Need help with case fans

[ArcticFox1977]

Hi fairly new to this. So if you are replying make it for beginners.
Currently have a master cooler TD500 white case
CPU i5 12600KF
MOTHERBOARD- gigabyte z690 gaming x ddr4
PSU- 1000w
RAM- 16gb
I have no CPU cooler yet or GPU. Cooler is on its way and obviously GPU's are hard to come by.
Anyway, cpu installed and ram and psu. Connected the CPU cable to the top right on MOBO and connected the big 24 pin power cable. Connected the USB 3 cable along with the audio and front panel cables. The fans on the case i have connected to the regulator that comes with it and connected this via sata cable to the back of the PSU. The other end of the fans cables i have connected into the socket labeled sys fan 1. I wonder if this is correct? There is also sys fan 2, sys fan 3 and sys fan 4/pump at the bottom. I have checked the manual and the pictures and description arent clear. It states to plug it into the sys fan at the top near the CPU fan socket.
I have tried turning the pc on to see if they spin and light up and nothing. The RAM rgb's light up and look good but nothing else spins or lights up. Please help.

Thanks.

 

[looniam]

Hi fairly new to this. So if you are replying make it for beginners.
Currently have a master cooler TD500 white case
CPU i5 12600KF
MOTHERBOARD- gigabyte z690 gaming x ddr4
PSU- 1000w
RAM- 16gb
I have no CPU cooler yet or GPU. Cooler is on its way and obviously GPU's are hard to come by.
Anyway, cpu installed and ram and psu. Connected the CPU cable to the top right on MOBO and connected the big 24 pin power cable. Connected the USB 3 cable along with the audio and front panel cables. The fans on the case i have connected to the regulator that comes with it and connected this via sata cable to the back of the PSU. The other end of the fans cables i have connected into the socket labeled sys fan 1. I wonder if this is correct? There is also sys fan 2, sys fan 3 and sys fan 4/pump at the bottom. I have checked the manual and the pictures and description arent clear. It states to plug it into the sys fan at the top near the CPU fan socket.
I have tried turning the pc on to see if they spin and light up and nothing. The RAM rgb's light up and look good but nothing else spins or lights up. Please help.

Thanks.

you did what? i tried booting w/o a cooler once and found out thermal tripping would not save the chip.

however getting back . .looking at a few pics of your mobo, there should be two headers on top w/ one labeled cpu_fan and the other cpu_opt. either *should* work but go for cpu_fan. (the white header on right):

please DO NOT power on w/o a cpu cooler.

in the meantime look in the manual for what lights should light up during boot up here VGA/CPU/BOOT/DRAM:

after installing the cooler please.

 

[Deleted member 202104]

Just to amplify @looniam's post, please don't power up your system again without a proper cooler installed.

 

[freeagent]

Man that is brave. Did you just want to see the lights or something?

 

[ArcticFox1977]

Is the cpu fan socket not for a cooler to go into?? Anyway cooler coming tonight

 

[Deleted member 202104]

Is the cpu fan socket not for a cooler to go into?? Anyway cooler coming tonight

Yes, the CPU cooler should be connected to CPU Fan.

The cable from your fan controller in your case can go to any of the other fan headers on your motherboard. Sys 1 is fine. You'll be able to control the behavior of all the fan headers from within the bios of your motherboard once all is connected and booted up.

 

[looniam]

Is the cpu fan socket not for a cooler to go into?? Anyway cooler coming tonight

the cpu_fan and cpu_opt are both good. anything mentioned as "pump" really just means it can handle 2 amps instead of 1 amp of 12v.

top two are cpu and the bottom four are for the case fans. a motherboard may not boot up unless something is plugged in to either of the top 2. since you mentioned you had a fan plugged into one of them, idk if maybe you need to check the cpu power connections - all you really need is the 8 pin to boot. using the additional 4 pin (ATX 12v_2x2) isn't necessary and i doubt an i5 will need it.

mind those VGA/CPU/BOOT/.DRAM lights - those are to help troubleshooting issues like yours.

 

[dirtyferret]

Man that is brave. Did you just want to see the lights or something?

Maybe he wanted to make scrabbled eggs using a Robin's egg?

 

[Chrispy_]

As others have said, DO NOT power on a system without a CPU cooler attached. It probably won't damage the CPU if you do it for very brief periods (10s or less) but even then it's not a great idea because the emergency protections that cut power to the CPU only kick in after the temperatures have already exceeded the maximum recommended levels.

Link us to the webpage for your fans and fan controller, or alternatively post pictures of each including the connector types. There are so many combinations of fan controller, RGBLED controller, and ways to power both that it's pretty hard to accurately tell you what needs doing without that.

 

[Bill_Bright]

I have no CPU cooler yet or GPU.
I have tried turning the pc on to see if they spin and light up and nothing.

As I hope you realize now, that was not smart.

If you were lucky, you are fine. But don't be surprised if your CPU fails to boot now. A CPU's thermal protection features can react very quickly, but there is an expectation there is a mounted heatsink, at least. The problem is, a CPU can go from cold to overheated in a just few clock cycles. And the i5-12600KF operates up to 4.9 billion clock cycles every second. One can only hope that before the system realized the CPU was heating up very quickly, that it sensed there was no CPU fan connected to the CPU Fan header and shut down before it got too hot.

Don't do that again!

 

[ArcticFox1977]

Top pic is the module for the argb. Power is connected via sata to psu, reset switch connected to change colours. All white cables are coming from the case fans.
2ndbpic mobo, fans connected at bottom in sys fan 1 socket.
Also if you guys see something not right let me know, open to your expertise.

 

[Chrispy_]

okay so here's what I see -

In red is just a lighting controller. In blue are the ARGB plugs for the fans connected to the controller, but they do not have anything to do with the fans spinning, only lights.
In yellow are the PWM plugs. Those wires need to be powered by something, presumably a Molex or SATA power connector directly off the PSU.

Presumably the button on the lighting controller in red is what turns on/off and then cycles the lighting modes.

You should try to plug the fan PWM connectors (circled yellow) into the SYS FAN 1, 2, 3 headers on the board so that you can make use of fan speed control in the BIOS or in windows.
I would also try the ARGB connectors in blue in your motherboard in these LED sockets:

They might not be compatible with the motherboard's LED controller but it's worth at least trying them because if they do work, software control is far better than an internal box that requires you to open your case to make any changes.

 

[ArcticFox1977]

okay so here's what I see -

In red is just a lighting controller. In blue are the ARGB plugs for the fans connected to the controller, but they do not have anything to do with the fans spinning, only lights.
In yellow are the PWM plugs. Those wires need to be powered by something, presumably a Molex or SATA power connector directly off the PSU.


View attachment 232206

Presumably the button on the lighting controller in red is what turns on/off and then cycles the lighting modes.

You should try to plug the fan PWM connectors (circled yellow) into the SYS FAN 1, 2, 3 headers on the board so that you can make use of fan speed control in the BIOS or in windows.
I would also try the ARGB connectors in blue in your motherboard in these LED sockets:

View attachment 232207

They might not be compatible with the motherboard's LED controller but it's worth at least trying them because if they do work, software control is far better than an internal box that requires you to open your case to make any changes.

Ok the ones that are yellow are plugged into sys fan 1.
I've connected the rests switch cable into the controller so I can use the reset switch at the front of the case to change light colours/sequence.
Still waiting for cooler to arrive, not turning on till that's connected.
Checked the manual and it says to plug the controller into the pay via sata which I've done, is this wrong?

 

[Chrispy_]

Ah okay, so the black wires I've marked with "?" are a fan-header splitter? That's good. If you have enough cable to reach other fan headers you are better off running one fan to each free header, but it's not really a problem to do it with splitters, you just might not get accurate speed control on those fans.

 

[ArcticFox1977]

Ah okay, so the black wires I've marked with "?" are a fan-header splitter? That's good. If you have enough cable to reach other fan headers you are better off running one fan to each free header, but it's not really a problem to do it with splitters, you just might not get accurate speed control on those fans.

Yes there are 3 wires from fans going into 1 plug which is into Sys fan 1. Just making sure the controller is OK to be powered with sata to vacuum of psu?

 

[Chrispy_]

Just making sure the controller is OK to be powered with sata to vacuum of psu?

Vacuum?

 

[ArcticFox1977]

Rofl damn predicted text lol

OK connected the cooler up, and no fans and no lights kick in when we turn it on. Should the cooler light up right away and fans start spinning??

Oh the cooler I've got is the asus tuf gaming lc 240

 

[Chrispy_]

OK connected the cooler up, and no fans and no lights kick in when we turn it on. Should the cooler light up right away and fans start spinning??

Yes. Lights usually default to "on" even if they're not the colours you want. Fans almost always spin up within as second or two of powering on.

I don't have time tonight to do a full diagnostic breakdown but there are threads and guides for that that are better than my forum posts anyway.

You should tear down the system and start simple - CPU, motherboard, RAM, cooler, graphics card, PSU. Just see if you can get it to POST, and get a picture from the graphics card, and get into the BIOS. Take it out of the case if you can't even get that working and try the minimum build using the motherboard box as a workbench.

Rather than try and guess what the problem(s) are from a complex full build, go back to basics and establish that the parts work one at a time. A completely dead board with no fans spinning and no lights can be one of many things, but is likely

• a bad or incorrectly connected power supply
• a bad or incorrectly connected power button
• a ground short between the motherboard and the case
• a dead motherboard.
• a dead CPU

If you really get no sign of life out of it, you should get the motherboard's error LEDs to show something with just a motherboard, CPU, and cooler. At the very least the CPU fans should spin, and the diagnostic lights should tell you that there's RAM missing.

 

[ArcticFox1977]

I'm just scared to turn it on if the cpu cooler fans don't turn on and don't cool the cou

 

[Chrispy_]

As long as the waterblock of the AIO is secured to the CPU socket, that will provide enough thermal mass to absorb heat for a short while.

You definitely shouldn't try to do any prolonged tasks like flash the bios or install an OS but the CPU will probably take at least 30 seconds to heat up the waterblock from room temperature to 100C or so, which is plenty long enough to look for diagnostic lights on the motherboard.

Just leave it to cool for ~3 minutes between attempts if the pump isn't running.

 

[ArcticFox1977]

OK update, everything is working. Fans rgbs cpu cooler looking good. It was a very slight loose cable at the vack of psu. Now I need to wait for gpus to come available. Don't know when that will ve.

Thank you all for you help and quick responses.

 

[Chrispy_]

Go find a Geforce 750Ti, GTX 950 for under $100 so you can use your PC before it becomes obsolete.

Decent graphics cards are going to cost a lot for several years. I think the price may actually still be going up, so getting yourself in a pre-order queue for a 6500XT or RTX 3050 is a smart move. If you don't want it at MSRP you can likely sell it for $100 more than you pay for it.