Aurora R9, Corsair ML120 Pro fans issue?

@hpereze 

so R9 + RTX 3070 FE   + lower speed fans

Does that blow all it's hot air thru the GPY directly out of the back of the case like a blower, or heat up the air inside the case used to cool the CPU?

GPU, CPU and AWCC temps needed I think.

@markburv 

Yep, I got that so I put the offset to be slightly under that cutoff so when playing games or doing anything else under load the fans will still be running

The issue I'm running into is that for some reason at times when running any programs that require high CPU usage the fans - the top one in particular - will rev up even higher than the offset I set before completely turning off/idle. It's a complete mystery to me why it would do this in the first place since it's not set to a curve like I tried in the beginning. I'm trying to find the right fan speed offset to set it to where even with a higher rev up it will still continue to blow air without the constant reving up and down it's doing assuming it doesn't just idle out

@hpereze 

Ok here, I think there is more to this

I fitted my OEM top fan on a 3pin Y connector to test my noctua 2000 RPM on the 4pin. Start up, bios error, Top fan not detected functioning correctly, fan test, full RPM 30 secs. Conclusion, confirms that noctuas don't work up there as PWM tach.

So BIOS, before AWCC, has some intelligence on those fans, when CPU temps hit too high, my guess BIOS will throw up the speed 100% as a safety net to protect your CPU, just a wild shot idea

@hpereze 

I may have a better reply this weekend when I try a ML 120 PRO sandwich replacing the OEM, if I succeed, if I do not I could try a single ML 120 Pro.

In the meantime, here are some stats on OEM:

• 66 offset = 3500RPM
• 35 offset = 2500RPM
• 28 offset = 2150RPM

My guess, you cannot offset more than 28 to not have the ML 120 Pro cut if your (top fan) OEM R9 is the same as OEM R8.

@markburv 

The design works like this. It brings in cold air through the bottom and one half expels heat through the back like a blower while other half of card exhausts it out the top

I had concerns as well about the design but in the week I had it using the stock fans I was satisfied with the performance. For GPU I undervolted the 3070 with minimal loss in performance and with fans in auto manage I was getting temps 65-70 degrees playing games all day (Warzone, Cold War Zombies, Apex Legends, RE3, SotTR). If I adjusted the fans in MSI Afterburner to 60% you can finally hear the fans and the temps dropped to low 60s, maxing the fans gives me mid to high 50s. I came from a 2070 Super blower that originally came with the pc so even at 100% fan speed it's still a lot more quieter than that blower card

For CPU it's a 9700k overclocked to 5.0ghz with temps going from 63-75 degrees depending on the games. Again, I must reiterate I had an aggressive fan curve for the top/front fans so they got LOUD. Think at the curve I set if the temps reached 70 degrees the fan curve was set to 60-70% speed. I wear 1000XM3 headphones for gaming with noise cancelling so I didn't hear them and since friends didn't hear them on my mic as well it was fine with me. Again, I don't mind the loud fans and house is kept cool at around 70-72 depending on family so it worked for me

I'm hoping to find out soon what temps I'll get with these fans once I get the speed offset locked down. If I get similar performance I'll just leave the fans and cross my fingers the fans don't idle. If I get worse performance then I'll probably put the stock fans back in and just live with thermal repaste. But my expectation is getting at minimum the same performance as I had before

@markburv 

I'll be happy to hear what you get when you do and your experience with it

@hpereze 

I ran Cinebench to stress test the CPU and even with custom fan curve I had from the previous fans they never revved up staying at ~10% according to AWCC so of course during the test it sent the CPU well into the high 90s. The few times the fans kicked in and to try to keep the case cool it was performing better than I expected keeping temps in the low 70s during testing. Okay, so I decided to use an offset to fix the issue. Then I found out that you can't really control the fans to their max potential; seems like 55-60% of fan's RPMs is the max these fans will go. I was still okay with this as long as it showed better performance

I have my sandwich installed with ML 120 Pro (non RGB, non LED).

I have played with AWCC to adjust my offset profiles and tested them. When I push 100% offset, fans are at 55% speed, HWINFO shows 2400rpm. I will not be using the Auto-managed profiles for now.

ML 120 Pro Top Fan max

Then when used the offset and started running Cinebench the fans went back to idle and did nothing. I tested this phenomenon with a few games as well and same issue. The fans will turn off when game starts and randomly rev up and down but mostly staying in idle while game runs. As a result the computer got hot quick with CPU hitting mid 80s in 10 mins playing

Haven't tested games yet, will do in the next few days, and keep you informed.

The 2440 was a stable speed all the time before. HWINFO pic of 100 offset:

@hpereze 

Bad news, first timespy test with offset +100, when the CPU hit 75° the top fan went from 2440 to 2515rpm and then cut out causing my cpu to shoot up to 77 in less than a half of a second, then the CPU test finished, any longer and the CPU would have shot up fast probably.

Tried with offset 65, got to 79°, the fans moved up from 1800 stable to 1900+ and the test ended again as before. This time they did not cut out.

Will keep testing. Try offset 65 and test.

I knew you were da man to solve all our problems, maybe not the only one of course thanks @GTS81 

Ok this is one example : Re: Experience of Buying an Aurora R8 - Page 4 - Dell Community

Using the OEM front fan as a sandwich means that AWCC will probably not act up. @GTS81 quite a few pages later, he put on hold doing the ML 120 Pro only fans in a sandwich.

I checked BIOS like you, found nothing, I did find an old thread here that said try uninstalling AWCC for problems on non liquid cooling systems. But I can't make out if it is a similar problem, 15 pages

Up until the latest BIOS, AWCC will not play nice with your ML120 Pro fans when it hits a certain temperature and PWM speed. The best you can do is to find out what this trip point is and set a curve below it. Guess why I went the full custom route a year ago...

Paging @Anonymous @r72019 @coldfish_91. They the more dedicated s. Me, I'm swimming in r/watercooling Discord servers nowadays.

@GTS81 

I've been testing stuff the past few days and this is what I've come to find out as well. The problem is when I think I've found one curve/offset that'll work then the next test (CB15, Prime95, games) it'll go back to the same issues with the idle stoppage. If it was just one fan causing it I'd just keep that one as is and put the stock fan back on the other but that's not the case. Frustrating to say the least

@markburv 

Thanks for the info and basically confirming what I've been experiencing. Why I love the Aurora R9 for what it's done for me so far, my next pc will decidedly be a custom build with all the information I've had to research for it lol

Running list of fleeing to custom builds:

@hpereze 

@markburv 

Keep us posted.