PSU Knocking??

[johnt]

I built a 12th gen i7 PC last April and I probably have a couple hundred hours of gameplay on it and it has been dead silent during gaming. I recently started playing Horizon Zero Dawn and there is a very funny knocking sound during gameplay. So far it's only been this game. It's consistent from the first load into the world, but it does go away during the map and some cutscenes. I provided an audio recording of the sound for reference. It's almost a pulsating noise... I hesitate to call this coil whine though. And why just this game?

 

I isolated it to the PSU by ramping the fans up and down, and the knocking sound persists and I can hear it coming from the PSU. Funny thing is I have not heard it during any other game. The build is a mini ITX case with a Corsair SF750 platinum, ASUS 3070 ti, all the other cooling fans are Noctua, only M.2 drives, all cables and RGB strips are tied to the case, all fan blades are clear (no loose wires hitting the fan blades)

 

Games previously tested/played without this noise: AC origins, far cry 5, rise of the tomb raider, cyberpunk 2077, red dead redemption 2, rocket league, maneater, borderlands 3, planet coaster, just cause 3 and 4, battlefield 5, nfs heat, soul calibur 6, street fighter 5, riders republic, the list is long and varied...

 

Any input would be appreciated!

[ThousandBlade]

Sounds like rod bearing giving up 

 

 

 

Oops wrong thread 
 

[aledsav1]

really does sound like a moving part rather than anything else, so it just has to be the SF fan, my SF 600's fan very rarely kicks in unless a seriously heavy load is put on it, I am pretty sure this is what yours is doing, and for some reason there is something touching the fan or the fan is problematic

[johnt]

12 minutes ago, aledsav1 said:

my SF 600's fan very rarely kicks in unless a seriously heavy load is put on it, I am pretty sure this is what yours is doing, and for some reason there is something touching the fan or the fan is problematic

I can run Cinebench R23 at advertised CPU clocks and my PSU fan does not spin. But as soon as my GPU does anything at all... the PSU fan starts going. Usually it's very quiet. I tried to do a Noctua fan mod on it a while ago and the wire didn't fit nicely. I had to resort back to the stock fan. But so far it hasn't caused me any issues.

 

I tested the in game FPS limiter and the sound completely stops at 50 fps with GPU reporting 40% usage. I normally limit to 90 fps with 70% usage (in this game). But the knocking is fully present at 60 fps and higher. Very awkward... 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Sounds like my OCZ PSU fan though the "knock" is not as noticeable as yours.

[Whatisthis]

I was gonna say you need to find that cricket…

 

Can you try stopping the psu fan manually (stick something into the fan blades near the hub) and firing up the game to see if it replicates the sound still? Don’t run it too long like that obviously.

[DontBeSillyWrapYourWilly]

90% it is a fan bearing. Though they go bad after many years of usage so this is a bit strange.

[johnt]

3 hours ago, Whatisthis said:

I was gonna say you need to find that cricket…

 

Can you try stopping the psu fan manually (stick something into the fan blades near the hub) and firing up the game to see if it replicates the sound still? Don’t run it too long like that obviously.

I can give this a try. Seems like a logical next step. I’ll have a portable fan pointed at the psu while I’m doing this.

 

2 hours ago, DontBeSillyWrapYourWilly said:

90% it is a fan bearing. Though they go bad after many years of usage so this is a bit strange.

 That’s what I’m thinking. It has a decent warranty that I thought it would be fine. It’s funny that it’s only in this game so far. It’s like my system knows I have to destroy machines in the game and it’s unhappy with me. 

[johnt]

@ThousandBlade @aledsav1 @Whatisthis @DontBeSillyWrapYourWilly

 

You guys were right... it is the fan bearing I think. It's the fan either way. Still not sure why only this game. I bought a 92x14 replacement fan and adapter (mini to regular 4 pin). Surgery commences this weekend.

 

This is stupid.. $180 bucks for a PSU and Corsair can't manage a reliable fan. At least I got sleeved cables. Horse droppings!

 

Thanks for your input everyone!

[ThousandBlade]

Don't forget to let capacitor in the PSU to drain completely before working on it.
You could get a nasty shock OR DIE

[Whatisthis]

23 minutes ago, ThousandBlade said:

Don't forget to let capacitor in the PSU to drain completely before working on it.
You could get a nasty shock OR DIE

Unplug and hit the power button a couple times.

[JLssg4]

20 minutes ago, Whatisthis said:

Unplug and hit the power button a couple times.

Does that drain it? (admittedly ignorant)...I had gathered/read that you leave it plugged into a wall socket/power strip/UPS, but hit the PSU power switch off...then holding down the power button drains the capacitors to ground (house/building ground).  This seems like something worth hashing out/nailing down.

[johnt]

2 hours ago, ThousandBlade said:

Don't forget to let capacitor in the PSU to drain completely before working on it.
You could get a nasty shock OR DIE

Decent enough advice lol I have opened this particular PSU before and tried this mod previously. I wasn't happy with how I wrecked the pins on the headers previously bc Corsair, of course, has modified the order of the cables. So I just defaulted back to the original fan just to be safe. But I'm better at it now... plus the fan is obviously dying, whereas before it was just a fun, aesthetic mod.

 

I went back and tried a few other games and the knocking is consistent across all of them now... the bearing noise is always there as the demand on the PSU increases. So I have to replace the fan now.

[Whatisthis]

2 hours ago, JLssg4 said:

Does that drain it? (admittedly ignorant)...I had gathered/read that you leave it plugged into a wall socket/power strip/UPS, but hit the PSU power switch off...then holding down the power button drains the capacitors to ground (house/building ground).  This seems like something worth hashing out/nailing down.

https://www.microcenter.com/tech_center/article/2859/how-to-discharge-capacitors-on-a-desktop-computer
 

unplug and hold down the power button is the approved method. We were both partly right.

[DontBeSillyWrapYourWilly]

10 hours ago, johnt said:

@ThousandBlade @aledsav1 @Whatisthis @DontBeSillyWrapYourWilly

 

You guys were right... it is the fan bearing I think. It's the fan either way. Still not sure why only this game. I bought a 92x14 replacement fan and adapter (mini to regular 4 pin). Surgery commences this weekend.

 

This is stupid.. $180 bucks for a PSU and Corsair can't manage a reliable fan. At least I got sleeved cables. Horse droppings!

 

Thanks for your input everyone!

Cant you RMA it? Opening PSUs without proper knowledge can indeed be lethal.

[johnt]

5 minutes ago, DontBeSillyWrapYourWilly said:

Cant you RMA it? Opening PSUs without proper knowledge can indeed be lethal.

I pulled the sticker a while ago. The void your warranty sticker. Not sure how liberal Corsair is about that. I also don’t want a refurbished unit as a replacement. I doubt they will just send me a fan for DIY in this situation. Plus a replacement fan is not likely to last more than a year either. 
 

I’ve opened this unit before. The fan comes out with the cover and the connector is easy to get to. I have the pry set from ifixit and heavy duty tweezers and needle nose pliers. I should be okay. I’m not really doing any work inside the unit except for one fan connector.

[Poinkachu]

43 minutes ago, johnt said:

I pulled the sticker a while ago. The void your warranty sticker. Not sure how liberal Corsair is about that.

Pretty sure depends on what country you live in.

 

Quote

I doubt they will just send me a fan for DIY in this situation. Plus a replacement fan is not likely to last more than a year either. 

Yeah, telling customer to DIY fix a PSU Fan can mean asking for a huge lawsuit over (possibly) death of a customer.

 

 

Just be careful man, even monkeys falls from trees sometimes.

Double check safety precaution and stuff like that.

[johnt]

If anyone is still following this... I replaced the stock fan with a Noctua A9x14mm. It was basically a perfect fit. I had some issues routing the long cable and the 4-pin to mini fan adapter. But eventually I was able to wrap it around the fan housing and use electrical tape to keep the fan wire on the housing directly. It all fit smoothly and the cover closed without any force at all. In the future, the black chroma version of the A9x14 has a short wire and a separate extension, which would make it a perfect fan for this swap. The short wire and the adapter would have been a no brainer to route in the small enclosure. But lucky me, I figured that out after I ordered the fan with the long cable lol

 

The biggest issue I had to overcome was the pin layout of the PSU fan connector. It was not in the standard format as it is for case fans. The funny thing is, the stock fan used the standard layout, but the wires were crossed at the mini connector. So I had to use the stock fan and PSU pin layout to figure out which pins were doing what function. I then took out the pins out of the adapter and rearranged them to convert the Noctua fan to the PSU. The Noctua fan remains untouched, basically, and the adapter can be used with any standard thin fan in the future if I need to replace the fan in this PSU. But hopefully this will never happen again.

 

I connected everything together, plugged in the machine, started it up, and boom... fan spins at start (just like the stock fan used to), and whirls away quietly when the GPU engages. It's dead silent! The other nice part is that the fan stops spinning as the load is reduced on the PSU. Some folks online were complaining their fans never stopped spinning after the swap or they couldn't get the fan to operate at all. I'm glad I didn't have these issues.

 

In the past, I thought that my AIO pump was very loud. I'm pretty sure it was the fan bearing slowly working itself to a death for a while now. Turns out the bearing was making a higher pitched whine before that turned into the pulsating noise that finally got me to fix it. With the Noctua fan, I can't even hear the pump at all... which to me seems like it was probably never the pump.