My problem Posted this elsewhere, but thought I'd add some more details...
So, I'd installed a Corsair H70 a while back, and was doing alright with it, but wanted to improve performance some. I had the included radiator mounted in the back of my case, with my case's standard rear fan blowing through it (it's an Antec 300, so one of the Antec three-speed fans). I wasn't really happy with how well it cooled set to 'Medium' fan speed, and 'Fast' cooled well...but was annoyingly loud.
So I did research on this. Positioning of fans on the radiator, fan brands, etc. Ultimately settled on a pair of Scythe S-FLEX SFF21F fans as the right balance of performance and volume, mounted on either side of the radiator in a push/pull configuration. (Note that I *am* still using them to exhaust...which I realize is less than ideal as far as the radiator is concerned, but I didn't really want to heat up the rest of my case. And, in any case, the rear fan port doesn't have a filter on it, while all of my other intakes do.)
However, upon putting everything back together...temps didn't really improve. And the Corsair pump had picked up an ANNOYING buzzing or clicking sound. It sounded for all the world like a fan wire being hit by one of the fan blades or something (or playing card in bicycle spokes). Did a quick Google search on that, and HOLY CRAP THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE GETTING THAT.
I even found
a Youtube video of someone experiencing it on an H50. Mine sounded just like in that video, but louder - easily audible over the fans. So I was, like, ****? Bad pump? I checked the mobo header the pump was plugged into...temp throttling was disabled, it was at full power... Walking through all the things changed, I finally hit on the problem...
My old exhaust fan had been mounted to the case...and as a 4-pin molex adapter, I'd just left it plugged into one of those 4-pin molex connectors directly off the power supply. On the other hand, the newer fans I had just added were both 3-pin, so...I plugged those fans into the fan controllers on the Corsair pump. Thinking it might be nice to...I dunno, have the cooling system manage the fan speeds or something. However, since that WAS a change, I decided to undo it...
So I unplugged the new 120mm case fans from the 2x fan headers that came out of the pump/block, and plugged the fans back into the mobo (as seen above).
NO MORE BUZZING from the pump!
Not only that, but the CPU temps have dropped about 7C! Mind-blowing is what it is. I guess splitting the power from the pump to the Scythe fans was just too much for the whole thing.
So my suggestion would be - if you are having problems with the H70, or other Corsair integrated watercooling system, and have fans plugged into the device in any way...REMOVE THEM. Plug them directly into your motherboard! Or 4-pin molex connections straight out of your PSU! Or
something...but not the pump!
tl;dr => Unplug the fans from the pump module, noises solved, temp drops. Other problems Reading around, there have been some others experiencing problems with noises on some Corsair blocks.
Given my above experience, and some of the solutions others have posted (plug the Corsair block into the motherboard CPU fan header, and using the BIOS to set fan speeds to something other than 100%), my thinking is that running a pump off the motherboard is a tricky idea. Maybe it will work for you right out, and you'll have no problems.
But if you do have any...poorer performance than you'd like, annoying noise, etc...don't give up! Just try different configurations of powering the pump. If removing the fans from the pump header had not, on its own, resolved my issue I was going to next use the 4-pin-molex to 3-pin-fan-header adapter my fans came with to run the pump block directly off the power supply. I expect that would also have resolved the issue.
The long-and-short of it is...the kit is worth tinkering with to get working. Performance is good, it's very quiet, and it's super easy to set up. A bit of tinkering - especially with the power the pump gets - and it seems most problems are solvable.