H110i + Ryzen 1700X Fans at 100%

I have a Ryzen 1700X system, with an H110i AIO cooler. It has worked fine for several weeks.

Today, while using my PC, all of a sudden the fans on the cooler went to 100% and stay there. Corsair Link shows my CPU temp 20C higher than Ryzen Master. I know that there is a 20C offset on the 1700X and 1800X CPUs, but this was not an issue before.

Now, on the balanced profile, it is loud 100% of the time. Even on boot, it used to spin to 100% for a second and then drop down a normal speed right after. Now, it hits 100%, drops for a split second (as if the H110i is taking over regulating fan speed), and then instantly shoots back to 100%.

Any idea what happened? There were no changes to the system in this time as far as updating BIOS or anything like that. I was just browsing the web, chatting on discord when all of a sudden it just went to full fans and pegged there.

I can set it to quiet, and it is quiet, but it lets temps go higher than I'd like (actual temps as reported by Ryzen Master).

You fan should be running from coolant temperature (H110i Temp) and not CPU temp. This how the cooler (and all coolers) actually function, but it likely even more important to use this as the control variable with AMD and the historically idiosyncratic temp reporting.

Take a look at your coolant temp and note the max fan levels of the preset curves. Those are not some gold standard you cannot change. You can and should adjust the curves for your particular room and case environment. Someone in a 16C room may never notice the fans, but if its 30C before you power on, those fans will blast from the start. No matter how fast you run them, you can't take the coolant below the room/case starting temp. Slow them down.

You may also want to quickly read through the response here. No reason to think your cooler is failing, but some of the same principles apply.

Thanks for the reply.

Ambient room temp is ~22C, coolant temp on "quiet" was up around 27-28C as I was gaming (around 30-45 minutes). After leaving it on the "balanced" where it was running at full fan speed, it settled down to the 26C area.

How would I check the curve of the presets? I made a custom profile, and set it to coolant temp with the default curve, and again it's down to being nearly silent with fans at 650 RPM.

It definitely seems as though the default settings aren't going by coolant temp, or if they are, something happened to the curve that's set by default. I'm not sure what happened to make it suddenly get so loud on the preset options. Even on boot it changed for no apparent reason of anything that changed on my end. Would it have pushed firmware automatically without my knowledge that changed something?

For reference, this is after 10-15 minutes on my custom setting, coolant temp was up to 28. What kind of temps for coolant are considered normal/optimal?

Everything looks normal and that is an appropriate fan curve. Even with my 5930K and the 4.5 mark, I don't need more than 600 rpm on 140mm fans at idle and 1000 would be plenty for nearly all uses. Even when I benchmark 2000 rpm fans, I often cap them at 1350 rpm. That's the most I can stand and it doesn't make much difference anyway.

So, setting appear correct and the curve is good. Back to the original problem, there is no reason the fans should do this. I would place my bet on a software glitch, but that is not my strong suit and I also don't use AMD models. Perhaps someone else has some theories or experience on this platform.

How often is it doing this throttling and go behavior? Isolated? Or constant? Any other monitoring or motherboard level programs running concurrently?

Starting tonight, when the issue appeared, it just ramped up to full fans and stayed there. I didn't monitor the coolant temp at the time, but I assume it was in the normal range. of 25-30. I also rebooted a few times to see if it was a Corsair link glitch that would correct with a reboot.

I was running Ryzen Master, a tool from AMD, to get a look at my temps after the fans went crazy, but wasn't the initial time it started.

It definitely feels that something changed the way the default balanced profile works to shift it to basing fan speed on the CPU package temp rather than the coolant temp. If I look at the default curve that I applied to my custom profile, max fan speed is at 60C. If the default balanced profile was basing that curve off of CPU temp, it makes sense, ad my CPU temp regularly goes to 38-40C, and with the 20C offset it shows as 58-60C. Not saying that's what's happening, but it fits with the observed behavior at least.

With my custom profile and prime95 for the past 20 minutes, my max (actual) CPU temp got up to 57C (and and average closer to 52) and the coolant temp got up to 33.8C. As it crossed the 30C threshold, fans were up to 700RPM just as the fan curve has set, so I'm pretty confident with the custom profile keeping things at a safe temp. Even at the hottest, fans were around 900RPM which is still plenty quiet.

I'm still curious as to what suddenly changed, but that may be a mystery to which I'll never find an answer. Thanks again for the info.