Asus motherboard control of AIO cooler

[chrisk]

Hey folks;
I'm kinda stuck with how to set up my AIO cooler properly. I am running a 3900x on the Asus Strix B550-E:

ROG STRIX B550-E GAMING | Motherboards | ASUS Global

ROG Strix B550-E Gaming ATX motherboard is PCIe® 4.0-ready and features a robust power design, comprehensive cooling controls, AI Networking and cyberpunk-inspired looks.

www.asus.com

The AIO I have is the Fractal design S24:

Welcome to the Fractal Design Website

Fractal Design is a leading designer and manufacturer of premium PC hardware including cases, cooling, power supplies and accessories.

www.fractal-design.com

Right now I have the two fans plugged into the S24s fan controller integrated on the rad, and the cable from the pump is plugged into the "AIO" power port on the Asus motherboard. I set the AIO to "auto" on the block, so that the block would decide how hard to push the fans and pump.

When I leave this as-is, I get CPU fan error on boot. I got rid of that by telling the mobo bios to ignore the CPU fan monitoring. I set the AIO bios setting to "auto" as I figured the BIOS would let the S24 do the work.

The results from this were a very quiet system, with the pump and fans only doing about half speed. On prime95 I get max 80c if I let ot run for an hour. Most of the time its in the low 70s.

I decided to try to get the mobo to do the control. So I set the S24 to "PWM" on the block, and then in the mobo bios I set the AIO port to "PWM". The result was the pump and fans went 100% all the time. A loud system, but cooler temps (max about high 60c range).

I was hoping the mobo would dial down the pump and/or fans. Do I have to set it up differently? I was hoping to not connect the fans to the mobo, etc.

Thanks!

 

[Cptn Vortex]

I did something recently for a client build, with the same S24 cooler, and for some reason I couldn't get the control to work at all via the "AIO Pump" header. I ended up using the CPU Fan header for the aio pump and set a custom curve that works much better.

 

[chrisk]

I did something recently for a client build, with the same S24 cooler, and for some reason I couldn't get the control to work at all via the "AIO Pump" header. I ended up using the CPU Fan header for the aio pump and set a custom curve that works much better.

That makes sense. I guess the pump would be the reported 'fan speed'?

 

[Cptn Vortex]

That makes sense. I guess the pump would be the reported 'fan speed'?

Yes in this case that's what I believe is being reported, as it is around 2000-3000RPM

 

[Lysrin]

I've struggled with this too for my stand alone PWM EK pump. For mine, ASUS Maximus X board, there is an option in the BIOS to change the behavior for AIO header and the separate pump header. However setting them to auto never seems to give me the PWM behaviour I want on my pump. It works, but didn't allow the pump to dial down enough to be really quiet on idle.

In the end I did similar to Cptn. I connected my pump to a controllable chassis fan header that takes it behaviour from CPU temp, and then I created a fan curve in the ASUS desktop software. That has given me the best behaviour; everything idles down and is quiet when cool but ramps up with temperature as necessary.

My rad fans are similarly connected to the CPU fan header via a fan controller and ramp up and down as desired.

So, in my experimenting the AIO and pump headers can work from auto in the BIOS, but never quite like I thought they should, and seemingly with a limited range.

I'm not expert at tweaking all this; this is my first custom loop. So others may be able to explain. I've been pleased with my performance and behaviour once I configured as described.