62 YEARS IN IT AND I NEED HELP WITH A SIMPLE PROBLEM (COULD BE OLD TIMERS DISEASE STARTING) 🙄🙄

[Tralfaz]

Hi everyone, I have just had my 75th birthday, but after 62 years in IT I have suddenly hit what appears to be a simple problem that I cannot solve. Having discovered this Forum, I hope someone can help an old “newbie” with fixing this.

Unlike the early days, when all we had to worry about was the punch card machine going mad or someone tripping over on the stairs while carrying too many two-inch tape reels, I find myself now working for the first time ever with a liquid cooling system on a PC.

Someone sold me a fairly well spec'd older machine very cheaply (ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Hero MOBO, Intel i9 9th gen processor, 32GB of RAM, 1080 graphics card, two 1TB SSD's) but it's the first time I have ever tried to iron out some bugs in the internal physical configuration where there is a Corsair Liquid Cooler installed.

The machine belonged to a friend's son who is an avid gamer (it was apparently two PC's ago and just gathering dust now - too slow!!). Apparently, the son had some problems initially with wiring up the MOBO and did a bit of a bodge job connecting the liquid cooler. Both fans around the radiator run, but if there was supposed to be a LED light up on the cooler proper to emphasise the “Corsair” logo this doesn’t happen.

The cooler states on it that it is Corsair “CX 9060017 WW”, which from my research is fairly old model, but like most people nowadays I don’t want to junk anything that mostly appears to be working and could be fixed.

Unfortunately, the cooler instructions, etc; were not with the PC, although I did get the full MOBO manual with it. The BIOS reports that there is no fan working to cool the i9 CPU, although the temperature measurements I have been taking show that the cooler system must be operating (apart from seeing the fans turning).

Having pulled the wiring apart it appears that there is a three-pin plug coming off the cooler that hasn’t been connected to anything in the past, which I suspect might be part of the previous bodge as there are no three pin sockets on the ASUS ROG MOBO at all.

The biggest hurdle so far is that none of the wires coming from the cooler setup are colour-coded (all black) so it makes it difficult when you are trying to trace power, ground, etc. and I don’t just want to break the MOBO by using trial and error. The three-pin plug from the cooler has two ridges on one side, which I assume were intended to plug into the relevant three pin MOBO socket, but the board doesn’t have any.

I have attached below a picture of the relevant connection page from the MOBO manual which shows the three of the four-pin sockets marked CPU_OPT, CPU_FAN, and W_PUMP, which appear to be all for the CPU.

The three-pin cooler plug will fit the four-pin socket, but if connected to the MOBO W_PUMP four-pin socket the GND circuit on that socket is not in the same position as the other two MOBO four pin sockets. My assumption is that if I connect the three-pin plug, then without a GND it won’t achieve anything.

I also understand from my reading that Corsair provided software to run these coolers properly. Is this model I have too old to be controlled by that software, whatever it is?

I apologise in advance if I have chosen the wrong part of the Forum or these issues has been addressed previously, but I would really appreciate anyone with expertise on these older coolers to help me sort this out.

Thanks in advance,

Tralfaz.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[muvo]

Your cooling is the Corsair H80i GT 120 mm, (CW-9060017-WW) which has no LED, just the sticker.

The fan connection goes into the cpu_fan connection. So that the mainboard can give you an error message (cpu_fan error) if the cooling fails. Please check in the bios whether this function is set (factory setting)

[Tralfaz]

Hi Muvo,

Thanks for the prompt reply, I really appreciate you taking the time to do so. The grey matter is getting greyer every day 🙂🙂 but I keep taking on new things to maintain my life-long interest in IT.

Looking at the page from the Manual there is the third socket marked "W_PUMP". For future reference does Corsair or any other cooler manufacturer make products that make use of this socket? I was intrigued that the circuit connections were in a different order to the other two, but my assumption is that this third socket has a very specific application not relevant to my setup.

Regards,

Tralfaz.

 

[c-attack]

W_Pump or AIO_Pump have no special properties on most Asus boards aside from a higher current capacity on premium boards. There are a CHAssis fan header preset to 100%. Most of the time this is wasted as nearly all AIO units these days use a SATA connector for power. The H80i GT was one of the last units not to do that and does take power directly from the motherboard. That 3 pin connector needs to connect to either AIO Fan, W Pump, or the CPU Fan connector set to “Full Speed” or 100% in the bios.
 

If you use W pump or AIO pump, then you must disable the cpu boot protection system. Go to the Advanced BIOS (F7) -> Monitoring -> CPU fan RPM. Hit enter and then change it to Ignore to disable the boot protection. No matter which MB fan port you choose, that 3 pin must be connected for power. It will slide onto any 4 pin header in the correct orientation. The motherboard has an auto-detect for DC vs PWM or you can manually set it in the bios. The AIO should always be set to PWM and is meant to use a full 12v with speed adjustments handled by the internal controller. 

[muvo]

There are custom loop pumps that run via this connection. This one has a little more strength. But with the Corsair cooling system, the CPU_Fan connection is completely sufficient and you don't need to change anything in the BIOS.

[c-attack]

You still must set CPU fan to 100% or Full Speed (Q-Fan) for the H80i GT as that is a power supplying connection unlike most other models. 
 

6 hours ago, Tralfaz said:

also understand from my reading that Corsair provided software to run these coolers properly. Is this model I have too old to be controlled by that software, whatever it is?

It will work with the current CUE software, although I am concerned the Device Memory Mode is going to cause problems on these older devices. My recommendation is to use the CUE 4 download (prior generation) to manage these older devices when there is no other Corsair hardware present. 
 

You also can skip cue entirely by putting the pump power on W_ Pump and the two fans on cpu/opt. Then in the BIOS set the fan delays to maximum for cpu fan (8.5 seconds). They will run cpu temp and I spend a lot of time explaining why that’s inefficient, but in these circumstances it’s a viable means of control.