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sirmallard
Journeyman III

Wraith Prism fan stops spinning after certain CPU temperature

After a day of use, the included Wraith Prism Fan stops spinning (presumably) after the CPU reaches a temperature of (I think) +40°C. When I boot up, I get the CPU_FAN error message and the bios shows N/A on it. The RGB lighting around the edge still works and sometimes in the middle but there is no turning of the blades and if I manually spin it, then the BIOS reads the fan speed until it stops spinning and returns to N/A.

I recently bought and assembled my first desktop computer. The parts are as listed below:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3800x with Wraith Prism Fan

GPU: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 OC

Motherboard: ASUS Prime B450M-A

RAM: 2 x 8GB Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro DDR4 RAM @ 3200MHz

PSU: Corsair CV550

Storage: WD SN750 500GB NVME SSD with Heatsink

My CPU was last to arrive and had been ordered from Amazon and I built the computer on the day it arrived. During the building process there were no issues except from a faulty Windows USB but it was all fixed with a different USB. Windows 10 Pro installed with a key and everything was working fine. I started installing all of my previous apps onto it with no issues while Nvidia installed their software. I however, did not install the motherboard software immediately.

The next day, after having powered down the computer for the night with no issues, I rebooted it and everything worked fine. I installed some more programs and decided to install the motherboard software among other items. I believe the motherboard was already up-to-date, though. Half way through doing work, the computer shut down unexpectedly.

I restarted the computer and it gave the American Megatrends screen with a CPU too hot error and no CPU fan error. I looked into the chassis and saw that the fan was not spinning but the RGB around the edge was all on. I opened up the case to see if there was anything wrong but everything was connected. I had however, installed the fan upside down. Trying to boot up Windows again, the fan would not spin and I got the CPU fan error message again and was taken to the BIOS were I went through all the settings to see if there was anything wrong, I could not find anything.

I looked online, tried different headers, reinstalled the fan the correct way, quickly logged on and removed the recently added RGB lighting software which had been able to control both the fan and RAM but was now only displaying the RAM as connected, removed and changed the lighting cables for the fan. There was nothing I could do. Having looked online, all I saw was getting a new fan, but my fan had worked for the first day completely fine and then stopped halfway through the next day when I had installed the motherboard drivers and lighting software.

I left it for the rest of the day too see if there was anything I could do. Thankfully, I was able to borrow a broken Dell desktop computer which is commonly used in offices and test the Dell fan on my motherboard. The Dell fan worked fine on my motherboard so I could clearly saw it wasn't my motherboard having issues. I decided to try it the other way round and connected my fan to the Dell computer. To my surprise, the fan spun perfectly. I reattached the fan to my computer and it worked. I loaded up Windows to see if there were any issues and I could not see any. A couple of minutes later, the fan stopped working again.

I tested the fan again on the Dell computer but it did not work, implying that the fan had an issue. This time I noticed that the lighting around the edge of the fan which had been one colour, was now a rainbow gradient which was odd since I had never seen it that way before. The centre fan colours were also working but a static orangey##-yellow colour.

The next day and the day after, I booted up the computer and the fan worked fine, but after a few minutes of use, the fan would turn off and I would be forced to shutdown if I did not want my CPU being damaged. I decided to reset Windows and clear the CMOS on the motherboard in case a driver or Windows had caused the issue. Fearing for the CPU, when I reset Windows, I sat there spinning the fan manually as Windows reinstalled with no avail. I also tried use the CLRTC pins to reset the motherboard, again with no result. I am now stuck here pondering over what to do, whether to contact the company and claim it is broken despite it having worked for a full day without any issues, or to ask it to the community, which is what I have done for now.

My conclusion:

Either:

  • The drivers or a piece of software was faulty and has caused the fan to stop spinning, unlikely since the fan did not always work on the Dell machine,
  • Or, some part of the fan is expanding causing it to stop spinning until it has cooled down, more likely since it only spins after having been powered off for some time.

Any help, even if it is 'Buy a new fan' would be greatly appreciated as I have never seen anyone else have the same issue as I have.

King regards and thank you for any help.

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1 Reply

try connecting your fan to one of your motherboard's Case Fan ports or directly to your PSU.

Your AMD Prism should run 100% all the time since the motherboard's Case Fan port is only a 3 pin port or directly connected to your PSU which both don't have fan control.

If the Prism runs 100% RPM connected to the PSU or to a Case Fan 3 pin port than it indicates that your Motherboard's CPU Fan port is defective. But if your Prism doesn't turn on while connected to the PSU or Case Fan 3 pin port then you have a defective Prism and should be RMAed under Warranty.

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