This is so fustrating, I had a stick of memory on my computer die the other week and it was causing my CMOS settings to get corrupted.
I ended up resetting my CMOS completley, but ever since the fans are running at a much higher speed, not at full speed, but enough to hear in the background.

When I built the PC, I set the Q-fan control in the BIOS to silent which ive always had it at, and the fans would only ever hit full speed when playing a game when the temperature increased, but the rest of the time it was super silent with them only running at a low enough speed to move air through without any audible noise.

Im wondering if subsequent BIOS updates may have changed some parameters for the fan control and only after resetting has it erased the configuration data that an older revision allowed?

What I find odd is that when doing a manual config, the slider only lets me bring down the speed to 50%, but the silent preset configuration shows it much less than that on the graph, but still sounds the same as 50% on manual.

nzoomed - 2021-06-11 12:14:00

How big is your case? Maybe the case fan can be removed alltogether? I know someone who had sealed up the case a bit and put some fairings in so the airflow would go into the case in one spot, be directed around the case cooling all of the components, and the powersupply fan would suck all the air out. The only fan (other than the CPU fan) was the power supply fan.

tygertung - 2021-06-11 13:09:00

This doesn't really take into account that a lot of cases now have a separate chamber for the PSU so that the PSU wouldn't have access to this hot air and also that a lot of modern PSUs have a 0% fan mode, where the PSU fan doesn't come on until the PSU detects that it is under enough load to justify fan operation.

Not only that, but the general idea of using your power supply as your only means of exhausting hot air from a PC case? That just seems like a terrible idea in general.

cube_guy - 2021-06-11 13:35:00

If you disconnected the fan wiring when you replaced the stick of memory, then visually look at the 3-pin fan headers on the motherboard to make sure you haven't slipped one across by one pin. It would still run, but not have the speed control function.

gyrogearloose - 2021-06-11 13:48:00

tygertung wrote:

How big is your case? Maybe the case fan can be removed alltogether? I know someone who had sealed up the case a bit and put some fairings in so the airflow would go into the case in one spot, be directed around the case cooling all of the components, and the powersupply fan would suck all the air out. The only fan (other than the CPU fan) was the power supply fan.

Its a midi tower, plenty of airflow, and nothing overclocked. Uses the stock standard Intel CPU cooler.
The noise is definitely coming from the case fans, i have one on the front sucking in and the rear fan is blowing out. The PSU fan is not making any noticeable noise.

cube_guy wrote:

This doesn't really take into account that a lot of cases now have a separate chamber for the PSU so that the PSU wouldn't have access to this hot air and also that a lot of modern PSUs have a 0% fan mode, where the PSU fan doesn't come on until the PSU detects that it is under enough load to justify fan operation.

Not only that, but the general idea of using your power supply as your only means of exhausting hot air from a PC case? That just seems like a terrible idea in general.

This lian-li case has no such chamber for the PSU, but im not going to soley rely on the PSU fan at all for airflow. Only 1990s era computers ever relied on the PSU fan!

gyrogearloose wrote:

If you disconnected the fan wiring when you replaced the stick of memory, then visually look at the 3-pin fan headers on the motherboard to make sure you haven't slipped one across by one pin. It would still run, but not have the speed control function.

Never touched any of the fan connectors, but something definitely seems wrong in the BIOS setup, why it only allows me to run the fans down to 50%, ill never know. It definitely had different profiles when I last remember.
Im considering changing the fans to PWM ones instead.

nzoomed - 2021-06-11 14:43:00

Fan bearings worn, the bios auto tunes the pwm frequency to monitor when they stall and sets the adjustment range accordingly. Worn bearings mean they now stall sooner. As a result you lose dynamic range in the adjustment. Your previous q-fan values were made when the fans were fresh. You lost them at the reset, It can't now replicate them.

Peel back the stickers on the fans and squirt with silicone spray if you have some, saturate if necessary, it wont hurt them, the objective being to lube the bearings. Failing that swap in a new fan and reset the bios again. Autotune if it has it.

Edited by ronaldo8 at 10:56 pm, Tue 22 Jun

ronaldo8 - 2021-06-22 22:52:00