Alex B

Hi all, I'm trying to get to the bottom of what exactly happened today with one of my Carbide 678C 6-port PWM repeaters. I am waiting on a GPU block to arrive tomorrow, but my build is mostly complete. So I decided to test the fans and RGB on my current components. I didn't provide any power to my water pumps or the mobo, but powered the fans, their RGB controllers, and a commander pro. Well, immediately as I powered on, smoke (didn't see actual flame) appeared and I quickly cut the power. It turns out of the repeaters SATA power cord just completely went up in smoke (see photos). Can you help me figure out why? A bit more about my setup. I have 22 fans in a Phanteks enthoo elite. I have 4 of the Carbide 678C PWM repeaters, with 6 ports each. I have a couple of them with 6 fans attached and the other ones are not saturated. Each of these repeaters has its own SATA power supply, which I attached to a corsair SATA cable with 5 ports itself on it, which then is attached to a corsair PSU (RM1000i). 4 of the 5 ports on the SATA power cable were hooked up to these repeaters. The 5th port was free... I think, maybe had something else on it. The PWM cable coming from each PWM repeater goes to a single commander pro. That same commander pro has 2 of its 2 USB ports used by Lighting Node Cores. Both LED ports on the copro are used (1 for a XC7 CPU block RGB, and 1 for a corsair RGB fan hub). The PWM repeater that got cooked was not the first or the last in the SATA cable ports, and all the other components on the other ports were just fine. After the incident, I replaced the fried PWM repeater with a spare I had. I also used 3 total SATA cables instead of 2 to distribute the power draw. After doing this, I had no issues. I am not sure if I 1.) had a bad PWM repeater, 2.) had a bad SATA cable, 3.) overloaded the SATA cable I had with too many PWM repeaters on it. I think connecting 6 QL140 fans to each repeater is fine... since that's what it's marketed to do, but nonetheless I cannot find any information on how many amps the entire repeater can handle itself. I doubt there's a power draw issue at the commander pro since each of the repeaters are themselves powered. I'm sort of leaning toward #3 above. 0.3A per fan... multiplied by 6 fans = 1.8A. Can a single SATA connecter handle 1.8A? Can a SATA cable handle powering a certain amount of fans (I seem to vaguely remember that each SATA cable is rated for 4.5A)? I don't remember how many fans via repeaters I had connected to the SATA cable in question at the time but maybe 15 plus an RGB hub, which is definitely over 4.5A. Can someone smarter than me help a dude out?

Following as well...

I had/have this issue with a 2080 ti FE. First block flexed the hell out of the PCB. RMA’d the block. Second block flexes it a little less but it’s still there (even out of the case)... the advice I was given was loosen the screws a bit. In my opinion I think it’s a product flaw, but I’m not too worked up about it because the flex isn’t extreme and it cools fine enough. You have a lot of flex there though...

Thanks for the quick reply and advice. Can you really “pump out” the coolant? What I mean by this is, if you’re draining your system, the pump is not going to pump air through the radiator to push the coolant out. So aren’t you stuck with just gravity anyway? I do have one of the rads vertically mounted with the ports at the top like you mentioned. Unless you’re flushing your system with distilled water and then replacing with coolant, I don’t think “pumping” the old coolant out would work. Am I wrong? My drainage line is at the very bottom of the case. So, I *think* pumping anything to it is irrelevant. Could very well be wrong. AB

Hey -- I'm going to rearrange some of my loop despite only completing it a couple weeks ago. I have a few noob questions. 1.) I'm moving around the drainage line, and I'm curious if I can put the drain line directly from the pump if I attach a ball valve fitting onto the port adjacent to the solitary outlet port. The reason I'm curious is because the manual says that this port is an INLET port. I don't see a reason why it wouldn't be able to drain from this port (or any of the bottom inlet ports for that matter)... does anyone know of any problems or shortcomings with this? 2.) The coolant (corsair clear) I'm using has only been in the loop for a couple weeks as I mentioned. Is it a problem if I just re-use this same coolant as long as I put it inside a clean container while its out of the loop? I still have the original bottle it came in and could drain it into that. Don't think this is a problem but I also don't want to make assumptions. Thanks in advance! AB

Hi — sorry for the late reply. Was out of town. I’m running the latest version of icue, whatever that may be... I can check it when I get back home from work. Doing things w the most basic setup doesn’t seem to make a difference. Maybe it’s a wonky temp sensor? Sort of running out of other ideas. Maybe the GPU contact to the block is sufficient but “not great”. The GPU never gets above 55c at least... Thanks again.

Thanks for looking into it so seriously. I’ve tried reinstalling icue and forced updates on all drivers. My commander pros are daisy chained and I recently switched the hydro x stuff (temp control, pumps, rad fans) to the opposite CoPro to see if that did anything and nothing changed. In doing that I basically unplugged all the the connections involving the hydro x loop. I didn’t unplug any of the fans, any of the power supply, or any of the USB connections. Do you think I should? I also did not unplug any of the daisy chained CPU -> GPU -> pump LEDs... but I suppose I could do that and/or change their order if you recommend it. Approximately which RPMs correlate to liters or gallons per minute? It would be nice to know so I can compare apples to apples. Thanks again.

Yeah I’ve figured it all out now. Problem all along was not realizing pump flow was so low on the hydro x setting, which was also why it was taking so long for my coolant temp to change. Here’s a better pic of how I handled two rads in the case and the re-entry. Higher quality pic of the front too. It would be nice if you could buy single packs of fittings/adapters. Would also be nice if Corsair made some of the more exotic pieces that bitspower offered (T-piece, white ball valve, white stop plugs, etc), but I get why they don’t (yet?!).

Hey -- thought I had an alert in place for replies not this thread... I guess not. I used the cooler master option. You will DEFINITELY not have enough space for fans PLUS radiator, FYI. To minimize/prevent sagging, I put the rubber block that came with the case (designed to support a 2nd PSU) and put it below the cooler master bracket near the middle of the case. It does fine on its own, but just mentioning it in case that interests you.

I ran a few tests. See the attached screenshot. For all but one of the scenarios I just ran the 3 intake and 6 exhaust/radiator fans at 1200 rpm then jacked them up a little to 1700 for the last test. Otherwise, the only thing I changed was pump speed to demonstrate that the lower pump speeds really affected the difference between my coolant temp and GPU temp. I assume the idling coolant temp increased throughout my tests because I wasn't giving the system a ton of time for the coolant to cool significantly between test runs. 3.) By run hot I Just mean 50-60 C or so difference between the coolant temp and the GPU temp with the pump at lower flows (using default Hydro X settings). Agreed though, I'll base the pump and fan speeds off of the coolant temperature. Because my coolant never changes more than 3 degrees between idling and load (does this also seem lower than expected to you?), I'll have to set a custom curve with baseline at 2500 rpm and going up 500 rpm every half degree of the coolant temp. Based on your link outlining the default settings for the pump, it looks like my coolant never gets hot enough for the pump to realize it needs to run faster... and that's the problem I was having. Still though, there's about a 20 degree difference between coolant temp and GPU temp at load... and from what I've read that is pretty crappy. Agree? 4) Yes I agree. Running hot air over a radiator doesn't make much sense. 5) I'll change the layout between the commander pros. Just ordered a H75 H105 Y-header cable off eBay for a few bucks and will Y two of the fans together to create space on the same CoPro. And, I'll change the pin to 4 instead of auto, thanks.

Thanks for your reply! 1) glad to know nothing is wrong with my temp sensor. 2) gonna end up creating a custom curve as well then. 3) Do you base your custom pump curve on coolant temp then? How do you get around the problem of the components heating up faster than the coolant itself? Or does this not happen to you? Seems like it takes forever for my coolant to change temps and my components run hot for a long time before it kicks in. 4) I'll probably use the temp sensors that came with the CoPro and put them in various places inside the case and vary the intake fans RPM based on their temps. Or just set it to also vary with the coolant temp vs. set it to a fixed value. 5) Shouldn't whatever "profile" saved to the hardware run at boot without the software loaded up yet, irrespective of which CoPro the fans are connected to vs. the hydro X series? Thanks again!

Hi All – I skimmed the other threads looking for any that pertained to these issues but didn’t see anything… please correct me if I’m wrong. I have a few questions after just finishing my first custom loop: XD5 pump/res -> corsair 2080 ti block -> corsair intel CPU block -> 360 mm rad -> 360 mm rad -> pump with 14 mm acrylic hard line. See attached pic. 1.) I’m getting the message “you need to plug temp sensor into #1 slot on CoPro” in the performance tab when clicking on “fan #6” (pump/res). I currently have the temp sensor in the back port of the XD5 and plugged into the #1 T slot on the CoPro. Is the presence of this message signifying that the software thinks I don’t have it plugged in? Shouldn’t this message NOT be there and instead a pump/speed curve that I can adjust? I’ve assumed that the message is there for everyone and that in order to adjust the pump speed with respect to the temperature I just need to assign a custom curve to the pump. That brings me to my second issue. 2.) the pump speed seems slow if set to the “hydro x series pump” setting. If I set my rad fans to a fixed 1200 RPM (just for example) and let the hydro x series profile control the pump speed, my GPU gets up to the 70s C during heaven benchmarking. If I assign a custom profile to the pump that gets up to 3000-4000 rpm or higher, the temp quickly falls to mid 40s – low 50s. I plan on overclocking the GPU and CPU here soon, and I’m just not putting much confidence in the default hydro x series pump speed profile. What setting/profile are you guys using? 3.) Is the aforementioned default hydro x pump speed curve setting basing its curve off the coolant temp? In my mind this makes sense to do, but I’ve found that the delta T is pretty narrow… ranging 24C – 27C. In theory I could make a custom curve along the lines of 24C = 1000 RPM, 25 = 2000 RPM, 26 = 3000 RPM, 27 = 4000 RPM… BUT the problem I foresee in this is that the coolant temperature climbs MUCH slower than actual component (GPU and CPU) temps because of the coolant/water’s high specific heat. Because of this, wont the pump speed significantly lag behind the actual GPU/CPU temps? I’d really prefer not to have the GPU and CPU running at 90 degrees for 15 minutes before that’s enough time for the component to heat the coolant enough for the pump/fans to change RPM. Isn’t this a problem for everyone? 4.) In my testing, the most important thing for cooling in my loop is pump speed. I understand/agree that its fan speed and radiators that should what’s important over some minimum pump speed (0.5 – 1.0 gpm)… but it just doesn’t seem to be the case in reality for me. If I max out my 6 radiator fans (pushing out) and my 3 intake fans (not paired to rads), this minimally affects my temps… varying the pump speed drastically affects my temps… even at higher RPMs above some minimum threshold. What gives? Based off what I’m seeing I should do one of two things: #1, just set the pump to a fixed 4000 rpm and set the fans to fixed 1000 rpm (where I can barely hear them) since this keeps the components in the 40-50C range, or #2 create a custom curve for the pump speed based off coolant temp or GPU/CPU temp and leave the fans to a low fixed speed (since I’m seeing diminishing returns with higher fan RPMs). Option #3 could just be to set the pump to fixed maximum 100% of the time… since the pump makes hardly any noise, but I’d be afraid of burning out the pump. 5.) Should I put the fans paired with rads on the same CoPro as the Hydro X series stuff? I think the answer is probably yes. I have two separate CoPros daisy chained together with the 6 radiator fans on the 1st CoPro and the hydro X series stuff + 3 intake fans on the 2nd CoPro. I did this because the XD5 pump takes up a fan slot on the CoPro and there wouldn’t be enough room on one CoPro for the hydro X series stuff plus all six fans (I suppose I could get a PWM fan splitter for two of the fans then I’d have enough room). BUT, I can control the rad fans from the other CoPro based on the T inputs from the coolant, GPU, or CPU. So if I don’t care to have fan speeds based on the default “hydro x series fan” curve and instead a custom curve of my own choosing, having it all on the same CoPro doesn’t matter—and, I’m inclined to do it this way because I’m seeing pretty crap performance if I leave the “hydro X series pump/fan” curves to do their thing instead of my custom curves. This is absolutely a ton of information/questions, and I really appreciate whoever is reading through all of this to provide some feedback. Thanks in advance. AB