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

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.

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Like with both my Aurora-R1 and Aurora-R6 with factory liquid-cooling ...

In AW-CC you set Thermal Controller to MANUAL. Then, you create simple "uphill" Curves.

The Radiator fan controls itself. If you toss it a bunch of work (like with Prime95 or OCCT) you should hear it go very-fast, as needed to keep the CPU temp below 70c-75c .

CPUID's HW-Monitor is good for inside Windows. It should be able to read all AW-CC fans.

For the Nvidia card, MSI-AfterBurner is good. Set a better fan-curve.

On boot, ePSA is good. One of my old posts describes how to interpret those fan readings for systems with Liquid-Cooling.

@Tesla1856

Many thanks. With the aftermarket H60, the pump is constant speed (and reasonably quiet at that speed). Thanks for the tool recommends - will take a look.

@GTS81

I think you may be right. I was assuming, but now you mention it I notice that the backplate is a grille kind of affair.

Hmm. Maybe then I shouldn't be expecting less case heat from an RTX 3080 FE?

About half the heat for the 3080 FE is through the blower. The remainder is upwards to the swing-arm PSU. It'll get real toasty once you tap the full 320W of that card.

With the aftermarket H60, the pump is constant speed (and reasonably quiet at that speed).

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Correct. All Asetek pumps (Corsair, Alienware, whatever) run at a constant speed.

I was talking about the radiator's FAN .

The 3080 fe comes with a new and improved airflow design over prior gens

@Tesla1856

"I was talking about the radiator's FAN. [If you toss it a bunch of work (like with Prime95 or OCCT) you should hear it go very-fast, as needed to keep the CPU temp below 70c-75c.]"

That brings us full circle to the subject of this post. It doesn't.

The radiator fan is the top fan and runs at 12-13% all the time, irrespective of temperature.

I can force it to run faster with manual curves, but doing so actually makes less CPU temperature difference than I had imagined.

@GTS81 & @r72019

Thanks regarding 3080 FE. With the realisation that the (lower TDP) 2080 SUPER is actually venting out the backplate, I wonder whether I have the headroom for a 3080 FE at all. (Still, if I ever got hold of one, I don't imagine I'd have a problem finding someone to take it off my hands!)

Below is my latest AC Odyssey graph (after H60). Compared to the one at the very top of this thread, average is 14 degrees better, but I'm still only 7 degrees off thermal throttling at the max (a momentary max - it is obvious the graph is not near 93 often).

"I was talking about the radiator's FAN. [If you toss it a bunch of work (like with Prime95 or OCCT) you should hear it go very-fast, as needed to keep the CPU temp below 70c-75c.]"

1. That brings us full circle to the subject of this post. It doesn't. The radiator fan is the top fan and runs at 12-13% all the time, irrespective of temperature.

2. I can force it to run faster with manual curves, but doing so actually makes less CPU temperature difference than I had imagined.

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1. Then I suggest you fix it. 

2. You always set Thermal Controller to MANUAL . That just means YOU HAVE CONTROL and not AW-CC doing whatever it wants.

Then, for each fan, you ignore the Fixed-setting and instead select "USE CURVE" and setup a little uphill slope. 

On the Aurora-R6, for both Front-Fan, and Top-Fan, I have "Linked to: CPU Sensor".

On the Aurora-R1, I use ambient sensors. But you still can't control the radiator-fan. It controls itself just like a fan on a "fanned heatsink" on a basic machine.

So, do this above. If still not working it is still broken so post back and let me know. 

@Tesla1856

Many thanks.

In my setup, the AWCC manual curves - while they "work" - do not work well.

I'm fighting the quantisation of the fan speed and the hysteresis (and the opaque nature of "Offset"). I can with some care get top to spin up from 12% to 25% (nowhere in between) as the temperature hits 50, say. It then doesn't spin down for a number of minutes after the temperature normalises.

So you open Chrome, a page load spikes the temperature to 53 for a fraction of a second, the fan goes from 12% to 25% and stays there.

The best solution I've managed so far (and this is sort of workable) is simply to define a "Boosted" thermal profile with flat top fan/front fan offsets and switch to this before gaming.

The Boosted thermal profile doesn't, of course, stop temperature spikes, but what it does seem to stop is a gradual increase in baseline temperature during a gaming session while the GPU + CPU are generating more heat than the regular fan speed can clear.

1. I can with some care get top to spin up from 12% to 25% (nowhere in between)

2. Installation went fairly smoothly. I reused the Dell top fan with the H60 radiator block, and plugged it into the same TOP_FAN header I'd taken it out of. The H60 pump attached to the PUMP_FAN header (the H60 only connects one pin, I guess this signals RPM).

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1. Doesn't sound right. Sounds broken. If you are positive it is mounted-down properly, the problem is likely wiring.

2. I think your problem is here.

< I reused the Dell top fan with the H60 radiator block, and plugged it into the same TOP_FAN header I'd taken it out of. 

I don't know if this is right.

< The H60 pump attached to the PUMP_FAN header

This doesn't sound right.

Personally, I would have just used a Alienware (Asetek) OEM cooler ... either installed by Dell at factory, or purchased from Dell parts. However, others have installed these various Corsair units (with various degrees of success).

It is unfortunate that Dell lets people even buy a system with an Intel-i9 and/or large Nvidia card ...
without a Liquid-Cooler and 850w PS.

@shortshrift99 :

I recommend changing everything back to stock to see if your fans revert to regular behavior i.e. not capped at 25%.

Thanks all.

I find I'm not the only person to see this, e.g. here. The posts I found were all relatively recent. Perhaps AWCC or BIOS behaviour has changed.

I'm reasonably confident in the installation (I've reused the original top fan and plugged it back into TOP_FAN, and connected the H60 pump into PUMP_FAN - that connector only has one wire, which must be TACH, and this seems to be working). This is what other Aurora + H60 users seem to have done. Everything works except that top/front fan speeds don't vary with temperature by default and attempts to force them have met with mixed results.

But even with fans stuck at 12-13% the system runs a good deal cooler (and quieter) than before. And defining a new profile that runs the fans harder for gaming produces a further improvement without a noise level that can be heard over game audio + GPU fans.

Bit out of time to investigate more at the moment, but I will update the thread if I learn anything interesting.

@shortshrift99 

Have you tried completely uninstalling AWCC, make sure everything is cleaned out of registry, downloading and fresh installing the program? There might be some residual information somewhere from when you were 'air cooled' that is whacking out the behavior.

Does the H60 function without the PWM header plugged in? Just let the pump run with the PSU power and connect TOP_FAN for the radiator fan and FRONT_FAN for the top fan. You don't need to read the tach for the AIO pump anyways.

@shortshrift99 

I didn't see anyone mentioning this but in AWCC under the Home section, did you select the custom Thermal profile with the new setting? I replied to a post here with the person answering the same question: https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware-Desktops/Aurora-R9-ml120-pro-fan-not-going-above-15/m-p/7660518#M30489

If you change the fan speed, you MUST create a custom thermal profile AND you have to select it in the home tab.

But you're going to get the cpu fan failure test and warning on every restart if you leave the cpu fan and pump headers both empty.