mkriese

Greetings everyone, I have just successfully upgraded my Corsair one elite's gpu to a 7900 xt and thought I would share what I learned in case it helps anyone. As a background, I do have some tech experience but haven't touched hardware for over 20 years so I do feel like this is something anyone can do with a little preparation. The first reason I started on this endeavor was that my GPU blower fan had started to run full speed no matter what I did or how hot it was. My version had the 1080ti reference card with the AIO cooler attached to the GPU and a blower style fan over the VRAM. I actually disconnected the blower fan and had been running the system (including gaming) for months without any issues but decided it was time to try and upgrade it. The GPU temperatures never got above 80 degrees celcius but obviously I had no way of knowing how hot the VRAM was. The steps I took for the upgrade were as follows: Upgrade the PSU. The elite came with a Corsair SF500W PSU that was running fine but didn't include a no fan mode. I swapped it out for a Cosair SF750W PSU that did include a no fan mode which was a bonus. The swap was very easy, just unplug all the power cables from the PSU, unscrew 4 screws from the top and pop the new PSU back in. Remove the radiator and the liquid cooling AIO from the GPU side of the case. First I opened that side of the case by unscrewing the top two screws holding it on. Then I unscrewed the screws holding the radiator to the side of the case. Then I took out the video card and left the AIO block on the GPU as I'm going to store them together. However, removing the GPU AIO block is very easy by simply unscrewing it (I've done this before to repaste it). Removing the card is simply a matter of unscrewing the top right hand screw holding it into the case and then sliding it out of the PCI-E slot. Next take off the PCI-E power cables. I then unhooked the AIO usb and power from the motherboard/cooling block and stored them as well. Install the new graphics card. I didn't want to blow the bank on this upgrade as I wasn't upgrading the motherboard/CPU so I chose the PowerColor 7900xt. This card is a good choice as it only needs a 750W PSU (the 7900 XTX cards all recommend at least 800W), only needs two 8 pin PCIe power connections and in theory fits the case. Sliding the new card into the space was actually easier than I thought. I didn't even need to take all 4 sides off the case, just the main side although I connected the power to the new card before sliding it in. My particularly version of the One already had a PCIe 3.0 cable so I didn't bother upgrading it as the gains from 4.0 are minimal (although with Direct Storage coming out I may revisit this. Re-connect the top fan. The top fan is connected to the GPU AIO cooler by default and needs to be reconnected. There is no place to connect the fan to the AIO on the CPU side (I checked while repasting it today). I bought a small PWM extension cable and connected the top fan to the SYSFAN spot on the motherboard. The cpu AIO cooler is already connected to the CPU fan spot. I installed the Fan Control app and made a custom curve that adjusts the top fan based on both the GPU and CPU temperatures. Unfortunately, it's not possible to even read the CPU pump coolant temperatures anymore but I verified that it is still running and it is. Once that was all done I powered on, removed my NVIDIA drivers and installed the AMD drivers. Everything worked very well. The unit when not under load is super quiet. If the no fan mode of the 7900 xt actually worked (apparently they are working on a fix in the driver) then during normal use the only fan running would be the top fan at a very quiet 400rpm (plus the CPU pump). The unit is actually more quiet than when I first bought it!

I went ahead and uninstalled and reinstalled Corsair Link and the only thing that changed was my LED case lights turned back on (I had them turned off). I also did a CMOS reset and the fan is still at ~2500 at all times.

I've had my Corsair One Elite for 3 years now and it used to be dead quiet (unless playing a demanding game) but now the GPU fan is stuck at a minimum of 2500 rpm and it's quite loud, even when idling and I feel like it used to be slower than that at idle. Any help would be extremely appreciated! I want my silent corsair one back! Here is a screenshot of Corsair Link showing the fan speed despite cool temperatures.