Soldato
- Joined
- 3 Jun 2005
- Posts
- 7,614
This is a bit of a long one, so sorry for the incoming wall of text, but you need the whole story. I’ll try to keep it short:
Got a new H80 cooler. Installed it and started it up and it whined. I thought great, I’ve got a dodgy one. Just to make sure I hooked it up to my backup PSU out of the rig and it run perfect. A-ha, I thought, the backplate wasn’t on properly and was causing the noise. Re-installed everything with some adjustments to the backplate. Before dragging back to my desk I gave it a try on the backup PSU again and it was perfect. So I lug the PC back to my desk and wire everything up and start it up – whining sound is back! FFS what is that, I think! Well, it can’t be the H80 because I just tested that. So I go around stopping each system fan individually, but the whining continues and definitely appears to be coming from the H80. So I think to myself, pull the power on the H80 for a second and see what happens – I pull the power and the whining stops! It’s definitely the H80!
I go and get my backup PSU and have it sitting next to my rig. I pull the H80 power from my internal PSU and quickly swap it to my external PSU – silence! Literally the only thing that has changed is where it’s getting power from. I think to myself that it might be a dodgy modular lead, so I get a different one, but it still whines. Ok, I’ll plug it into a different socket on the PSU – it still whines. Hmm, maybe I’m overloading my 850w PSU, so I unplug all my HDDs – it still whines.
I’ve tried 3 different modular leads and 3 different sockets on the PSU, including the one which has been powering my HDDs for years.
I’m completely at a loss.
EDIT
It seems I've found the solution here:
http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=107252
Got a new H80 cooler. Installed it and started it up and it whined. I thought great, I’ve got a dodgy one. Just to make sure I hooked it up to my backup PSU out of the rig and it run perfect. A-ha, I thought, the backplate wasn’t on properly and was causing the noise. Re-installed everything with some adjustments to the backplate. Before dragging back to my desk I gave it a try on the backup PSU again and it was perfect. So I lug the PC back to my desk and wire everything up and start it up – whining sound is back! FFS what is that, I think! Well, it can’t be the H80 because I just tested that. So I go around stopping each system fan individually, but the whining continues and definitely appears to be coming from the H80. So I think to myself, pull the power on the H80 for a second and see what happens – I pull the power and the whining stops! It’s definitely the H80!
I go and get my backup PSU and have it sitting next to my rig. I pull the H80 power from my internal PSU and quickly swap it to my external PSU – silence! Literally the only thing that has changed is where it’s getting power from. I think to myself that it might be a dodgy modular lead, so I get a different one, but it still whines. Ok, I’ll plug it into a different socket on the PSU – it still whines. Hmm, maybe I’m overloading my 850w PSU, so I unplug all my HDDs – it still whines.
I’ve tried 3 different modular leads and 3 different sockets on the PSU, including the one which has been powering my HDDs for years.
I’m completely at a loss.

EDIT
It seems I've found the solution here:
http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=107252
Last edited: