Questions about fans

[B Poot]

My computer has arrived and seems to be working very well . One minor issue is that the centre case fan does not seem to work for RGB. It appears to be spinning but no RGB. It might just be spinning passively from the air being drawn in by the AIO. The likelihood is probably quite high as in Armory Crate, it reports that chassis fans 1 and 2 are spinning but claims chassis fan 3 is at 0 rpm (weird that it is chassis fan 3 when it is the middle one!). The chassis fan above it and below it appear to be working fine - any suggestions?

The second question I have is more about fan setup. The AIO cooler that I have has been set up on the front of the case so that the case fans pull air in, push it over the AIO radiator and then the AIO fans are mounted on the other side of the radiator and pull the air through even more into the case. My question is: what is the best way to set up fan speeds/profiles? To make matters interesting, the AIO fans seem to be controlled from iCue and I can only see the presets of Quiet; Balanced; Extreme; Zero RPM. As yet, I haven't figured out how to change the fan curves (or work out if I should). I can see various fans and their speeds in the dashboard of iCue, but it is not clear which fans they refer to, and they don't seem to tie up with eachother! I.e. the AIO reports the pump speed and the speed of its 3 fans, and the motherboard reports 8 fan speeds, but none of these seem to correlate with the AIO fan speeds. I only have 4 case fans total + 3 AIO fans! The case fans RGB is controlled in Armory Crate, but I haven't seen how to change the fan speed profiles yet.

My concern is, hypothetically, if I had the case fans on full blast and the AIO fans on minimum (or vice versa) are they going to be fighting eachother and wear out the components? Is there an easy way to control the fan profiles of all the fans at once? Any advice would be grately appreciated.

My full build is as follows:
Case
COOLERMASTER MASTERBOX TD500 MESH ARGB GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X Eight Core CPU (3.8GHz-4.7GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF X570-PLUS GAMING (USB 3.2 Gen 2, PCIe 4.0, CrossFireX) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz (4 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3070 Ti - HDMI, DP
1st Storage Drive
2TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (up to 560MB/sR | 530MB/sW)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 6900MB/R, 5000MB/W)
2nd M.2 SSD Drive
1TB INTEL® 670p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 3500MB/sR | 2500MB/sW)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Processor Cooling
Corsair H150i ELITE CAPELLIX RGB Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Wireless Network Card
WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 2,400Mbps/5GHz, 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Firefox™
Keyboard & Mouse
Corsair K100 RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard, CORSAIR OPX Switch
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-gen3-pc/QBfTWfQBYj/

 

[JakAttack]

Morning B Poot

Very nice spec, always reminds me I need to upgrade...

We mount the AIO cooler on the front when the top area cannot be used, usually due to the RAM/motherboard shroud. As long as the cooler works efficiently; the air being passed into the PC won't be too warm and shouldn't have a knock-on effect on the GPU or any other components.

The front fans are connected to the RGB headers via either a combo of RGB splitters normally or one main splitter running from the ARGB port for the front fans. If one is not lit (but spinning) it is likely that the RGB connector has come loose, if you can trace the cabling for these three fans you should be able to see one that isn't making a proper connection. These should just push back together.

When we first started selling the coolers in a push/pull configuration with a mixture of case fans this sent alarm bells ringing for me, in 18 years of working in IT it was always a textbook no-no. However, these reasons for this were mainly noise (as you often used to get a pulsing sound when mixing two different fan types together), however, with PWM modulation and better designed and quieter fans these days you don't tend to get the same issues and they are monitored for this during testing, as I was working in RMAs at the time I got to test this out quite a bit and was actually quite happy with the results.

The fan speed profiles for the case fans should be set through the Armory crate, to balance the fans out in iCUE you can play around with the profiles after you've set them by dragging the little dots on the device fan graph. It's quite common to have a mixture of set-ups, there are plenty of guides on how to use iCUE, not as many for Armory sadly, but you should be able to get the profile you want, If you can't, by all means hit us up either on here, by email or over the phone for support

Hope all this helps!

 

[B Poot]

Morning B Poot

Very nice spec, always reminds me I need to upgrade...

We mount the AIO cooler on the front when the top area cannot be used, usually due to the RAM/motherboard shroud. As long as the cooler works efficiently; the air being passed into the PC won't be too warm and shouldn't have a knock-on effect on the GPU or any other components.

The front fans are connected to the RGB headers via either a combo of RGB splitters normally or one main splitter running from the ARGB port for the front fans. If one is not lit (but spinning) it is likely that the RGB connector has come loose, if you can trace the cabling for these three fans you should be able to see one that isn't making a proper connection. These should just push back together.

When we first started selling the coolers in a push/pull configuration with a mixture of case fans this sent alarm bells ringing for me, in 18 years of working in IT it was always a textbook no-no. However, these reasons for this were mainly noise (as you often used to get a pulsing sound when mixing two different fan types together), however, with PWM modulation and better designed and quieter fans these days you don't tend to get the same issues and they are monitored for this during testing, as I was working in RMAs at the time I got to test this out quite a bit and was actually quite happy with the results.

The fan speed profiles for the case fans should be set through the Armory crate, to balance the fans out in iCUE you can play around with the profiles after you've set them by dragging the little dots on the device fan graph. It's quite common to have a mixture of set-ups, there are plenty of guides on how to use iCUE, not as many for Armory sadly, but you should be able to get the profile you want, If you can't, by all means hit us up either on here, by email or over the phone for support

Hope all this helps!

Fantastic, thank you for the response. Very useful information. I will have a play to see if I can fix the case fan RGB, and also look out for tutorials online.

 

[B Poot]

Well, the good news is that I have managed to reconnect the RGB header and so all my fans now display in glorious technicolour 🌈. I have also found where to set custom fan profiles in iCue, but I very quickly realised that I need to do more research before fiddling about with that. Also, I haven't found a way to sync either fan profiles or RGB between Armory Crate and iCue yet - maybe I'm asking too much. I'll continue the research...

 

[SpyderTracks]

Well, the good news is that I have managed to reconnect the RGB header and so all my fans now display in glorious technicolour 🌈. I have also found where to set custom fan profiles in iCue, but I very quickly realised that I need to do more research before fiddling about with that. Also, I haven't found a way to sync either fan profiles or RGB between Armory Crate and iCue yet - maybe I'm asking too much. I'll continue the research...

How to: Integrate Armoury Crate with iCUE

With Armoury Crate, you can control the lighting effects of your Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro or Dominator Platinum RGB memory modules. Enabling Armoury Crate If you installed Armoury Crate before th...

help.corsair.com

 

[B Poot]

How to: Integrate Armoury Crate with iCUE

With Armoury Crate, you can control the lighting effects of your Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro or Dominator Platinum RGB memory modules. Enabling Armoury Crate If you installed Armoury Crate before th...

help.corsair.com

Thanks. I have seen that before, but I think it only helps with controlling the RGB of RAM, which I seem to be able to do already from both iCue and Armory Crate (I think that they had preinstalled this module already).

"This plugin only grants control of your RAM modules to ASUS Armoury Crate."

I can see my ASUS motherboard in iCue, including 2 RGB headers. However, changing the colour scheme for the motherboard (and RGB headers) in iCue doesn't seem to do anything. In Armory Crate I can only change the case fans' RGB and motherboard RGB - seemingly nothing else.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Thanks. I have seen that before, but I think it only helps with controlling the RGB of RAM, which I seem to be able to do already from both iCue and Armory Crate (I think that they had preinstalled this module already).

"This plugin only grants control of your RAM modules to ASUS Armoury Crate."

I can see my ASUS motherboard in iCue, including 2 RGB headers. However, changing the colour scheme for the motherboard (and RGB headers) in iCue doesn't seem to do anything. In Armory Crate I can only change the case fans' RGB and motherboard RGB - seemingly nothing else.

yes, iCue doesn’t have the ability to control motherboards or headers, that needs to be done through Armory crate

 

[JakAttack]

Just to update on this, if your motherboard shows up in iCUE it is actually supported, click on the motherboard, go to the lighting setup and press + to add a profile, iCUE will then control these RGBs, be careful with clashes with Armory Crate but they normally go fairly well hand in hand if the option is there.

 

[B Poot]

Just to update on this, if your motherboard shows up in iCUE it is actually supported, click on the motherboard, go to the lighting setup and press + to add a profile, iCUE will then control these RGBs, be careful with clashes with Armory Crate but they normally go fairly well hand in hand if the option is there.

I was able to see the motherboard in iCue and create profiles, but despite appearing to work in the software, nothing changed in reality. I recently updated Armory Crate and now the motherboard has disappeared altogether from iCue!

 

[JakAttack]

They may have found issues and removed the support if this the case. It seems to vary from board to board so must rely on a lot of things. Is iCUE to to date?

 

[B Poot]

They have found issues and removed the support of this the case. It seems to vary from board to board so must rely on a lot of things. Is iCUE to to date?

Yes, iCue, Armory Crate and Windows are all up-to-date. The motherboard has reappeared in iCue, but still has no effect when I add a new profile and change the colour of any of the 3 back plate lights or the 2 RGB headers ☹️

 

[JakAttack]

Odd, I'll have a look into it on Monday, I've also edited my previous shoddy reply! Not enough caffeine by 12pm clearly.

 

[JakAttack]

Can you use Armory crate now to control the back plate lights and RGB headers?

 

[B Poot]

Can you use Armory crate now to control the back plate lights and RGB headers?

Yes, sorry if I wasn't clear: iCue can control the RGB for my RAM, AIO CPU cooler, Keyboard and Mouse. Armoury Crate can control my backplate and case fans. The motherboard appears in iCue and shows RGB headers and backplate controls, but changing them in iCue does nothing (not sure if Armory Crate and iCue are fighting and Armory Crate wins?). I have tried setting everything in Armory Crate to 'Dark' and then changing the RGB header settings in iCue, but no luck.

Whilst it would be great if it could all be controlled by one system, it's not the end of the world having to use 2 (or 3 if you count Zotac Firestorm to control the graphics card RGB!).

 

[JakAttack]

At this point I'd say if it is working carry on with this, Armory Crate is thankfully much better than Aura was so you do have a good level of control, making everything Corsair can often be expensive so if it is working and doing as it should I'd chalk it up as a win