Noisy pump on Corsair Hydro Series iCUE H100i?

ShellShock · 14 Sep 2023 at 13:20

I bought a Corsair Hydro Series iCUE H100i AllInOne water cooler in June. It has been running OK in Quiet mode until today, when I noticed it seems to be a lot noisier. The pump is set to Quiet preset in the iCUE software, but it is running constantly at about 2030 RPM under 0 load, which I think accounts for the noise. I think the RPM was a lot lower before. Coolant temp is 30 C, CPU temp is 30 C, fans 1 & 2 are 0 RPM. I would prefer to trade lower pump RPM for higher CPU temp, which I think I had set before, but I can't find anyway in the iCUE software to change the pump RPM. Is 2030 RPM normal for Quiet mode? iCUE software is up to date, as is the firmware.

Glanza · 14 Sep 2023 at 15:41

Move your case around whilst it's powered up and see if the noise goes, might be air trapped in your pump. If it doesn't go then something's gone faulty with it.

JonRGV250 · 14 Sep 2023 at 15:56

I’ve got the H150i and can’t see a way to change the RPM, just the quiet, balanced and extreme settings.
My first one developed a pump fault where it was noisy as hell then just stopped working all together.
I got it from a well known internet shopping site and they replaced the whole thing under warranty.

Grim5 · 14 Sep 2023 at 16:23

Extreme raises pump rpm slightly, it's like 200rpm or something. In general the pump is quite slow, sits around 2400rpm. Compared to a ekwb d5 which does 4900rpm

The pump on my h150i is dead silent

ShellShock · 15 Sep 2023 at 14:38

Thanks a lot everyone, that is really helpful. It is definitely not dead silent, and I am sure it used to be a lot quieter, until a few days ago. I put the case on its side, and that helped a little bit, but when I put it upright again, it becomes noisier - I can hear it over playing music, unless the music is loud. I will have to see about an RMA.

Edit: I have now found the problem, and it was not the pump after all, but one of the two fans on the pump's radiator. This fan was going full blast, and did not respond to setting to Zero RPM in iCUE, even after a power off/on. I disconnected the fan from the PSU, reconnected it, and it is now working fine - silent again. Not sure what the cause was - a loose power connection?

Edit2: I think the real cause was a loose USB cable in the pump header. I must have knock it when I swapped out one of my DDR4 modules earlier in the week, and I knocked it again just now, so iCUE was not detecting the pump at all. Reseating the USB plug has fixed the problem.

random_matt · 15 Sep 2023 at 17:17

I can change my Asus pump rpm in the bios. I could not change a corsair's one on a MSI board. Cannot be sure if corsair locks that method out, sucks otherwise.

Grim5 · 15 Sep 2023 at 21:32

random_matt said:
I can change my Asus pump rpm in the bios. I could not change a corsair's one on a MSI board. Cannot be sure if corsair locks that method out, sucks otherwise.

Depends how you connect it. If you plug the pump into the motherboard then you can change it in bios. But Corsair likes to use go proprietary so their AIO comes with a fan hub and they expect you to connect the AIO to the hub and then your motherboard cannot see the AIO

That's the case for any fan hubs, if you connect your fans or pumps into a hub then your motherboard won't see your fans and pump