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.

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.