Question "CPU fan error" from Corsair H100i AIO Capellix pump not turning on after PC wakes up from sleep

[Mida4]

This is going to be quite a very long post since it is still currently being investigated by Corsair support so bear with me. Here is also a link to a series of picture to follow along

https://imgur.com/a/UfMGX6a

View: https://imgur.com/a/UfMGX6a

PC specs

CPU: Ryzen 7 3700x

CPU cooler: Corsair iCUE H100i ELITE CAPELLIX

Fans: Corsair QL 120 mm 3x & QL 140 mm 2x

GPU: Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 XT

Motherboard: Asus TUF GAMING X570-PLUS (WI-FI) ATX

PSU: Seasonic Focus Plus 650 Watt 80 Plus Gold

RAM: Corsair Vengeance Pro 16 GB DDR4 3200

OS: Windows 10

The H100i Capellix pump does not seem to turn on after my PC wakes up from sleeping after about 30 minutes or more and sometimes, it just won't turn on at all even after completely shutting off the PC and powering it back on (pump won't turn on about 30% of the time). The PC would say "CPU fan error" on start up. The case fans are still lightly spinning but there were no RGB lights on either the fan or pump head and the pump wasn't working. Everything is connected properly including the pump tach cable plugged into the CPU_FAN header. I tried different SATA power cables to make sure they weren't broken and the cables were not defective. The SATA cables powered all of my storage devices and the Lightning Node CORE properly. Going into BIOS shows the pump fan not spinning and CPU temperatures constantly rising well pass 70 C and continuing to climb until I shut the PC off manually to prevent overheat damage. The final cable test was to see if the USB headers on the motherboard were defective or not. I have 2 on my MOBO and both of them worked fine after swapping out different multiple devices, including the Capellix AIO when it was working. Also note that the Capellix has a special Commander Core that has both fan cables and fan RGB cables plugged into it and not the typical Commander Core sold separately by Corsair.

Originally the 2 culprits that we thought were behind this was iCUE acting weird and the "device not migrated" driver problem in the PC device managers. But those 2 have been completely ruled out after successful testing. The AIO pump and everything still worked with or without iCUE installed during normal boot ups and the pump also failed to turn on after PC wakes up 30 minutes+ from sleep with or without iCUE installed; so the pump function is totally independent of ICUE's presence. Also Corsair emailed me a special firmware file to update iCUE to make it fully optimized with the Capellix AIO. As for "device not migrated" issue, that has been fixed where everything has been up to date including all motherboard drivers, BIOS version and windows version being completely up to date as of yesterday. BIOS settings has also been set to default for testing. After days of troubleshooting and fixing those 2 problems that were thought to be causing "CPU fan error" message , it still gave the error... This is the most up to date interaction with me emailing Corsair about the error happening despite "device not migrated" problem being fixed (they haven't replied back yet since I'm guessing their support team doesn't work on Sunday).

At this point, does anybody have any idea why the pump fails to turn on after PC wakes up from a long enough sleep (and sometimes it just won't turn on even after the PC gets freshly turned on)? Is it still software related problems or do I just have a defective pump in the unit and/or defective cables that came with the AIO?

(also it's late at night so if you don't see me respond back to replies here, assuming that I fell asleep :^) I will reply back when daylight comes)

 

[Crosslhs82x2]

Just a quick thought, has the Usb Selective Suspend been disabled in Windows Power Plan?

 

[Mida4]

Is it this thing? If so then it looks like it's enabled then

https://imgur.com/a/Q3i1X40

View: https://imgur.com/a/Q3i1X40

 

[Crosslhs82x2]

Yep that's it.
It won't hurt to set it to disabled and see what happens.
You could also go through Device Manager looking at the Usb's Power Management on any device that have it and uncheck any that is checked to allow the computer to turn off to save power.

Good luck!!!!

 

[Karadjgne]

If you have the stock cooler, or any cheapo aircooler that'll mount up, I'd suggest you swap it out for the pump. Then try your sleep etc.

If it still fails, that eliminates the pump/software as the cause, and narrows it to motherboard, bios, windows settings.

Disable fastboot/CSM in bios. Also make sure hibernation is totally disabled and sleep is just sleep, not hybrid sleep.

In bios, you can also limit power reductions in c-states, keeping low power modes at c4 or above, preventing the ultra-deep sleep modes.

 

[Mida4]

Yep that's it.
It won't hurt to set it to disabled and see what happens.
You could also go through Device Manager looking at the Usb's Power Management on any device that have it and uncheck any that is checked to allow the computer to turn off to save power.

Good luck!!!!

What will disabling it do exactly and is it safe?

 

[Mida4]

If you have the stock cooler, or any cheapo aircooler that'll mount up, I'd suggest you swap it out for the pump. Then try your sleep etc.

If it still fails, that eliminates the pump/software as the cause, and narrows it to motherboard, bios, windows settings.

Disable fastboot/CSM in bios. Also make sure hibernation is totally disabled and sleep is just sleep, not hybrid sleep.

In bios, you can also limit power reductions in c-states, keeping low power modes at c4 or above, preventing the ultra-deep sleep modes.

I had my stock Ryzen 7 cooler on for a month and it worked perfectly. It always turned on whether the PC woke up after sleep or from a fresh power on.

Hybrid sleep is enabled but I guess I can disable that for now. Although I'm not sure if that will explain why the pump won't turn on like 30% of the time when I initially power on the PC at start.

As for disabling fastboot/CMS, I'm not sure what that is or what that does so can you explain that a bit more for me?

Also I'm not sure about is this c4 state power reduction is either so can you explain that as well 😀

 

[Crosslhs82x2]

By Disabling the Usb Selective Suspend
It stops the system from selecting any usb that it thinks can be turned off to save power.
So in essence you would be keeping usb's powered all the time.

If your cooler has a cable that plugs into a 9pin usb 2.0 header then to a controller or to the pump as on previous versions of coolers as like the H110i it disables the system from turning off the power to that header to save power.

What seems strange on this is the pump gets it power from the sata cable so the pump itself should not be turning off at all.

If this new version has the zero stop fan mode the fans slow and or stop if the cpu temp is low enough but the pump itself should still be pumping.

Can you verify from Icue you have zero pump Rpms when it comes out of sleep mode?

 

[jasonf2]

Ok so lets start this one from the top.
The corsair H100i Capellix is a controller based AIO. So the commander core is what is running all of the pump/fans. Your bios will only see what is on the motherboards headers. So the only RPM value it has is the one connected to the CPU Fan. Under a normal setup that tach value would be detected on a running fan. The core unit is faking the signal back to the motherboard. So pump rpm will never show up in the bios because there is nothing plugged into the header. And bios settings will do nothing to control the AIO.

The CPU fan error is being caused because either the tach signal from the core isn't sending a signal, or the motherboard isn't receiving it. My money liens towards the core not sending it properly.

The core controller is powered directly from the power supply and should run independently. If you are not having issues except when going to sleep I would try this. There is a 5v power rail that should be maintained at all times during sleep mode. If it isn't supplying properly the core controller may be crashing during sleep. Try swapping out your PSU if you have a spare laying around. Something is causing the controller to crash in low power mode and not come back up.

 

[Karadjgne]

When you first start up a pc, or after any reset, the cmos is skipped and the bios loads everything from scratch, reading all drivers and going through everything.

Fast mode is when you shutdown from Windows. All the drivers, info, settings etc get saved to a file on your storage. When you boot up, that file is activated and everything stuck back where it was. This was a huge time-saver for hdds, with a ssd, it's almost no difference.

The problem with fast mode is that sometimes certain necessary startups or checks don't happen or don't happen in the right order, and sometimes if there's any program changes to the registry on reboot they don't happen either and you can have conflicts.

Next time the pump fails, reset the pc by holding the power button until it shuts off instead of closing windows.

Hybrid/hibernation is a function for laptops. Windows gets suspended, temporarily, and this can be bad for desktops as there's motherboard functions that need windows input in order to happen.

 

[Mida4]

By Disabling the Usb Selective Suspend
It stops the system from selecting any usb that it thinks can be turned off to save power.
So in essence you would be keeping usb's powered all the time.

If your cooler has a cable that plugs into a 9pin usb 2.0 header then to a controller or to the pump as on previous versions of coolers as like the H110i it disables the system from turning off the power to that header to save power.

What seems strange on this is the pump gets it power from the sata cable so the pump itself should not be turning off at all.

If this new version has the zero stop fan mode the fans slow and or stop if the cpu temp is low enough but the pump itself should still be pumping.

Can you verify from Icue you have zero pump Rpms when it comes out of sleep mode?

iCUE does have zero RPM mode for the Capellix unit BUT you can't enable that for the pump. The lowest setting it lets you go is quiet pump mode, not zero pump mode. Also the pump still works with or without iCUE installed as in the previous tests show (vice versa where pump also doesn't turn on with or without iCUE installed when it malfunctions)

 

[Mida4]

Ok so lets start this one from the top.
The corsair H100i Capellix is a controller based AIO. So the commander core is what is running all of the pump/fans. Your bios will only see what is on the motherboards headers. So the only RPM value it has is the one connected to the CPU Fan. Under a normal setup that tach value would be detected on a running fan. The core unit is faking the signal back to the motherboard. So pump rpm will never show up in the bios because there is nothing plugged into the header. And bios settings will do nothing to control the AIO.

The CPU fan error is being caused because either the tach signal from the core isn't sending a signal, or the motherboard isn't receiving it. My money liens towards the core not sending it properly.

The core controller is powered directly from the power supply and should run independently. If you are not having issues except when going to sleep I would try this. There is a 5v power rail that should be maintained at all times during sleep mode. If it isn't supplying properly the core controller may be crashing during sleep. Try swapping out your PSU if you have a spare laying around. Something is causing the controller to crash in low power mode and not come back up.

"If you are not having issues except when going to sleep I would try this. "
Half true actually. Not only when it wakes up from sleep, I get pump issues from the PC freshly powered on about 30-40% of the time where it feels like trying to turn on the car engine only for it to sputter a good chunk of the time. I also don't have a spare power supply to swap out since this is my very first build and power supplies are extremely hard to get now because of COVID crisis. Do you think the 5V power thing is still the reason even if the pump fails to turn on sometimes when the PC gets powered on too?

 

[Mida4]

When you first start up a pc, or after any reset, the cmos is skipped and the bios loads everything from scratch, reading all drivers and going through everything.

Fast mode is when you shutdown from Windows. All the drivers, info, settings etc get saved to a file on your storage. When you boot up, that file is activated and everything stuck back where it was. This was a huge time-saver for hdds, with a ssd, it's almost no difference.

The problem with fast mode is that sometimes certain necessary startups or checks don't happen or don't happen in the right order, and sometimes if there's any program changes to the registry on reboot they don't happen either and you can have conflicts.

Next time the pump fails, reset the pc by holding the power button until it shuts off instead of closing windows.

Hybrid/hibernation is a function for laptops. Windows gets suspended, temporarily, and this can be bad for desktops as there's motherboard functions that need windows input in order to happen.

About the hybrid hibernation feature in your previous comment, I disabled the hibernation feature and the pump still sometimes wouldn't turn on. Also when I asked Corsair support about the fastboot/CMS thing he had this to say

"You should not need to disable fastboot/CSM or change c-states for your cooler to wake after sleep. If this is the problem, then this would be an issue with your BIOS, and I am unfortunately I do not have access to the information you would need to work that issue. That question is best for Asus Technical Support. I don't want to give bad information and cause any extra issues for you."

What do you think about his diagnosis since I'm not sure which would be better now?

Also for your "Next time the pump fails, reset the pc by holding the power button until it shuts off instead of closing windows." I actually have been doing that where I would shut down the PC with the power button instead of using the shut down function in windows and it still didn't fix the issue when I power on again. It usually takes like 3-4 tries of powering off+turning off the power strip a few times before the pump feels like turning on again with the PC.

 

[Mida4]

I've been told from people on other forums that damaged cables and wires might also cause some pump issue. I did check to see if there were any damage to the cables when unboxing the unit and there actually were some damages. Although I think it might be just cosmetic damage to the outer sleeve and no internal wires were damaged (?). The cable that connects the pump to Commander Core had some gashes and holes in it while the USB cable that connects to motherboard has some of the silver wiring slightly frayed and sticking out the cable. Here's a couple of pictures (3 in total) with captions on each image in the link to show it. Do you guys think these damages were actually enough to impact performance after all?

https://imgur.com/a/F3gJhZB

View: https://imgur.com/a/F3gJhZB

 

[jasonf2]

"If you are not having issues except when going to sleep I would try this. "
Half true actually. Not only when it wakes up from sleep, I get pump issues from the PC freshly powered on about 30-40% of the time where it feels like trying to turn on the car engine only for it to sputter a good chunk of the time. I also don't have a spare power supply to swap out since this is my very first build and power supplies are extremely hard to get now because of COVID crisis. Do you think the 5V power thing is still the reason even if the pump fails to turn on sometimes when the PC gets powered on too?

With this information I would say there is something wrong with the controller or pump. Regardless it is new cooler time. If you have a stock fan put it on and see if it works.

 

[Mida4]

With this information I would say there is something wrong with the controller or pump. Regardless it is new cooler time. If you have a stock fan put it on and see if it works.

Yeah after a lot of email exchange Corsair told me I should exchange the unit and see what happens from then on. If the new unit is fine then I just got a defective unit the first time. If the new unit still has same problems, then it's probably my own PC rejecting the AIO for some reason. Although it has to wait until Saturday since I have school the entire day during the weekdays.

Also the stock Ryzen 7 cooler does work. That was what I've been using for the first months before I switched to this AIO unit

 

[Mida4]

The pump is starting to not turn on even after the PC gets turned on more frequently too, on top of it already not turning on after waking up from sleep. This time I was able to document the whole thing on video. You can see me trying different methods of turning on/off the PC like turning off the power strip + power supply switch, to just turning off the power strip, to just turning off the power supply switch etc. Until eventually the pump decided it want to turn on. But like what did I do differently this time that it wanted to turn on?... here is the whole video in action https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_wStpVGz8ZIZpUJFFriBaqGEQ_s9GiNU/view?usp=sharing . Also note that whenever you hear a click and the RGB lights from my speaker turn on, that is me flicking on my power strip switch

 

[Mida4]

Final update: after exchanging the old unit for a new one, the new one has been working perfectly so far where the pump would turn on after PC wakes up from sleep and pump would just turn on all the time in general whenever the PC gets powered on. Turns out the first unit I got was defective this entire time...

 

[Karadjgne]

Be nice to know how the Corsair rma experience went, it's been a long time since I've had to use it, and it was very decent back then.

Great that it was resolved 👍

 

[Mida4]

Be nice to know how the Corsair rma experience went, it's been a long time since I've had to use it, and it was very decent back then.

Great that it was resolved 👍

The actual product exchange was from Best Buy since that was where I bought it. The process was super smooth since all the staff did was ask what happened and checked to see if I placed everything in the box. After that they gave me the new product to take. But before that I had an email exchange that went over 1 week long with Corsair support.

The support I had was from a specialist of their team that dealt with this product before so he gave me more personal treatment during the whole experience. The specialist was very patient with me the entire time and looked into every possible way to fix the problem. He even brought in his entire team and special squad to analyze my data log for any possible errors. Eventually when every troubleshooting was exhausted, he said it's probably a defective product. He offered the RMA to personally inspect the unit and was willing to do a free 1 day air delivery shipment replacement since he knew I had to fix my PC soon for school (but soon found that didn't work because COVID delayed the shipping to over next week). So that's where I just went to Best Buy for the exchange mentioned earlier. Overall Corsair customer service was wonderful 👌

 

[Karadjgne]

Glad to hear that. I prefer liquid cooling, so aio recommendations are normal for me personally. I also own several Corsair products, so it's nice to know that even as big as they've become, Corsair still looks after the little guy. 😁

 

[Mida4]

Glad to hear that. I prefer liquid cooling, so aio recommendations are normal for me personally. I also own several Corsair products, so it's nice to know that even as big as they've become, Corsair still looks after the little guy. 😁

I highly recommend the AIO as long as you didn't get unlucky with a defective unit like me. It's Corsair's brand new AIO that just came out weeks ago and it's both super gorgeous (the most RGB ever in their pump head) and really effective at cooling. It's part of their brand new "elite" line up for their newest flagship hardwares (they have one for their keyboard, case, teased their new ram etc) with this unit representing their flagship AIO

 

[Crosslhs82x2]

Glad to hear things are working out.
I have Always liked Corsair's Customer Support and will continue to use their products no matter the reviews of a product because of their support.
So I quess you can say I'am a Brand Loyalist.

 

[matt_p707]

so, i bought an h150 elite , it worked for 2 days and then started flashing red, i returned it, but accidentally forgot to return the usb controller that goes with it as it was hidden in my case, Long story short is, i hook up the new pump and radiator to the old usb box from the old unit thinking it was the pump because the software clearly said pump error, well it flashed red immeidately, i stopped being lazy and unplugged the old usb box and hooked up the new one and it works great. its 100% a defective usb hub on the AIO... DO NOT USE THE DOUBLE SIDED TAPE TO PLACE THIS UNIT ON YOUR CASE, THE ACTION OF REMOVING IT IS WHAT BROKE MY FIRST ONE!!!!!!!!!