My Experience with Corsair H80 Liquid Cooling

Just FYI, the setup for the H80 on my system is back fan, radiator, then inside fan. Fans exhaust out of the case because all the others blow in. Anyway, after only 6 weeks the fan in the back mounted on the case and then to the H80 radiator started making a grinding sound periodically. On observation I noted the fan would rev up, start to slow down and then finally stop. After a few seconds it would start up again full speed and make the grinding noise briefly when it started. Went through this cycle every 50 seconds or so. I contacted DS tech support and they offered to replace both H80 fans, which incidentally are not the Corsair fans that show coming with the H80 system from Newegg or other vendors. The fans are CoolerMaster fans identical to the ones on the case. Fine and well. Anyway, because I had to pay $8 shipping for the replacement fans I decided to just buy one from Amazon as DS tech support suggested. For now I merely unplugged the outer fan from the outlet on the H80 cooler on the CPU. That shut it up and my temps have been running 27 - 29 Celsius without it.
Now after 8 weeks the inside fan, (which is very obvious from where I sit at my PC because of the clear side panel), spins erratically. Sometimes it would spin full speed, at least from visual observation, then other times it would seem to be going slow. Whatever speed it started at boot up it would stay at that speed for the entire time the PC was on. Each time it would be a coin toss, fast or slow. Yesterday the fan would start, then slow to a crawl, then speed up to a slow speed. Doing it over and over as a cycle. Oh, boy! The other fan has died. . .
Not so. I decided to unplug the interior radiator fan from the top of the H80 CPU cooler block and plug it into an open PWR_FAN port on the motherboard, a P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3. Of course the fan revs up and goes full speed, no problem.
On reading reviews of the Corsair H80 on Amazon others have noted the speed adjustment on the CPU block, (Ostensibly slow, balanced and performance), does nothing. What it does do is cause the fans to malfunction. So, if you have my grief with your Corsair liquid cooling system plug the fans directly into the motherboard. The speed regulator does not work and, in fact, may toast your fan motors before their time or cause them to spin at random speeds regardless of the CPU temp or setting on the H80 CPU cooler block. If I had it to do over I would not get liquid cooling.
J.

I always plug my fans into a mobo fan header when ever possible. I really wish DS techs would think of stuff like that when people have tech support issues. I had several issues when I first got my system and every issue was resolved with help from people here on the forums.

I suffered through numerous phone calls and e-mails with DS tech support and at best they seemed to be guessing at random and when the first thing they thought of didn't work they would tell me I'd have to ship the system back, at my expense ofcourse.

Luckily I was able to get answers from other users and I was able to fix most of the issues and tell DS tech support what parts to send me.

"I always plug my fans into a mobo fan header when ever possible."
This is the advice I'm reading all over the web concerning Corsair liquid cooling. It fixed my problem. Thanks for your post.
J.

If you're satisfied then that's all that matters.   Just me, and take it for what it's worth, but I would get it replaced. One problem usually leads to another plus this could be a bad batch, with a new one being 100%.     Good luck and glad it's working.

"If you're satisfied then that's all that matters.   Just me, and take it for what it's worth, but I would get it replaced. One problem usually leads to another plus this could be a bad batch, with a new one being 100%."
I would have to take it to a shop to get the H80 replaced. Just looking at it I think it is out of my league to do the job on my own. If I have additional problems, I will take it to a reliable computer repair shop I know and have them replace the whole thing with fans.
Thanks for your input.
J.

"The fans on the H80 should be plugged into the actual CPU block not the motherboard pins because the H80 allows easy fan control by pressing the fan control button on the head of the pump."
That's how it's supposed to work. It does not. You don't understand what I was saying before . . . the fan control button on the head of the pump does not work. There are 3 settings, slow, balanced and performance. There was no noticeable difference no matter what setting was used. The fans malfunctioned when plugged into the CPU block or pump as you call it. They work fine in the motherboard header plug in.
J.

Alex yes the part I had an issue with was different but my experience with tech support was the same. They did not offer much in the way of options and there were answers out there to my problem but your tech support was not educated on the known issues. The community members here had more technical knowledge then even your head tech manager.

Various tech support reps and managers made me go through a bogus list of trouble shooting options because they did not know anything about my hardware. For example I was told to hit the "mem ok" button but was never told I had to go into my BIOS and reset my RAM speed. I noticed it on my own over a month later that I had been running with my RAM at only half speed due to your reps failure to complete the process and have me fix the RAM clocks after hitting the reset button.

The worst thing was both of my issues were actually due to mistakes made by the people who assembled my system and the QA people who failed to catch those mistakes. You kept trying to maintain that nothing was done wrong but you head tech support manager told me point blank my system was assembled incorrectly and with the wrong parts.

That's just one example that goes along with what happened here. The only solution your tech could offer for the OP's issue was to change out the fans, which you guys were going to charge him shipping on. But as the OP found out on his own the fans were not the problem so you all would have charged him shipping strictly due to your techs in ability to properly research and diagnose the issue.

If you actually take the time and do some research you will see there is a known issue with the fan controller that is built into the H80. Numerous H80 owners, including jseidel, were able to fix their issue by plugging the fans into the mobo instead of the cpu controller.

Replacing a liquid cooling set up is beyond the scope of the "average" consumer and is not something I would want to have to deal with. So your offer to send a replacement is not reasonable to some people.

Since there is a known issue with the H80 controller your tech support department has a responsibility to know that. For any product you sell you should have people that research the product on-line to find feedback and reviews so your tech support department knows about these things when one of your customers called.


Edited by jmaster299 - 23 Feb 2012 at 10:00pm

You're missing the point, your team should be taking the team to learn about known issues with products even if your builds have not seen many issues with it. The OP was able to find multiple people on freaking Amazon of all places that were able to give him a solution that your tech support team was not.

You may not be able to do it for every part but for your most popular items you should have people who keep your knowledge base up to date researching those items for known or potential issues.

The should be doing things like saying "OK these are our 3 most popular cases, motherboards, CPUs, RAM modules, HDDs, PSU and GPUs we sell." "The 3 most popular items for the basics required to build a system." "What are people saying about these products on review and benchmarking sites, on the manufacture's website and forums and other tech forums?"

They can then but the information they learn into the knowledge base that all your tech support people are supposed to use. So they have the knowledge available for things like the H80 fan controller.

Your tech support guy even recommend he just buy some new fans from Amazon since it was cheaper then the $8 you guys were going to rip him off for in order to pay for you guys to ship him new fans. (Any part replacement under warranty needs to come with free shipping fyi).

So that same tech that recommend the OP take his business else where, a universally stupid move for any company, could have found out the same information the OP did from the site he recommended the OP use for his replacement parts.

You claim that 3/4 of all your builds use the H80 but yet your tech support department did not know about a known quality issue for that part? Your tech support team should be at least doing as much work as the customers. Do a damn Google search for "H80 Fan Issues". The second, third and forth top results are all about the fan controller being crap.

So how is your team knew nothing about this issue. It's even talked about on the Corsair forums. Your tech support department should know this stuff or at the very least they need to be looking that stuff up if they are unable to find a solution to a problem instead of saying "well your SOL, why don't you go spend money with another company replacing a piece of hardware that is not actually the cause of the problem".

Also they should be doing that research, or walking to the shop to get manuals like in my case, BEFORE they call the customer back. If by some random act of god they don't have to wait for a call back the first thing the tech should do is type the issue into Google to obtain additional information.

That's where the fixes came from for my system. From users here on the forums and doing some research online. Being a paying customer I do not want, and should not have to, do that research for you. Offering life time tech support does not mean anything if the tech support is not smart enough to research an issue on the internet for a customer.


Edited by jmaster299 - 23 Feb 2012 at 11:08pm

from just skimming over this thread, i believe the issue is coming form the fact whoever built the system used the coolermaster fans and not the corsair fans.   the h80 fan controller seems to be very picky about what fans you plug into it.   

example. if a customer gets the coolermaster r4 sickleflow upgrade i always will plug the fans into the motherboard because the fans will change speed randomly and sometimes stop spinning all together.

Extra fans usually just get put to the side as extras.   If I were you I would call tech support and inquire about getting the corsair fans that came with your h80.

Thanks to all who took the time to read and post. Problem now is how to connect the inner fan on the back of the case to a header on the motherboard. Looking at the diagram above, the available plugins are PWR_FAN2 in the upper left of the board and CHA_FAN1 just left of center. Both are blocked from access by the dual fans with the H80 radiator sandwiched in between. Just above the video card there is a USB 3.0 4 port card so there is no room for my big fingers to fit in the space to access the chassis fan port in the center of the board. In order to access either plug I will have to remove the whole dual fan/radiator apparatus from the back to be able to plug in the fan. I will get this resolved, I am determined. . .

We can definitely send adapters, etc... please contact us and let us know.

"Check the extra wires that came with your system and see if you have a cable with a 3-pin to molex adapter so you can plug that last fan directly into the PSU. It should solve your issue the same as plugging it into the mobo and the fan will just spin at one constant speed."
There is no extra one in the leftover box that came with my system.
Is this what I want? I would probably also need the extension cable.
3-Pin to 4-Pin Adapter


Edited by jseidel - 24 Feb 2012 at 3:16pm

I don't t have the h80, but I believe the h80 pump body should be plugged into the Cpu_fan connector, top right of mobo between the Cpu_fan opt and pwr_fan header.   The other option would be to psu peripheral 4 pin plug.    Should be easy to trace from pump, unless blocked.    Forget the psu connection. I would think the Bios would need to sense the pump thru mobo.    

Edited by bprat22 - 24 Feb 2012 at 4:58pm

"Noctua D14 air cooling all the wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy"
Yea, as always hindsight is always 100%.

Nice.    Happy it's working.     Quick question......on another post a forum member is complaining of a constant noise from they think is the H80.   Do you think the H80 is loud?    Thanks.

" Do you think the H80 is loud?"
Interestingly enough I never noticed any noise coming directly from the H80, but now that I have the fan in the back there is a hum coming from that fan. Before I disconnected it the hum would come and go, which I did not figure out immediately because I did not realize the fan was starting and stopping. Now that the rear fan is replaced and operating again the hum is constant. . . because it runs continuously. Because the rear fan is physically connected to the radiator and vents out the back I'm guessing the noise may actually be coming from the radiator of the H80? The new fan is identical to 4 other fans in the case, they are all these:
CoolerMaster SickleFlow 120
Because none of the other fans make the hum, and the fan that was in there before made the hum, the noise must be coming off the H80. Because the back fan vents to the outside and is mounted to the radiator it "radiates" the noise along with the heat. I put a piece of foam rubber on the wall behind the where the back fan vents and this has absorbed the sound somewhat. Alternately, one could unplug the rear fan to reduce the noise Don't go there with me. . .
As I said before, if I had it to over I would get air cooling.
J.

Edited by jseidel - 25 Feb 2012 at 4:40pm

New update:
The noise with the back fan plugged into the power fan header on the Mobo was too loud. Sounded like a jet taking off all the time. After doing some more reading I found my theory that the noise coming out of the back was from the H80 radiator was wrong. The noise was merely from the fan being attached directly to the case and going full speed. So, I took the back fan and radiator off once again so I could physically get to the plugs on the motherboard and put the outside fan connected to CHA_FAN1 as shown on the diagram above. What a difference in the noise level. I went into Asus Fan Xpert and now I see at that setting the outside case fan (Which shows as Chassis Fan 1)is going at about 1,300 RPM. Going with the other power fan monitor it was doing about 1,900 to 2,000 RPM plugged into the PWR_FAN2 header. What a difference it makes. The constant whine is gone and the noise level is fine for what I would expect from a well cooled high end system. FINALLY I am a happy camper!
I have read most of the applicable posts here:
Corsair Forum - Cooling
Sounds like I am not the only one with these problems with the H80. Good information there.
J.

Edited by jseidel - 27 Feb 2012 at 2:57pm