other H80 and H100 pump noise solution

There's a lot of unhappy people out there (like me) whos H100 (or H80 because of the same pump) is making a 1990's hard-drive noise.

For a long time this was believed to be caused be caused by air bubbles in the system. The only recommended solutions were to get it replaced by Corsair, or to shake the cooler while it's working, until the noise goes away.

Recently someone discovered that ts actually caused because some PSUs give a little more than 12 V. his causes the pump to work faster than it should. Like at 2300 RPM instead of 2000.

The new recommended solutions include:

• Use something like a fan controller that has an extra molex for the pump or something.
• Build a small adapter that has a 1N4001 diode.
• Build a large chain of random adapters and cables between the PSU and your pump.

Sources:

• http://www.overclock.net/t/1209387/corsair-h100-pump-noise/10
• http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=97733&page=22

I have yet to try any of this, as I just found out about it. I'll try to get some fan speed measuring program first to see how fast my pump is.

EDIT 1:

Maybe I could just use a molex to 3 pin adapter (which I already have) and use that to plug the pumps molex right into one of the PWMs on my motherboard? The case fans are meant to work at up to 12V, right? Or maybe this would be bad, because the motherboard measures its temperatures and only turns those up to full when it thinks its hot? Either way, I have some experimenting to do.

I could get a fan controller, but I'm trying not to have to do that, because 2 of the case fans use molexes and I don't want my whole case to become full of adapters and extension cords.

EDIT 2:

According to "SpeedFan", the pump is working at 2165 to 2181 rotations per minute. According to the people at the Corsair support forum, most of their pumps became quiet at about 1700 RPM.

EDIT 3:

According to the "CPU Thermometer" (by Microsoft), the cores are between 24 °C and 30 °C at idle. The stock cooler kept them at about 32 to 37 °C at idle.

EDIT 4:

Turns out that the molex to 3 pin adapter I have has the wrong (male) 3 pin part. (Duh! ) So all actual tests will have to wait.

Edited again for spelling.

Well I've decided to do this right and get a Zalman ZM-MFC1 plus. Seems like a cheap and effective thing.

My soldering skill is just shit and I don't want to have any suspicious loose ends. And I definitely don't want to burn out any part of the motherboard.

They'll replace it for free now:

quote http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showthread.php?t=107252

Released from Cooling Product Manager:

"Corsair has now tracked down and fixed a rare and hard to reproduce issue on some of our Hydro series coolers, specifically the H60, H80, and H100 when used in combination with certain power supplies in certain circumstances. The failure will present itself as a buzz or hum, similar to a hard drive seek noise, and may disappear and reappear at random times. This issue affects a very small number of units, and typically is more prevalent on power supplies that provide higher than +12.2V on the +12V rail, which explains why some users have experienced multiple units with the same issue – they’re plugging them into the same power supply.

Regardless, this has since been corrected and we are now shipping units that do not experience the issue. If you’ve got a noisy H100, H80, or H60 unit, and the noise is coming from the pump (not the fans), we’d like to offer you a RMA. Please Contact us by using the link on the left and request an RMA to start a replacement with a known good unit.

Thank you, and we appreciate your patience as we corrected this issue."