Corsair ML120 Pro header to mobo question

Hey yall,

 

I'm building my first rig in over a decade and I'm learning about fan connections for the first time here.

 

I have a Gigabyte Auros Z390 Pro WIFI mobo which has 3 A1 fan header connections and 3 A2 connections. All of them being flexible hybrid PWM or DC mode headers.

 

I'm looking to incorporate 4 ML120 pro fans into my build. So, my question is, do I plug 3 fans, individually, into the 3 A1 headers and the 4th into one of the A2's? I thought I read somewhere that you can plug up to 3 fans into 1 A1 header? I thought physically, it was 1 4 pin fan cable per header on the mobo?

 

Lastly, since the ML120 pro's require a 12 volt power supply to run? If I boot my rig up for the first time with them plugged in, won't my bios's default setting be a non 12 volt D/C mode for the fans which I then have to go in and configure to PWM? And if so, will that damage the fans being booted into D/C for a brief period of time upon intial startup before I can switch their power profile over to PWM?

 

I apologize if this is making no sense or im contradicting myself. This is all so new to me. Any help would be awesome.

If you use splitters, you can put multiple fans on a single header. But if you have enough headers (and it sounds like you do), that's not necessary. The downside to this is that y ou won't have individual control over each fan - all of the fans on a single header behave as one fan.

 

Most current motherboards will actually auto-detect PWM vs DC fan with a fair amount of accuracy. That said, it's still better to specify and not let it guess. Having a few seconds where it's controlled "as DC" won't hurt the fan. Both DC and PWM fans will take up to 12V and many fans can be controlled either way. The ML fans cannot because they need the voltage for the magnetic levitation.

 

This, too, is talking about the Fan Headers. If you have the RGB versions of these fans, you'll have a second connector on it for the RGB. Don't plug that into your motherboard.

If you use splitters, you can put multiple fans on a single header. But if you have enough headers (and it sounds like you do), that's not necessary. The downside to this is that y ou won't have individual control over each fan - all of the fans on a single header behave as one fan.

 

Most current motherboards will actually auto-detect PWM vs DC fan with a fair amount of accuracy. That said, it's still better to specify and not let it guess. Having a few seconds where it's controlled "as DC" won't hurt the fan. Both DC and PWM fans will take up to 12V and many fans can be controlled either way. The ML fans cannot because they need the voltage for the magnetic levitation.

 

This, too, is talking about the Fan Headers. If you have the RGB versions of these fans, you'll have a second connector on it for the RGB. Don't plug that into your motherboard.

 

Thanks so much for the reply. You answered eveything I needed to know.

If you use splitters, you can put multiple fans on a single header. But if you have enough headers (and it sounds like you do), that's not necessary. The downside to this is that y ou won't have individual control over each fan - all of the fans on a single header behave as one fan.

 

Most current motherboards will actually auto-detect PWM vs DC fan with a fair amount of accuracy. That said, it's still better to specify and not let it guess. Having a few seconds where it's controlled "as DC" won't hurt the fan. Both DC and PWM fans will take up to 12V and many fans can be controlled either way. The ML fans cannot because they need the voltage for the magnetic levitation.

 

This, too, is talking about the Fan Headers. If you have the RGB versions of these fans, you'll have a second connector on it for the RGB. Don't plug that into your motherboard.

 

One last question though. I know you said modern mobos are good at detecting between D/C and PWM. But once my rig is up and running, how do I check to make sure it is in PWM mode? and Is there a fan monitoring program that you would recommend I use to monitor and adjust such things?

You would do this either in the BIOS or in any software provided by your motherboard manufacturer for system control. I don't recall a single modern BIOS that doesn't have a simple radio button or drop down setting for PWM vs DC override. Maybe I'm OCD but I always go in and manually set it.