on at any speed i want.  Same with the waterpump " im assuming".  

 

Youre right i have seen those PWM adapters, like the one he linked up above, except the one id get would be the PWM to molex connector like this.  This would be the safest way so i dont fry my gpu using too much power..  But in all honesty DO i need that ?  If a PWM puts out 1AMP thats 12watts, the pump uses only 6Watts, the 3 fans use 4.5w together..  With 2 fan headers on the gpu im only using 50% of the maximum power for one and 40% for the other..   But maybe its better to have a little more wire clutter to be safe and not fry my 800$ gpu lol

 

 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812311001&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-_-Cables+-+Internal+Power+Cables-_-EVERCOOL+THERMAL+CORP.+LTD-_-12311001&ignorebbr=1

 

[Jurrunio]

It's fine to plug the pump to the 4pin PWM header at the back of the graphics card. The manual specifies CPU-FAN because the pump needs a constant supply of 12V, which the CPU-FAN header always has. Other PWM fan headers also do the same thing, but the situation on 3pin fan headers are different. Some of them dont support fan speed control at all, so they also supply constant 12V electricity. Those that do support fan speed control control fan speed by lowering voltage, which is bad news for the pump.

 

Make sure you dont plug multiple connectors on each header on the graphics card. While those on motherboards all output 1A of current at most unless specified, Asus did not specify how much those on the back of their cards can do. I assume they are also 1A, but I'm not certain about it.

[candymancangt]

So you think the 6W pump will be fine on the GPU 4 Pin PWM ?   The 3 fans if i even use them anyway, only draw 1.4w each, they are the EK Vardar f3 120mm fans.  The kit came with a 3 plug to 1 4 pin plug splitter to wire all 3 fans into 1 4 pin connection.  All together it would only draw what 4.2 watts ?  Im sure the header on the gpu can handle that ?  Or is there some other reason to not use a 3 way splitter like this on the GPU.   I probably wont use those fans anway,  I have the cpu AIO mounted on top of the case and i wanted to mount the gpu 360 rad on the 3 120mm ThermalTake 3GB fans in the front of my case.  Those 3 fans are already being controlled by the thermaltake software thats running the 3 on the cpu radiator.   But then those 3 fans will be going off cpu temperature not gpu..  So maybe itd be best if i mount the radiator on the empty 360mm spot next to the motherboard and use the 3 vardar fans.

 

Sorry i hope im not confusing anyone this is all confusing almost me lol

 

When i called asus the  tech guy had no idea how much the fan headers output..  Like i said he tookd my info down and fowarded my question to asus's design team as he said lol.  So they would have the more technical specs on the fan header amperage.  I should get the info in 2-3 days he said.  I hope

 

 

 

 

[candymancangt]

Damn well i hooked the pump/res up into a single loop using a like 12 inch long hose filled it up and plugged the pump into the 4 pin fan header on the gpu, and it didnt power on.  I have the gpu fans set to 50% they are on, so i dont know why the pump didnt power on..  This is frustrating.

 

 

EDIT: Ok i got it working now, there was a hidden setting on gpu tweak 2 that i had to look for and click on and you can manually adjust the external fan speeds.  The pump turned on when i set it above 55% seems to be working great too.  awsome, video card hasnt blown up yet either lol.   The pump/res i thought was suppose to be RGB but there are no rgb lights, thats a bummer.  I guess its only the Xres 140 that has that.   I might resturn this kit then and get the xres 140 and the 360mm and fittings seperetly then.. bummer