Thermaltake Water 3.0 Extreme connections?

I am attempting my first custom build, and have stalled at the point where to connect one of the cables to the motherboard. I think I have the fans connected ok, but there is one long cable from the block that has 4 wires going into a 9-pin connector block that I have no idea where to connect to my MB. I am assuming this connector is for the water pump.

Unfortunately, there is very little instruction with this chiller, other than some wordless pictograms.. And it shows this connector going to a header near the RAM sockets on the MB - but I do not have any such headers on my ASUS Z87 Expert MB.

Any experience with this, or suggestions?

Edit: I am attaching an image of the Thermaltake 'manual'... the green box is the fan connection, the red one is the one I am having trouble with..

Those are the USB header, you need to plug that in to your mobo if you want to control the 2 fan speed.
And i think you have make a good puchage there, this's one of the best AIO cooler in the market right now

Thanks!

That is a 4 pin fan connector, not USB. I'd pick a fan connector on the board that wasn't the CPU one, unless the instructions specifically say to use that.

ASUS ROG said:

Those are the USB header, you need to plug that in to your mobo if you want to control the 2 fan speed.
And i think you have make a good puchage there, this's one of the best AIO cooler in the market right now

Click to expand...

That is a 4 pin PWM connector, not USB....................

Conumdrum said:

That is a 4 pin PWM connector, not USB....................

Click to expand...

Picture #10.

But he circled picture 9? So he's not asking about the USB, or he hasn't got that far yet? Can we expect a circled box 10 soon?

Ahh yes, he's looking for a USB connector. On my current mobo, diff brand it's way below the PCIe slots.

I suggest the OP, Paul read his Mobo manual and see where the USB port is. It is TT, don't expect the best manual and many mobo brands have diff pin layouts.

Ok, I made an error with my red marking on the diagram.. 9 is definitely the fan header and I did connect the fan to it. It is connector 10 that I was asking about, and it appears it does go to a USB header as suggested.. at least it fits properly into the header.

Okay, great! Is it working?

Hehe... Well, I am still a bit nervous in powering on.. Still have an outstanding question regarding the front panel connections that I would like resolved first.. Got too much $$ invested in this to take chances!

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=735578

thideras said:

That is a 4 pin fan connector, not USB. I'd pick a fan connector on the board that wasn't the CPU one, unless the instructions specifically say to use that.

Click to expand...

Conumdrum said:

That is a 4 pin PWM connector, not USB....................

Click to expand...

The op post a different pic when i reply to this thread and the pic was blurry, hard to tell.

Well, I tried to post both pics, but it only lt me post one.

Yup. Looks like its powered by the CPU_Fan Header and controlled/monitored by the USB. Samething with the H100i/H80i coolers from Corsair. My only question would be to the OP is it working? It should if you connected them and is there any monitoring/controlling software that came with it?

Knufire said:

Click to expand...

I know how to attach images to a post.. the problem is that when I attempt to attach more than one, it only takes one image, not both. May be a bug.. at least in preview mode, it only displayed one attachment instead of two.

No fan control

Ok, I am back again.. and still having problems with this chiller.

I believe I have all the connections correctly.. the fans are joined with the Y-splice so that only a single connection is made to the CPU_FAN header. The controlling cable is connected to a USB header.

When I powered up the system, I got a bios error saying the CPU fan was not running. I spoke to ASUS about this.. mentioned that that fans were indeed running, but the bios said they weren't. He suggested moving the fan connector to the CPU_OPT header, and there was no change. (also tried plugging the fans into a chassis header) As the fans were running, he suggested setting the bios to IGNORE for the CPU fan - which I did. He hinted that the board may be bad, but given that the fans run from both these headers, it would appear the board is good.

Then I decided to load up the fan control software supplied with the chiller. It failed to start, with an error: Could not detect device.

I spoke to ThermalTake about this, and as usual, they were not much help. Apparently, they were aware of this problem but had no fix or suggestions.

Soooo.. I was wondering if anyone else is having problems with this chiller? (Thermaltake Water 3.0 Extreme and ASUS Z87 Expert mobo)

No experience with the Thermal tech but have used the Antec 920 which looks very similar except for the rad. there should be 3 wires coming out of your block / controler.

1. a single fan wire that gets connected to your CPU Fan plugin
2. a Y cable that you connect your two fans to
3. a USB connecter that you connect to your USB Header.

Question .... your USN connecter is it a single thin 5 pin or is it the normal dual row of pins with 2 missing pin that we normally see with a USB cable?

My Antec 920 has the single row of 5 which is my memory is correct connects to the longer row of pins on the motherboard plug. If you plug it in the wrong row it may not be recongised. Here is a link to the antec site take a look at the instal instrucions they are a little more clear then yours are. What the big differences is Antec is asking you to load your software / drivers first then install. When I did the install like you with my antec Windows couldn't find my drivers and would fail loading or not find my cooler.

Now sometime I do get a low fan error or fan not working error I just plugged in my ram cooler there instead. I think it was just an error caused when the pump starts up slower then your CPU Cooler Fan. I only ever seen the error on start up if I ignored it everything ran fine.

i got a fan error also with my new cooler . i think it is because of having a 3 pin fan on the 4 pin cpu header . problem fixed , installed a 3 pin to molex adapter with a censor connector . no more cpu fan error .

bassnut said:

Question .... your USN connecter is it a single thin 5 pin or is it the normal dual row of pins with 2 missing pin that we normally see with a USB cable?

Click to expand...

Bassnut.. thanks for taking the time to reply...

It is a dual row block connector with one pin open. Plugs right into similar socket USB header.

I am not sure I understand your comment about the sequence of installation.. surely, you are not loading up drivers without having the cooling system installed?

rustylivz said:

i got a fan error also with my new cooler . i think it is because of having a 3 pin fan on the 4 pin cpu header . problem fixed , installed a 3 pin to molex adapter with a censor connector . no more cpu fan error .

Click to expand...

Rusty.. thanks for taking the time to respond...

Could you clarify what you mean? All my fans in the system have 3-wires into a 4-position connector. And the bios correctly identifies the other fans running and their speed.. why would the CPU be different?