H100i Pro RGB bricked from failed firmware update

[drewp29]

So I have an H100i Pro RGB that has been humming along since the beginning of this year. Everything was going swimmingly the past 10 months.

 

A couple weeks ago I started having issues with my mouse hanging and not responding for several seconds here and there. The cursor moved fine, but clicks wouldn't respond and it acted like the mouse was having issues. Eventually it would go back to normal and work totally fine. Yesterday I thought I'd try to figure out the issue.

 

I came across a few threads on 'teh interwebz' where people had noted that the iCUE software caused weird issues with various peripherals. So I opened task manager, and watched the iCUE process. When the mouse stopped responding to clicks it seemed the iCUE process was using CPU cycles, so I thought perhaps there was an update that would make a difference.

 

Opened iCUE and realized there was a firmware update for the H100i. I clicked 'update firmware' with 'force update' selected. Aaaaaaaaaannnnd - HAAAAAANNNNNNNG!!!

 

I let it work for about 15 minutes, and it never updated. They give you this handy dandy 'Abort' button to click, which albeit had a warning that it would leave the device in an 'unusable state'. Why would they allow you to abort the update if it became permanently unusable? Any company producing products requiring firmware in 2020 should have stored the default firmware on an EEPROM or ROM and would load it when the firmware failed to be detected, right?

 

WRONG! I feel like it's 1999 again and I'm bricking motherboards with failed firmware updates! Seriously, what in the holy h e double hockey sticks is Corsair thinking? Not only do they not guard against this, but they don't even provide firmware for download to update manually?!!

 

The cooler is no longer detected by the iCUE software, or Windows. I thought maybe an update of the iCUE software was in order, so I did that successfully. The cooler was still not detected, so I read some threads about the same thing happening to quite a lot of people. Turns out, if I hadn't updated the iCUE software, I possibly could have manually updated the firmware with the previous hexadecimal file. But updating the software deletes the previous file, so that's no longer an option.

 

I spent about 5 hours last night looking for a random forum post in which someone had uploaded the firmware for download, but nope, nothing.

 

I put a Service Ticket in with Corsair Support, requesting the firmware file, but I don't know when they'll get around to responding.

 

The pump still works, and currently I have the fans hooked up to the MB as case fans so at least they turn on and run. I set up a profile in my MB bios so they will dial back a little bit and not be horribly loud, but being able to control things from the iCUE software would be nice. Plus I don't think there is any way to control the pump RPM currently.

 

Does anyone happen to have the firmware, or possibly the hex key from your current install that they could upload? I'm fairly confident I could get it working again with the hex key, but I don't know since Windows no longer recognizes it. Corsairlink recognizes the cooler fans as case fans, but does not recognize the cooler.

 

Sorry if my post is a bit snarky, I find this whole situation quite ridiculous really.

[drewp29]

Also,

 

I plugged the pump USB cable into another header on the MB thinking it might reinitialize and allow iCUE to locate it, but that didn't work.

 

I uninstalled/reinstalled various versions of the iCUE software (already lost the hex key, so why not)

 

With the fans running as case fans, the cooler works fine - ~25-26C idle temps for CPU. I didn't load up the CPU much though, so I don't know if the pump is at 100% or wherever the initial setting is from the factory. I know when first installed, I had to adjust the pump speed and fan speeds so I got the best cooling when gaming since it is default set for quiet mode.

 

I'm pretty certain this is firmware update failure related, so I did not try another micro USB cable as suggested in other threads, but I suppose I could try that.

 

I don't have any other RGB items, so no other controller software, and no other hardware monitors are installed that would keep iCUE from recognizing the cooler.

Edited October 30, 2020 by drewp29

[Zgoldinger]

Did you ever get a fix for this? The same thing happened to me and I’m waiting on them to get back to me with a firmware to flash or an rma

[EricChaney]

i just had the same thing happen to me, i installed the new H100I Capellix RGB cooler,everything was working great until i did the firmware update,restarted and now my pump is not seen in ICUE, they are supposed to send me a firmware file to install to see if that will fix it,i have been on the phone 5 times today with tech support to no avail.