Aurora R9, Corsair H60 install, top & front fans stuck at 12-13%

You can set a manual fan curve.

Thanks. Yup, I can "set" a manual top fan curve on the ADVANCED tab, but nothing happens. Fan remains at 12-13%.

Just a random thought:

Did you turn on/off the custom Fan setting in the Home tab section where the 4 buttions are? Or did you just changed the Fan curve setting in the Advanced tab?

In the past, I used to make the mistake by assuming the change is invoked in the Advanced tab.

However, I discovered the way AWCC works is that the settings are turned on/off only in the Home tab section by toggling any of the 4 buttons on the lower part of the AWCC interface.

Make sure you toggling the Fan button on the Home tab section, after you configured it in the Advanced tab.

This. I sometimes end up making this mistake too.

Spot on. I can now vary the top/front fan speeds.

Defining a curve was a bit hit and miss:

• it's unclear what "Offset" means - I needed quite different curves for top and front to achieve similar effects;
• the speed quantisation to 12%/25%/... obscures the effect of your tweaks;
• top/front don't seem very responsive to temperature (or there is some sort of hysteresis) - temps rose to 60, top spooled up, temps later fell back to 40 and stayed there, top kept running fast for another couple of minutes.

Progress of a sort though. This is still a very hot-running machine, though 15 degrees less so since the H60. It probably doesn't help that the H60 radiator is installed at the top (exhaust) fan, and when the GPU (2080 SUPER) is running hard, the air flowing over the radiator is 70+ degrees.

In the older Aurora revisions (R7/R8), the front fan and top fan temperature sensors were placed near to one another on the motherboard. Someone like @Tesla1856 / @r72019 may be able to confirm this. So this means little difference in setting the front/top fans based on their temperatures.

As you have noticed, the terminology used in AWCC is confusing. I've never gotten around to figuring out what they all meant. Some software like HWinfo may be able to tell you the corresponding fan speed in RPM but 3rd party software probing of the Dell proprietary motherboard controller readings come and go based on BIOS update.

In the early days of this generation's Aurora (R5 and above), we were faced with loud fan noise because the BIOS was programmed to be sensitive to temperature sensor change so the fans would kick in. Many of us went the path of dumping Dell's industrial fan for better alternatives like the Corsair ML120 Pro or a constant speed Noctua fan. Then out of nowhere, a BIOS update came and people stopped complaining about fan noise. That's the start of us noticing that instead of going for better fans, Dell just made the temp sensors trigger the fans at a higher temp.

If you ran a CPU-only workload, you should see temps well under 70C with the H60. If your issue is with heat when the 2080 Super runs, that's a different issue. The H60 helps somewhat but you need a different solution like slapping an AIO cooler on the TU-104 die.

Very helpful thoughts, appreciated. I must admit to being a little disappointed that, to put it plainly, a high end Alienware gaming PC was basically unfit for purpose as sold. ( I consider the CPU regularly hitting 100 degrees and going into thermal throttling "unsatisfactory". ) The H60 has improved things, but I think (?) there is no practical way to install this other than with the radiator on the top (exhaust) fan, and there's a limit to how much you can cool the CPU with 70 degree air off the GPU.

I have a faint hope that an RTX 3080 FE (if I can ever get hold of one), which vents out the backplate, might improve things.

"What is your source for that temperature reading? That would be incredibly hot"

From 3DMark. Not, I grant, that the air the card is expelling is necessarily 82 degrees, but it'll be pretty toasty!

(The CPU isn't so hot at that point, as that test is GPU bound - it warms up nicely in the next test.)

@shortshrift99    It probably doesn't help that the H60 radiator is installed at the top (exhaust) fan, and when the GPU (2080 SUPER) is running hard, the air flowing over the radiator is 70+ degrees.

What is your source for that temperature reading?  That would be incredibly hot 

Yes, an Intel-i9 should have liquid-cooling.

Yes, you must be able to control Front-Fan (to bring in more cool air). If you can't, maybe the machine can't control the radiator-fan either (which might explain why it's going to 100c).

If not that reason, then I expect the Corsair-H60 is:
- Not installed properly (down-flat against i9, thermal-compound, bad wiring, etc.)
- Defective
- Not compatible somehow with AW-CC. Does the Corsair come with software to control it ?

@shortshrift99   From 3DMark. Not, I grant, that the air the card is expelling is necessarily 82 degrees, but it'll be pretty toasty!

It will be 'less toasty' before it reaches the radiator as it mixes with ambient air from the lower front intake fan.

@Tesla1856, thanks.

I'm reasonably confident in the installation - the H60 has brought down CPU temps by 15 degrees or so. CPU-only load (i.e. Prime95), the temperatures are low 50s. It's, perhaps unsurprisingly, when the 2080 SUPER is running full chat that the CPU temperature soars.

I have now got the top/front fans varying speed (Balanced never shifts them from 12-13% - perhaps this is normal for an R9 with liquid cooling), but making useful curves is not totally straightforward (as I touched on earlier in this thread), and spinning up the fans makes less difference than I had imagined, which may explain why Balanced is set up as it is.

So my initial query is pretty much covered. The machine still runs very hot when both GPU and CPU are loaded, but hasn't (quite) throttled since fitting the H60. As I said earlier, I wonder if a GPU that vents through the backplate will improve matters.

Did you buy your 2080 Super as part of a pre-installed option in your R9? Or was it an aftermarket card.

I have 2080 Super that runs cool like this:

Radiator flush against wall.

@shortshrift99 :

My system was as shipped by Dell (until the H60 went in). Their 2080 SUPER dumps most of its 250W into the case.

I thought Dell RTX cards are blower designs and will vent most of the heat out the back of the case?

@GTS81 Nice. My system was as shipped by Dell (until the H60 went in). Their 2080 SUPER dumps most of its 250W into the case.