System fan vs CPU fan

Can a CPU fan be connected to a system fan connector? What is the difference between the two? Just a 'name' and place on the motherboard?

Connecting to a system fan header is no different than connecting to one designated for the CPU. The only difference would be if you one to control the speed in the bios it will be controlling the wrong fan. Also, fan speed sensors will report 0 RPM's for the CPU speed. If you don't use the mobo to adjust the CPU fan speed, and most folks do not, then you really should not have any problems with it.

some case fans dont have rpm sensors.... (just 2 wires)

All CPU fans have rpm sensors

^ True 99.99999% of the time. I've run into an oddball here and there from some no-name shop in china so you'll have to watch out for that if you buy a cheap 'sink.

A lot of BIOSes have a feature that will set off a loud annoying siren if the CPU fan is "not connected" (read: no RPM wire is detected). Generally you can disable this to prevent it from being an issue if you're Water cooling and don't want to use the CPU Fan header or you have an oddball sense-less (rimshot) cpu fan.

Moto7451 said:

^ True 99.99999% of the time. I've run into an oddball here and there from some no-name shop in china so you'll have to watch out for that if you buy a cheap 'sink.

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Yup its true 99.9% Ive actully seen it also