CPU fan header

Sultan of Swing · 18 Oct 2008 at 02:12

On my P5Q-E the fan attached to the CPU heatsink is a 3 pin, not 4 pin, so I have it plugged into a 3 pin header on the mobo. When I start up the system is tells me there isn't a CPU fan, so I'll have to press f1 at each startup. Should the 3 pin fan work in the 4 pin header, or is there a way of bypassing the reminder at startup? Thanks.

Popov · 18 Oct 2008 at 02:18

You should be able to set the cpu fan warning to ignore, probably in the hardware monitoring section of the bios.

Sultan of Swing · 18 Oct 2008 at 02:31

Ah good, thanks for that.

ANDARIAL · 18 Oct 2008 at 08:43

you should be able to connect the 3pin connector to the 4 pin header on your mobo as the locating lug on the 4 pin header is offset for this purpose to be backwards compatible with 3 pin fans

fobose · 18 Oct 2008 at 10:49

ANDARIAL said:
you should be able to connect the 3pin connector to the 4 pin header on your mobo as the locating lug on the 4 pin header is offset for this purpose to be backwards compatible with 3 pin fans

This is true.

Sultan of Swing · 20 Oct 2008 at 00:47

ANDARIAL said:
you should be able to connect the 3pin connector to the 4 pin header on your mobo as the locating lug on the 4 pin header is offset for this purpose to be backwards compatible with 3 pin fans

Tried that after looking in the manual at the pin descriptions, but the fan didn't move.

Found the BIOS setting I needed, had to change CPU Fan Speed from [N/A] to [Ignored]. (In case anyone wanted to know)

fobose · 20 Oct 2008 at 07:00

It might have been the CPU was very cold, which is why the CPU fan didn't move, Asus QFan probably decided it didn't need to spin the fan up as it wasn't hot enough. Did you wait till you got in to windows first? I would put it back on the 4pin CPU header.

PhillyDee · 20 Oct 2008 at 08:35

It should still 'see' the fan though. Have you set the fan control to voltage instead of PWM?

Sultan of Swing · 20 Oct 2008 at 20:21

PhillyDee said:
It should still 'see' the fan though. Have you set the fan control to voltage instead of PWM?

I don't know how to do that, so I highly doubt it. It could be that it decided the CPU wasn't hot enough, I guess, and I'm still waiting on Vista to come through the post. I don't think I'll worry about putting it on the CPU header, as the motherboard uses QFan on the chassis headers too, and I've got a second CPU fan running as well--cooling should be fine.

ANDARIAL · 20 Oct 2008 at 21:37

If you are going to leave it on the chassis headers does q-fan on these headers work at different temps to the cpu header?
Just make sure that you have set the cpu/pc to shut down at a safe temp i.e. no more than 90 oC for example

Sultan of Swing · 22 Oct 2008 at 16:55

I don't know about any differences between chassis and cpu q-fan. I also can't see any options in the bios for shutdown temps, so I assume Asus automatically set it.

mitch212k · 22 Oct 2008 at 17:03

i have a p5q-e and a 3 pin socket in the cpu fan header and have no such issues?

Sultan of Swing · 22 Oct 2008 at 17:06

Maybe it's the fan then--a Noctua P12.

mitch212k · 22 Oct 2008 at 17:47

mine are just cheapish hipers i have push/pulling on my true 120 ... works dam well though

54' load on 4Ghz

-Aura- · 22 Oct 2008 at 18:56

I have the P5E, 3 pin Zalman CPU cooler. Depends how you plug it in. Looking at board from above, plug needs to use pins 1-3 inc, not 2-4 inc. Using 2-4 indeed doesn`t spin fan.