ASUS P8P67 mobo and fans compatibility help!

xalexon

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Im buying the coolermaster haf x case
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119225
and extra 200mm fan for the side (current side fan is going to be moved to the top)
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103072
a thermaltake frio cpu cooler which i plan to set up in a push pull configuration (2 fans)
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835106150
and finally im buying an ASUS P8P67 PRO mobo
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131682

this is my first time building a pc so sorry if some of these questions are common sense/obvious but I have a 5 case fans (230 front, 200 side, 2x200 tops, 140 rear) and 2x120mm cpu fans for my thermaltake frio, a total of 7 fans. But looking on ASUS's website, there are only 4 places on the mobo to connect my fans to
http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=HMMvTCuBcZLfu2YL&templete=2
"1 x CPU Fan connector(s) (4-pin)
2 x Chassis Fan connector(s) (1 x 4-pin; 1 x 3-pin)
1 x Power Fan connector(s) (3-pin)"

my question is, what happens to my other fans? Surely asus would know that most people would have more than 4 fans! Do I plug in my extra fans directly into my PSU? do i ditch them?
My psu is a corsair 950W TX PSU
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139013

Could someone please tell me what to do here?

P.S. heres my full build if you need it:
http://secure.newegg.ca/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=13192571

Thanks a bunch!
 
Solution
The HAF case is specifically designed for the fans to be running at full speed. If you want them to be speed-controlled, get a fan controller. They should not be connected to the mainboard's fan connectors. Besides, they are huge (200mm each) and noise shouldn't be a problem.

For the Frio fans, you could buy a 3-pin Y-cable. That way both are connected to the CPU fan connector. That way you don't have to do any splicing.

xalexon

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also i suppose i may as well ask here:
will my psu be able to support an overclocked 2500k and two 6970's in crossfire? i dont plan on putting in a second 6970 right away, just as a future upgrade
 
The fans will have normal Molex connectors and will connect directly to your power supply.

And yes, that power supply should have enough oomph to do your system with the second GPU.

That's a nice setup you have there. One question though -- no SATA 6GBps hard drive?
 

xalexon

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sata 6gbps is an SSD right? Tha'ts my first planned upgrade, but for now, it doesn't fit into my $1600 budget.

Btw, my board includes 4 sata cables, 2 of them being 6gbps. However I have 3 sata II peripherals (dvd drive, WD 1TB black HDD, and a 500GB HDD i have lying around). Will I need to buy an extra sata 3gbps cable or will a 6gbps cable work? And would i plug my peripherals into the sata II ports on my mobo or sata III?
 

xalexon

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and how about for my frio? I understand the case fans come with molex connectors but my frio comes with 2x3-pin fans and as far as i can tell only 1 fan connector. Do i need to buy an adapter?
 
Regular hard drives come in SATA 6GBps versions also. Transfer rates are better on those.

Each fan on the Frio has its own connector. You just plug one into the CPU fan connector and one into a chassis or power fan connector.

Edit: Had to do some research on the cable issue. SATA III (6GBps) cables will work with SATA II (3GBps) devices. You will plug your stuff into the first, second, and third SATA II connectors (hard drives first, then DVD). Or, if you get the SATA III version of the WD hard drive, you plug that into the first SATA III and the other hard drive into the first SATA II and the DVD into the second SATA II.
 

Paperdoc

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Use the CPU_FAN mobo connector for the CPU Fan(s) ONLY. CPU fan speed is controlled by the actual temp measured inside the CPU case by a sensor, and ONLY this mobo pinout uses that info for fan speed control. However, there MAY be a wrinkle you have to deal with. Your mobo uses a 4-pin pinout for the CPU_FAN. Your cooler comes with two 3-pin fans, and one (we'll deal with 2 a bit later) CAN be connected to the 4-pin pinout, but you'll just have one pin not involved. Some mobos can detect which type of fan (3-pin or 4) is connected and accomplish fan speed control either way. Others can only supply full voltage to a 3-pin fan so that it always runs at full speed. If that is what happens to you, your only solution may be to buy a pair of 4-pin fans for the CPU cooler.

Now, how to use two fans on the CPU cooler when only one pinout is available? You can modify the fans' wiring by splicing together matching wires from both fans at ONE connector so they operate in parallel, but NOT one of the lines. On a 3-pin fan, the YELLOW line is a speed pulse signal fed from the fan motor back to the mobo for monitoring. You cannot connect together both yellow wires and feed dual pulse signals back - the mobo would get VERY confused. So for that one line, do NOT connect the second fan's wire to the first - just leave one yellow wire not connected to anything. NOTE that, IF you go to the 4-pin fan option, the color code is different - see here:

http://www.allpinouts.org/index.php/Motherboard_%28CPU%29_4_Pin_Fan

and, for most such fans, you would NOT connect in parallel the GREEN (Sense) lines.

The mobo PWR_FAN pinout is intended only for use with a PSU that has a special leads (or set of leads) coming out of it to plug into this pinout. The original intent was that this only allows a speed signal from the PSU's fan to be fed to the mobo for monitoring, and the mobo does NOT do any control of the PSU fan speed. (Many PSU's do their own speed control internally.) Some posts here have said that, on at least some mobos, this pinout actually does work just like a Chassis Fan pinout and accomplish control or at least provide power, but that's not the original plan.

ALL your case fans ideally should be controlled by the mobo SYS_FANx pinouts but you only have two - one 3-pin, one 4-pin. You can try the modification I outlined above to connect two fans in parallel to one pinout, but I recommend you do NOT connect more than two fans to each mobo pinout. Any more risks possibly overloading the output at start-up time. So, that leaves you with not enough mobo pinouts. What to do?

One option, most certainly, is to connect one or more case fans to a 4-pin Molex PSU output, but that (those) fan(s) will always work at full speed. You could buy and install a fan speed controller that allows you to set some fan speeds manually. I have seen an adapter system mentioned on these forums (but I can't find it right now) designed to allow you to connect one CPU fan and two case fans (4-pin only!) together so that all three are powered by a Molex output (lots of power for 3 there), but the speed control for all is taken from the CPU_FAN mobo output pinout. The last possibility is that some fans come with a small resistor in a short wiring adapter that is inserted between the power supply and the fan, or even a 3-position switch that connects to the fan, and these allow you to manually set a fixed fan speed slower than max.
 
The HAF case is specifically designed for the fans to be running at full speed. If you want them to be speed-controlled, get a fan controller. They should not be connected to the mainboard's fan connectors. Besides, they are huge (200mm each) and noise shouldn't be a problem.

For the Frio fans, you could buy a 3-pin Y-cable. That way both are connected to the CPU fan connector. That way you don't have to do any splicing.
 
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