Question What's this noise ?

[James Blonde]

Got an occasional (every 30 seconds) hissing / sizzling (like water dripping onto a hot stone) noise coming from my PC. I fear that my Corsair AIO is failing and dropping liquid onto something hot, but not seeing any liquid or moisture inside the PC, and not noticed any increase in coolant temps as if I was running out of coolant.

How would you expect an 18 month old corsair AIO to fail?

Other idea was a bearing in a case fan, but I'd have thought it would make a noise all the time or rhythmicly in time with the spinning.

Kind of urgent given how close we are to Christmas and getting anything ordered / fixed!

Can post a video if that helps?

 

[RAIDGoblin]

a video would help, as would full system specs, but there isn't anything in a PC that's hot enough to cause a sizzling sound from a leaking AIO, it would have to instant boil the water, ie. be at least 100 degrees, nothing will be that hot, and ifr it was dripping onto power rails inside your PSU you would be getting sparks and blown fuses. If you can't see any coolant residue on anything, or around the hoses, joints or radiator it won't be a leak, it could be the AIO pump failing, it could be fan bearings, it could be something else

unplug all the case fans (except the ones for your AIO radiator, run the PC with the side off so nothing gets too hot, see if you still get the noise

 

[James Blonde]

I'll post video. Can't attach though can I? So need to host it somewhere... Please hold caller....

 

[RAIDGoblin]

you can host on imgur

 

[James Blonde]

Here we go... What's this noise - from 50 seconds

As the link says, skip to 50 seconds, you'll hear normal system sound, then at 1 minute you'll hear the hissing.

System is an i9 13900k, 128gb ram, rtx4080, a full stable of NVME drives, SSDs and sata spinning drives.

All corsair fans, in the 18 month old age bracket

 

[RAIDGoblin]

that sounds very... odd... my first thought was sand in a vacuum cleaner LOL

perhaps a torn dust filter catching in a fan, check everything, that there's nothing catching on your fans, that there's no kinks in the AIO hose etc...

you can get hissing from air trapped in a cooler pump, but this is prevented by having the radiator at the highest point (like you do already), if there was enough air in that cooler to cause that you probably wouldn't have stable temperatures

I still think unplug all the case fans and see if the noise still happens, and if the noise happens often enough not to have to run it for too long, unplug the AIO fans and see if the noise still happens

if it does the only thing I can think of is the pump, (edit: or maybe a broken spinning HDD, normally that's more like the classic geiger clicking sound) anyone else heard a noise like this?

 

[James Blonde]

Not the fans - have stopped them in turn and the noise is still there. I include the top AIO fans in this. It's hard to pinpoint the noise beyond being in the back half of the system. Also not the gpu - those fans aren't turning.

Problem seems to be worse today. (bearing in mind I didn't have this problem at all until lunchtime yesterday!

 

[RAIDGoblin]

do you have a way of getting hold of/testing your PC with a different cooler before you splash the cash just to be safe? a lot of PC shops will have used stuff lying around that they can use for fault finding if you take your PC in

but I honestly think it's the cooler, there's nothing else that could make a noise like that, but I may still be wrong

if it's getting worse, have your thermals changed yet?

 

[Eximo]

You can always make doubly sure by unplugging the pump. CPU won't cook instantly and can just throttle down.

Still, sounds like a replacement is needed. Contact Corsair.

In the meantime you can pick up a cheap Thermalright cooler, they are quite good for the money.

 

[James Blonde]

I've got a new cooler coming tomorrow, so can do a bit of testing if needs be, but yeh - seems the most likely option now doesn't it? Will pull the pump cable tonight as well and see if that kills the noise and confirms it.

Interestingly temps seem a bit higher today too - not massively but enough to notice. (well especially given I've got a massive liquid temp display on top... 😂)

 

[James Blonde]

New IAO arrived (same corsair model as the last one - I might live to regret that...) and just based on having removed the old one I can see that's the problem - the radiator sounds like it's half empty!!!

The obvious questions though are.... Where has the coolant gone?! And I mean how does a sealed unit lose liquid over what.... 18 months? I know these units have a lifespan but this short??

If I can get the video onto Flickr I'll post it, more for the audio entertainment,and you can see what I mean!

 

[RAIDGoblin]

New IAO arrived (same corsair model as the last one - I might live to regret that...) and just based on having removed the old one I can see that's the problem - the radiator sounds like it's half empty!!!

The obvious questions though are.... Where has the coolant gone?! And I mean how does a sealed unit lose liquid over what.... 18 months? I know these units have a lifespan but this short??

If I can get the video onto Flickr I'll post it, more for the audio entertainment,and you can see what I mean!

hope the new one runs OK, as for where the coolant goes? no idea, you can inspect all the hoses for signs of leakage, usually there's a residue, I have seen this before on a PC that a friend asked me to look at because it was overheating, the only thing I could think of was that it was a manufacturing fault and maybe it wasn't completely full to start with, or that if the leak is inside the radiator and the escaped coolant evaporates because of the fans