I’m finding out how sensitive I am to certain stimuli (and it does seem like I’m getting more sensitive over time) and one of those things I am sensitive to is the fan noise of my computer. This latest computer I built is less than five months old and when I built it I wanted to use the current generation of AMD’s Ryzen as my then-current computer was a couple of generations behind, so I went with a Ryzen 7900X knowing that they ran hot and that I’d need a good CPU cooler.

I chose the Noctua NH-D15, with two towers and two fans. It has kept the CPU well within a reasonable temperature range, and I was happy with how low the idle temps were (around 39 C) but when compiling code it would make quite a noise even though the computer was across the room (with 35 foot HDMI cables…that was fun getting that that length to work).

When I moved my office temporarily into a smaller room in the house I ended up putting the computer no more than 4 feet from me and that fan noise started to sound a lot louder. And it didn’t help that running (far too many) Chrome and Firefox processes and tabs ended up with the CPU running higher than normal idle and so there was a more or less constant fan noise.

I decided to try an All-In-One (AIO) water cooler thinking it would cut down a lot on the noise, so I did my research and ordered an Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360 and a case that would it would fit in (yet another purchase…sigh). I knew it would be relatively straightforward to move all the components over to the new case, though it would take a few hours for me.

So late one day this last week I started on it all. The new case (Fractal Design R5) is well designed and I did a test fit of the AIO cooler and then started moving the PSU and motherboard over. All was straightforward, relatively speaking as this was the first AIO I’ve worked with; I did have to make sure that it only used the CPU FAN header on the motherboard–I didn’t know a single header could drive the pump and the three fans, but that’s the setup.

I got everything together and then plugged all the cables back in and turned it on. And, a POST failure on “VGA” LED. Along with a horrible sound from the PC piezo speaker that I’ve carried along from build to build (as no one seems to supply them anymore). Turn it off, unplug, check and reseat things. Back on, still VGA failure and buzzing, so now I’m thinking my RX6600 GPU somehow got fried (how??) so I put in my backup RX6600 and it also fails, so now I’m thinking it’s possibly the motherboard.

Next step is to remove the GPU and rely on the iGPU in the Ryzen 7900x. Same VGA failure. Seems like it has to be the motherboard. But before I declare final defeat, I thought it wise to reset the CMOS so I do that, then boot up and still VGA failure, but the awful speaker buzz stops, so maybe progress?

All except the first test had been without any cables (HDMI, USB, RJ45) plugged in (just easier to do) and I decided, for some reason, to plug in the HDMI cable just in case anything showed up on screen. It was then that I noticed that my KVM switch was off–I had forgotten that I had turned that off for some unknown reason before I started this whole side-grade process. I turned that on, made sure the display was on, rebooted the computer and it worked.

Now, my perhaps wrong understanding from all my decades of building computers is that POST does not (or at least, usually doesn’t) require a display to be connected and turned on–memory and CPU of course, but other components? I’ve not used a Gigabyte motherboard before so maybe it’s specific to these boards. I don’t know, so while I’m quite happy all was working, I was grumbling about the cause of the apparent failure.

So, word to the wise on this: when testing new/changed configurations at the motherboard level, make sure there’s a display plugged into the computer.

Now for the results of my AIO side-grade. I’m mostly happy in that it’s definitely quieter in general, though when I do a build the three fans will kick in. The CPU temps are also good. The problem is that I sometimes hear a high pitched ringing that is coming from the AIO unit and that’s almost as annoying as the Noctua cooler was. I’ve tightened the screw and have adjusted the fan speed profile at the UEFI level but it still is occurring.

Lastly, while I like the Fractal case, the USB header on the motherboard for the front-panel connector is a bit too close to the bend in the case for the pass-through to the cable management area on the backside of the motherboard tray and it was (still is) really hard to get the right angle to connect the cable to the header. So I bent a few of the pins and I can’t seem to get them unbent so I have no USB on the front panel of the case. This is not as bad as it could be from my perspective as the whole computer is squeezed into a modified shelf unit so there’s no room for me to plug anything into those USB slots. But still. I’m going to see if there’s anything I can buy that will help unbend those pins…