LL120 fans too fast/loud on idle and simple tasks

I just got 3 LL120 fans and set them up in my NZXT s340. RGB works perfectly and so do the fans..except they are way to fast/loud on idle and for simple tasks. I even have the pwm modes set on silent in my BIOS. They never go below ~1150 rpm and spike up to 1500 randomly every minute or two from doing simple task like opening Chrome or loading a webpage. I have them set in balanced mode on LINK as well. Temps are around 30 for mb, 30s for cpu, and 50 for gpu when idle and they still randomly spike up. I am not sure if this is normal but they are seriously loud enough to hear through my headset whenever they ramp up to 1500 rpm like that. Is this a defect? Any feedback is appreciated.

 

 

For example, the LL120 fans are numbers 1,3, and 4. The spike is a result from me simply opening chrome...

 

Hi bud.. what do you have the PWM cables from the fans plugged in to?

Hi bud.. what do you have the PWM cables from the fans plugged in to?

 

I have them plugged into the fan headers on an ASUS Z170-A. If you notice it even effects my stock fan as well. This didn't happen before I installed these fans.

ok.. any settings you apply in link will have no effect buddy.. would need a Commander Pro to control them in Link.

Presumably you have the fans set to CPU Temp as the control variable in the BIOS. That is the cause of your peaky behavior. Unfortunately there are not a lot of other choices on Z170. That platform is also when Asus started to introduce the fan delay setting within the BIOS and not just in AI Suite. If you have them on CHA Fan headers, go to the Advanced BIOS (F7) -> Monitor -> Scroll way down until you find Q-fan. There should be settings for each header and delays run 0,12,50.... 12 seconds is good. I would also make 3 custom control points while you are there (also can be done in EZ BIOS Q-fan). The default “quiet” is pretty generic and may not be appropriate for a lot of fans.

ok.. any settings you apply in link will have no effect buddy.. would need a Commander Pro to control them in Link.

 

I know this. I was just listing all the possible info to maybe help identify the root of the problem.

Presumably you have the fans set to CPU Temp as the control variable in the BIOS. That is the cause of your peaky behavior. Unfortunately there are not a lot of other choices on Z170. That platform is also when Asus started to introduce the fan delay setting within the BIOS and not just in AI Suite. If you have them on CHA Fan headers, go to the Advanced BIOS (F7) -> Monitor -> Scroll way down until you find Q-fan. There should be settings for each header and delays run 0,12,50.... 12 seconds is good. I would also make 3 custom control points while you are there (also can be done in EZ BIOS Q-fan). The default “quiet” is pretty generic and may not be appropriate for a lot of fans.

 

That seemed to help a lot. I also was able to change the source for the fans to the MB and that made the ramping up go down a lot. I was mainly controlling the fans in Qfan Control and not the advanced settings. Temps are looking good too. Thank you so much!

I don’t know why they bury the delay controls. Seems like it should be in the EZ BIOS Q-fan as well. Motherboard temp is a scientifically appropriate choice, however in a well ventilated case that can make the overall range small and thus the overall fan speeds difficult to maintain. The irony is a hot box choking on GPU heat would give you the larger number of incremental degrees to dial it in where you want. In a well organized case, motherboard temp can be hard to use and the daily change in room temp may be larger than your case temp change. Either way, I wouldn’t worry about ultra precise control. Slow and steady works most of the time.