Is a 4 pin CPU fan required for Cool 'n' Quiet?

zubblwump · Post by **zubblwump** » Wed Nov 08, 2006 2:15 pm

First, let me say I tried searching since I figured this has probably been discussed already. Unfortunately, I didn't really find the answer I need. I have a Athlon 64 X2 4200+ CPU and an ASRock 939 Dual VSTA motherboard, which supports Cool 'n' Quiet. I'm looking to replace the stock heatsink and fan to quiet it down a little, but don't know if i need a 4 pin fan or if a 3 pin fan will function the same. My understanding of the difference was that the 4th pin is a speed control? So if i use a 3 pin fan, the motherboard won't be able to slow the fan down under low load? (BTW, I'm not entirely sure that the fan speed control is part of the Cool 'n' Quiet feature, or a different bios feature, to be honest.) If I am correct, what do people do? Not use the motherboard speed control?

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Wed Nov 08, 2006 3:41 pm

3 pin will work fine.

Andy

psiu · Post by **psiu** » Wed Nov 08, 2006 8:36 pm

Well, the motherboard can control the fan, but it does have to be a 4 pin fan. So you could enable CnQ, but won't get the fan control benefit of it. I have the same motherboard, I just have the Zalman Fanmate 2 hanging out of the case for control.

zubblwump · Post by **zubblwump** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 7:22 am

Thanks. OK, say I get a 4 pin fan then, to let the motherboard control it's speed, but later decide I want to add a fanmate to make it quieter. (As I understand it, the fanmate is designed to work with 3 pin fans only, so say instead I manually volt-mod it) Will there be a problem with the motherboard thinking it's running full voltage/speed? Or should the motherboard fan speed control be disabled (if possible) when using an manual fan speed control method.

kentc · Post by **kentc** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 9:07 am

zubblwump wrote:(BTW, I'm not entirely sure that the fan speed control is part of the Cool 'n' Quiet feature, or a different bios feature, to be honest.)

you are right to doubt that. fan speed control is a bios feature completely seperated from c'n'q. all c'n'q does is to reduce the cpu speed and voltage when idle or when used for light duties.

bios fan speed control usually runs the fan at about 50% spinning it up to 100% when you reach a set temperature.

zubblwump · Post by **zubblwump** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 12:18 pm

That's kinda what I thought. So Cool 'n' Quiet will reduce power consumption and heat output, but does little by itself to reduce noise? If so, then you still need to either manually undervolt fans, or at least buy quieter ones, or use the motherboard's fan speed controls to actually achieve the "Quiet" part of Cool 'n' Quiet? Is the "Quiet" mostly referring to the fact that with less heat generated, you don't need a lot of loud fans?

fabre · Post by **fabre** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 2:46 pm

kentc wrote:bios fan speed control usually runs the fan at about 50% spinning it up to 100% when you reach a set temperature.

The fan control feature doesn't work in bios 1.30, I emailed Asrock about it and the they sent me a rev 1.30a, with this revision instead of a slow/medium/fast option, you can select a target fan speed from 10% to 90% by increment of 10%.

With C'n'q enabled (don't forget to set minimal power management in windows) and the JMC fan at 20% my x2 3800 is 34c Idle (at 10% the fan is so slow the fan speed is not reporting anymore), the target temp is set to 50c .

kentc · Post by **kentc** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 2:18 am

zubblwump wrote:Is the "Quiet" mostly referring to the fact that with less heat generated, you don't need a lot of loud fans?

i should think so. marketing speak i soften bashed here in the forums and articles just for that reason. it's often just a load of manure. most notably the dBa/cfm-figures for fans are often completely out of wack. annoying.

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 8:22 am

If you are talking about 4 pin like this http://www.hardwarezone.com/img/data/ar ... r_conn.jpg

Then it won't be useful for CoolNQuiet. The 4 pins are 12v, Ground, Ground, 5v

If you are talking about a 4pin fan connector like this:

Then a 4pin fan tail will work on a 3pin or 4pin header.

on a 3pin it is 12v, ground, RPM not necessarily in that order.

psiu · Post by **psiu** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 8:29 am

So I think we need a list

:

1. CNQ with 4 pin fan: motherboard will adjust fan speed based on temp. Also processor speed control (does it affect voltage also?). This should be the easiest to accomplish.
2. CNQ with 3 pin fan: Will only do processor speed control (and V?). In my case, I have a Fanmate 2 plugged in, it does pass the RPM's back through accurately to the motherboard.
3. I do a combination of CrystalCPUID and my Fanmate 2. I have it set to lower voltage and multiplier at lower CPU usage levels, I use Speed fan to get CPU temp, ATITool to get GPU temp and control the graphics cooling based on temp. I can manually crank up the Fanmate 2 if needed for CPU cooling (it's plugged into a Zalman 7700AlCu).

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 10:08 am

I was trying to figure out why anyone would use CoolNQuiet and 4 pin motherboard fan headers in the same conversation. In the past those were only seen on the Intel side of the fence.

I just reviewed all of the AM2 motherboards covered in five articles on anandtech and out of the bunch only two of them had 4 pin fan headers. The winners were:

Foxconn C51XEM2AA (with more than one 4pin header)
MSI K9N SLI (with a mixture of 4pin and 3pin headers)

The following boards had nothing but 3 pin headers:

Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe
Biostar 590 SLI
ECS KA3 MVP
Epox MF570SLI
Gigabyte GA-M59SLI-S5
MSI K9A Platinum
ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 AM2 Reference Board (ATI RD580 Northbridge - ATI SB600 Southbridge)

It is interesting to note that MSI has a board with only 3 pin headers that is just as new as the one that has both 3 pin and 4 pin headers.

Is there a 939 board or any newer AMD board not listed here that has 4 pin fan headers?

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 10:30 am

Also I'd like to say in no uncertain terms you can use Coolnquiet with a 3 pin fan and a 3 pin fan header.

How well the ASRock 939 Dual VSTA will handle Coolnquiet I couldn't say. And as for using a 3 pin fan on the ASRock 4 pin header I sill don't know how well it would work. Worst case scenario that motherboard has a 3 pin fan header on the other side of the board that you could run a fan power extension cable to.

Best to just try it and monitor the RPMs to see if it is running below full speed at idle.

fabre · Post by **fabre** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 10:47 am

dhanson865 wrote:How well the ASRock 939 Dual VSTA will handle Coolnquiet I couldn't say. And as for using a 3 pin fan on the ASRock 4 pin header I sill don't know how well it would work. Worst case scenario that motherboard has a 3 pin fan header on the other side of the board that you could run a fan power extension cable to.

I used to have a 3pin nexus 92mm before swapping it for the 4pin JMC, plugged on the 4pin header the Nexus just ran at full speed, no control possible even with speedfan.

The only other fan header on that board is also a 4pin header. I was thinking of plugging a 4pin 120mm exhaust fan on it but the header is located on the front of the board, and the exhaust fan plug is to short to reach it.

C'n'q seems to work fine, Idle vcore goes down to 1.10v and will increase up to 1.38v according to load.

psiu · Post by **psiu** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 11:25 am

dhanson865 wrote:Also I'd like to say in no uncertain terms you can use Coolnquiet with a 3 pin fan and a 3 pin fan header.

How well the ASRock 939 Dual VSTA will handle Coolnquiet I couldn't say. And as for using a 3 pin fan on the ASRock 4 pin header I sill don't know how well it would work. Worst case scenario that motherboard has a 3 pin fan header on the other side of the board that you could run a fan power extension cable to.

The 939Dual-VSTA handles CnQ fine, only problem is the 4 pin mobo header doesn't do any fan control when a 3 pin fan is plugged into it. I have a 3 pin fan plugged into it, but I use a Fanmate 2 to control it.

zubblwump · Post by **zubblwump** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 10:35 am

Thanks for all the replies. I definately understand the whole C'n'Q deal better now. I know the ASRock 939 Dual VSTA does have the 4 pin header, so I guess I may as well take advantage of it and get a fan with a 4pin connector as well. Maybe the fan control will make it quiet enough and I won't have to use a fanmate or mod it. I actually have no idea if the bios fan control is working on my board or not. My bios shows the three HIGH, MED, LOW fan settings only, so I must be using the bios that reportedly doesn't work, although I've got enough other loud fans in there that I can't be sure. I do know the system was louder when encoding some videos the other night than at idle, but that may have been due to ramping up of the PSU fan or GPU fan, neither of which are partcularly quiet under load. Unless the bios fan speed control is controllable on the fly or provides a drastic noise reduction, it's hard for me to tell when I have to shut down in between.

I'll try the bios update and see what it does for me.

Is a 4 pin CPU fan required for Cool 'n' Quiet?

Is a 4 pin CPU fan required for Cool 'n' Quiet?

Re: Is a 4 pin CPU fan required for Cool 'n' Quiet?

Re: Is a 4 pin CPU fan required for Cool 'n' Quiet?