Replacing the stock fan of Corsair H55 to alleviate noise issue

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bastille77

bastille77

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May 1, 2015
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I recently bought a Corsair Hydro Series H55 Liquid CPU Cooler. The default fan meant to be attached to the radiator is 3-pin. When I plug said fan into the 4-pin CPU fan header of my Asus P6P87 Pro (Rev 3.1) mobo, it runs at a constant 1600 rpm. Needless to say, the noise is atrocious and resembles that of a darn helicopter taking off. :(

After doing some research on fan controls, I found out that if you plug a 3-pin fan into a 4-pin fan header, it'll always run at full speed. Consequently, I'm thinking of replacing the stock fan with a Corsair Air Series SP120 PWM fan which is 4-pin and should operate at a variable speed. My old CPU fan, belonging to the Cooler Master Hyper 212+ is 4-pin and I'm pretty certain it ran at variable speed.

So before I commit to buying the replacement fan, could someone experienced in this area confirm that this the correct solution to the problem?
 
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Sakkura


Not quite true, but it will often be the case. The 4th pin is used for a PWM signal that tells the fan to turn on and off its 12V supply quickly, in order to control fan speed. Without that pin, it's still possible to control the fan by instead reducing the voltage. However, many 4-pin fan headers will not have that functionality built in, since they're mainly meant to be used with 4-pin PWM fans.

Anyway, a Corsair SP120 PWM would work. I would recommend a Noctua NF-F12 PWM instead though, it's generally a better fan.
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Sakkura

Sakkura

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Aug 22, 2011
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Not quite true, but it will often be the case. The 4th pin is used for a PWM signal that tells the fan to turn on and off its 12V supply quickly, in order to control fan speed. Without that pin, it's still possible to control the fan by instead reducing the voltage. However, many 4-pin fan headers will not have that functionality built in, since they're mainly meant to be used with 4-pin PWM fans.

Anyway, a Corsair SP120 PWM would work. I would recommend a Noctua NF-F12 PWM instead though, it's generally a better fan.
 
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bastille77

bastille77

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Thanks for the info. By the way, there seems to be quite a few different versions of the Noctua NF-F12 fans being sold on Amazon. Will this one work? Also, acoustics-wise, which one is the best, i.e., quietest?



The layout of fan headers on my motherboard is such that I can only realistically plug the cooler fan into the 3-pin PWR_FAN header, which only operates at full blast and can't seem to be controlled. The other 3-pin header belongs to CHA_FAN2 and is located near the bottom right of the board and thus can't be reached; I use it for my front panel chassis fan instead. The radiator is plugged into the 4-pin CPU_FAN header.

The BIOS fan controls has silent, turbo and standard modes, but changing them doesn't seem to affect the operation of the fan at all. It also doesn't have the option to let me tweak fan speed through voltage.
 
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Sakkura

Sakkura

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Yeah they took the same basic design and just made different variants. The one you have is the basic PWM version of it, and is the most suitable for your situation. There are also some high-RPM variants but they shouldn't be necessary. The standard NF-F12 PWM is already pushing more air at full speed than the Corsair SP120 is capable of.

I actually have a Corsair H55 cooling my graphics card (with the use of a bracket to mount it). It's a pretty power-hungry R9 290, so I put the 2000 RPM version of the NF-F12 on the cooler. Works well, and turns out the extra speed isn't really necessary. It starts to get a bit loud past that point anyway.
 
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bastille77

bastille77

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Thanks for these tips, I really appreciate them. By the way it just dawned on me that since I still have the PWM fan that pairs with my old Cooler Master Hyper 212+, I could detach the brackets and use it with the Corsair instead. That should serve as a temporary solution until I order the Noctua fan right?

Also, I've another question regarding fan installation. Should I orient the cooler fan for intake or exhaust? I've watch video guides which claim that that depends on whether you have an exhaust fan at the top of the case. I recently changed from a Cooler Master HAF 922 to a Corsair Spec-02, mainly for the sake of having a bigger motherboard cutout for easier cooler installation. The Corsair case doesn't have a top exhaust fan, so should I install the cooler fan as an exhaust?

 
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Sakkura

Sakkura

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Yeah the fan will work as an interim measure.

Intake is a little better for CPU cooling but does add some heat inside the case, might make the GPU run a couple degrees hotter.

I would just go with what happens to fit well in your case and airflow setup. Top exhaust is probably good.
 
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bastille77

bastille77

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I installed the spare Cooler Master PWM fan onto the radiator of the H55. Now the fan speed is variable and the system is just as quiet as before. Thanks very much for the help! :)
 
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