Hello everyone. This issue has been bothering me for months. It's a long story, so I tried my best to condense it...but it's still pretty long. Bear with me.
Replaced all the cooling in my PC almost a year ago. Bought a new liquid AIO CPU cooler (Swiftech H240-X) and 5 new Noctua case fans. All the speeds are controlled via a Swiftech 8-Way PWM splitter. Everything worked well for a few months, but then afterwards I've been experiencing an issue where all Noctua fans turn off. I discovered that unplugging the pump from the splitter (which is only a PWM connector, the pump receives voltage from a SATA connector) allows all the Noctua fans to work fine. Another thing I discovered is that if I wiggle the 8-way connector, everything would work again for a brief amount of time (couple hours), but occasionally it will be fixed for a couple weeks. But during the course of this, 2 of my Noctua fans died simultaneously, and another fan just died yesterday.
The problem isn't the splitter - I've replaced it and it still occurs. The problem isn't the PSU - I've replaced my PSU and cabling. The problem isn't the amount of fans I'm trying to split the PWM signal with - the problem occurs with even just one fan and the pump on the splitter. Swiftech's support insists that because the pump only receives a PWM signal, thus it can't be responsible for interfering with the other signals.
So it has to be my motherboard, right? I'm not sure. I tried to test this by hooking my pump up to another PC of mine - lo and behold everything turned on. But when I plugged it back into my motherboard - everything was still working, so I don't feel like I got anything conclusive from that experiment. I only conducted that experiment earlier today and my fans turned off once briefly, but are running now, making it difficult for me to conduct that experiment again. Once they turn off again, I'll try it again and see what happens.
I've done a lot of Google-fu and couldn't find anyone experiencing this problem or anything similar to it anywhere on the internet. What the hell is happening? Why did all my fans work fine for a couple months, and now I'm having issues? Why are my Noctua fans dying?
I've already been making a bit of a stink with the Swiftech people because they sold me a product that doesn't work reliably with my motherboard. To me, what difference does it make if the problem is with my motherboard? The problem only occurs specifically when that Swiftech pump is integrated into my setup - to me, it seems like the problem is with the pump. I'm just having trouble difficulty pinpointing what my motherboard could possibly be doing that's causing this issue. And of course, I'm having trouble pinpointing a fix. I've tried adjusting the PWMOut Clock and it doesn't solve anything. It's just really strange that after a few days of my fans not working, and then plugging it into my other PC, the fan setup works again - even after plugging it back into my regular PC.
Someone has to have some idea, right?
