ASUS Maximus Formula SE

[Talonman]

Hi, Asus have always worded it this way with the optional fan that is supplied with any of their motherboards. What do you mean by active and passive wc? If it's the case that you mean your WC has a fan attached to the CPU water heatsink then it could be assumed that the additional fan would intefere with the airflow. If you mean that your WC is active by means that it is part of a wc system, ie water flows around through other components, then you would still require the additional fan. As Asus clearly make the distinction between passive, ie heatsink no fan or water, and water cooling I'd have thought it was quite clear.
You could try raising a technical query with Asus...

ChrisC

I was thinking it needed a water pump to be considered active cooling, but mabey they are talking about WC with fans?

This is a passive water cooler, the type I dont have:
http://www.trustedreviews.com/periph...ater-Cooler/p1

I will have an active CPU cooler, in the form of a water block.

I believe what they ment to say was:
If you use a water block to cool the CPU, use the small clear fan.
If you use A CPU fan as your main cooling method, don't use our little fan too because it might suck the breath away from the big guy, and destabilize the system.

It is a done deal... Fan installed.