Help installing h100i elite in corsair icue 465x rgb case.

I'm trying to build my first pc.

I have a

rog strix b550-f gaming mother board

H100i elite

Icue 465x rgb.

At the place I bought my parts I was told I would be able to top mount the h100i elite but I seem unable to do it. The rad and fans keep hitting my corsair rgb ram.

Can I front mount this to the fans that come pre installed in the icue 465x case and then use the h100i fans as exhausts?

Also the case comes with a commander pro and light node pre wired with the 3 front fans going into the commander pro.

My understanding is I still need to install the commander core that came with the h100i elite.

If I front mount the radiator to the 465x fans do I also need to rewire the fans its attached to into the commander core from the commander pro?

Are you sure you have a Commander Pro already installed? One does not come with the case, but you might have purchased one separately. The 465X does come with a Lighting Node Core which is a RGB power/control box, but this is lighting only. It still may be useful.

The Commander Core you must use with the Elite coolers is both fan controller and RGB controller is one package. 6 PWM fan ports and 6 RGB ports. Those two are not related and you can have 6 RGB fans plugged into the RGB slots and 6 different fans on the PWM speed control side.

So you most certainly can mount the radiator behind the front LL fans. You can put the ML-Elite that come with the cooler on top. You can put all of your fans on the PWM speed control slots 1-6 and that will make all case fans controllable through CUE.

Now comes the part where you need to make a choice. You can put all 5 RGB fans (3 LL + 2 ML-Elite) on the Commander Core RGB ports. The program will automatically make it a base 16 LED count for fans. This means effects will go through the top two 8 LED fans pretty quickly and it will look "fast". However, this puts all the lighting effect controls in one place. You set a lighting effect in the Commander Core and it will apply it to all.

The other option is to leave the RGB wires for the LL right where they are the Node Core. This keeps their lighting on the current device you have in CUE. Then only connect the ML-Elite to the RGB ports 1-2 on the Commander Core. Each group of fans (LL and ML-E) will act like a separate unit and be controlled from their respective devices. This ensures that lighting effect presets behave properly on each set, but you will need to create effects twice. It will be more work to make a lighting effect start on the front and finish at the back.

Which of these two choices is better likely depends on what kind of lighting you normally use. If you generally prefer static or non-fan to fan moving patterns like Spiral Rainbow, Rain, etc., then put them all on the Commander Core. If the effect moving at different speeds through different parts of the system is going really bother you, keep them on separate controllers.