5 LL120 RGB fans faulty at once?

Earlier this year I built a custom cooled PC. The Obsidian 1000D. So this means a lot of fans and a lot of money. However probably 5-6 months of use later and 5 of my LL120 fans (Only the RGB LEDs to be precise) are faulty, out of 30 so 1/6 fans breaking every 5 months is gonna be expensive maintenance... Anybody got any ideas why this may be happening?

 

Thanks folks in advance :eek:

Can you elaborate a little as to the failing? No lighting at all, stuck halfway around, wrong colors, blinking on/off. etc.?

Yes of course. 5 fans in total.

Fan 1: Front of case. 2nd in series on lighting hub. When fan 1 is plugged in the fans that follow in the series become all glitchy flickering. Swap fan 3 and 4 to put them before the 2nd in series and faulty RGB fan 1 at the last slot in series. The rest of the fans are perfect and the last fan (fan 1) has a little flickering led at one side that must have been the root cause.

All other faulty fans have the same failing LED problem just not as obvious.

The rest are on the top of the case. In a series of 6 fans... Swapped a few fans around in the series to see which ones ruin the lighting loop same as with fan 1 and discovered that 3 different fans in the link stop any lighting occurring after them in the series.

Also used some new spare fans I have to test this one by one. Plugged faulty fan into slot one and slot 2 with new fan doesn't light. Put good fan into slot one and slot 2 works fine.

 

Hope this helps. The fans are mechanically sound just lighting problems and this is vital in such a bling, customised expensive PC :sunglasse

have you cancelled out the RGB Fan LED Hub playing a part in all this?... from what you have said it does sound like a bad fan though but is's unusual for a few fans in the chain to fail at the same time..

I have multiple different fan hubs and I did try different ones to check if it was the hub and not the fans.

I know the hub works fine and other fans that are fully functional chain together no problem on it.

 

The fact that they were all faulty around the same time is the part that is confusing me too... I will buy replacements this time but I want to avoid this happening every 5 months where I need to buy 5 fans at around £100 :eek:

if only 5 months old then you need to open a ticket and get them replaced as they would still be in warranty....

I have started a RMA now.

I was just wondering if there may be a cause for this as it seems unlikely it should happen :(:

I would like to avoid having to completely drain my custom loop and refill that frequently as this may increase the likelyhood of leaks :eek:.

 

Thank for the advice though, I'm glad you folks are taking the time to troubleshoot this with me:D:

One thing worth mentioning is a RGB hub with 6 LL fans will pull up to 3.7A on the 5v rail of the SATA power line. You can't go over the SATA limit with just 6 fans, but if you start combing RGB hubs on the same line from the PSU or anything else using the 5v rail, you might get yourself into trouble. In my experience with this, the PSU may shutdown rather than fry the fans, but perhaps the behavior is not so clear cut if you are dancing around the 4.5A limit on the line.

Ohhhh :bigeyes:

Now that may be something worth checking. I can't remember how I wired up the power to these hubs but I do have a lot of fans and 4 or 5 hubs. I doubt I would have been able to fit all the hubs on one line but if I have more than 2 (12 fans) then there's a possibility of some overdraw?

Best solution?

I may not even have enough peripheral slots on my PSU because of the amount of components in the PC :(:

I just checked and there are a few attached to the sata power.

However I also have 4 SSDs and I just don't have enough peripheral power slots on my AX1600i PSU to have 1 hub individually on a line.

What can I do :(:

I would not be too worried about extra SSDs on the same line as an RGB hub. What’s a really heavy SSD power draw? 2.5W? I guess it varies by model and some older ones are less efficient. However, the real question is whether the SSD draws 12v line power or a combination from all three rails. I don’t the answer and it could once again vary by make and model.

 

Rather than chase the above, I think the more pressing issue is to make sure both RGB 6 port hubs are not on the same line together. That we know is a lot of 5v power. You might say the same about the commander pro if you have 2 in play. If one C-Pro and one RGB hub are on each line (plus whatever other non-heavy current draws), you should be ok. The “anything else on the 5v rail” was a generic warning about adding random stuff, not a warning you can’t add anything. Water pumps (12v rail 20-35W or 2-3A), Commander Pro (12v -varies by fans, 6 LL motors 1.8A), and RGB hubs (5v - 3.7A for 6 LL) are the big ticket items. Those you need to watch how you combine with other things that draw from the same voltage line.

Okay, so I have 30 fans in this case. 3 COPROS, 5 hubs and a lighting node pro... What would you suggest if it were you trying to power these because I certainly can't have them all on separate lines, I'd need 2 PSUs for just the 1 system.

I have tried rearranging things but I still end up exceeding the 4.5A limit on sata cables. There's just not enough, slots on my PSU. Makes me sad that my build just may not be possible :'(

It’s hard for me to visualize all of your gear (that is a lot). There are other people running huge amounts of fans in 1000D sized cases. Perhaps someone has some insights to a more efficient way.

You can run more than 4.5A from a single PSU cable. You cannot run more than 4.5A from a single SATA connector (so no splitters!).

I am absolutely pulling more than 4.5A on a single 5V line from the PSU. So are many others. PSU cable is typically 18 Gauge, which will handle that just fine. It's the SATA connector, however, that's only rated for 4.5A and may melt if you pull more current through it.

One thing, however, to look out for is the total rating on the 5V rail on your PSU. These vary by PSU but seldom exceed 20A. This does present a challenge to systems with a lot of RGB - IMHO, Corsair should come out with series of PSUs with something like 50A on the 5V rail.

Does anyone know what is wrong with my fan... I've had this problem for a few months and I never got around to looking into it until now.

Is it the last one on the fan hub?

It's likely that the LEDs are bad.

You can run more than 4.5A from a single PSU cable. You cannot run more than 4.5A from a single SATA connector (so no splitters!).

I am absolutely pulling more than 4.5A on a single 5V line from the PSU. So are many others. PSU cable is typically 18 Gauge, which will handle that just fine. It's the SATA connector, however, that's only rated for 4.5A and may melt if you pull more current through it.

One thing, however, to look out for is the total rating on the 5V rail on your PSU. These vary by PSU but seldom exceed 20A. This does present a challenge to systems with a lot of RGB - IMHO, Corsair should come out with series of PSUs with something like 50A on the 5V rail.

 

Dev you have eased my mind beyond belief :).

That means I have not damaged my fans due to overloading 5v rail.

I'm sure the AX1600i's 5v rail is rated to 30A which I'm almost sure I can't be exceeding unless the COPROS are pulling from that rail too :bigeyes:

 

If it's not overloading then Im still baffled as to why I lost 5 RGB fans so quickly and roughly around the same time.

Thank you guys for giving the time to reply to me.

Could heat cause the LEDs to go faulty cause I had one hell of a warm summer here and my room easily hit the 30 celsius mark and the radiators in this monster to which the fans are attached must have gotten mega toasty?

No, that level of heat won’t do it. I am at 28-30C in the room for 5 months and while my case is breezy, there are plenty of people with hot boxes that sit at 50C all the time. Heat certainly can kill LEDs, but I don’t think you are there and there is not a physical change point like “50C compound X melts and the LED fails”. They would not all drop off at the same time.

 

When you loose that many fans at the same time, it reads like an electrical issue. We might not figure out exactly what happened, but assessing how everything is wired needed to be the first step.

Hi Fwashy,

 

I would submit a ticket on our support page. They will be able to walk you through a bunch of troubleshooting steps and that would get you set up if an RMA is needed.

 

You can always try uninstalling iCUE and clearing the %appdata% of corsair folders then reinstalling. This would let you check if its software related. If that doesn't fix it and swapping around the hubs doesn't fix it, then Corsair Tech Support would be your best bet.

 

Support.corsair.com

I have, taken my system apart, replaced the fans with new ones put it all back together and a few weeks later maybe a month or so. I have faulty LEDs on multiple fans throughout the case.

I made sure there weren't too many fans on one sata plug and made sure no y splitters were used and now hundreds of £ worth of fans are broken again.

I'm lost on what could be causing this and I'm not rich enough to replace constantly malfunctioning fans.

It seems that my custom Obsidian 1000D may have to become an ugly standard fan case :(

 

Any ideas from anyone would be a huge help :greencry: