Some Weirdness with a Corsair H100i Pro AIO Cooler - And Some Advice

I just completed a new Ryzen build and had to buy a new liquid cooler since my old Cooler Master Seidon didn't fit the new AM4 socket. I chose the Corsair H100i Pro RGB. I've got a nice pair of Corsair VOID headphones that I like very much and overall have been quite happy with Corsair products.

Installing the cooler was without drama and I fired up the PC and the fans and pump were spinning. OK, I thought. Then I realized that my headphones no longer worked. I plugged and unplugged them and they didn't come on, but I had noticed the LEDs on the ear parts were lit during boot. They were no longer lit now. I opened the iCue software to see why it wasn't working and nothing was detected. Not the AIO, nor the headphones. I also noticed that the fans for the AIO were not spinning very fast and the CPU was relatively warm. I checked the pump's USB connection and it was solid, so was the connection for the headphones. I had always used USB 2.0 ports for the headphones and the AIO is made to plug into a USB 2.0 port. Everything was working, but not working at the same time.

Cutting to the chase, after much head scratching, I took my phone charger cord and plugged it into the pump, fed it out the back of my case into a USB 3.1 port. Still no joy. So I reinstalled the iCue software and my pump appeared. I was able to set the profiles and everything cooled off, but my headphones didn't work yet. Replugging the pump to a USB 2.0 port made the pump go away again, so I thought to plug the headphones into a USB 3.1 port. Presto it all worked!

This may be some weirdness with my ASUS 470-F Strix Gaming motherboard, but my H100i does not work with USB 2.0 ports as expected.

So, bottom line, if you are having trouble getting your H100i running in iCue and the rest of your Corsair USB devices disappear, plug the stuff into USB 3.1 ports.

I hope my cautionary headache helps someone, because this isn't on the Corsair help site.

Thanks for posting this. I haven't experienced this issue but others on the Corsair forums have. I don't think this solution was ever mentioned.

Somewhere down the line, the compatibility of your USB 2.0 and 3.0 mobo ports have become corrupt. Intermittent USB connection it sounds like, turning on/off continuosly. I would go into the BIOS and change the USB modes if you can. Like disable any Legacy and select EHCI to Auto instead of Smart mode. Might not help, hope you work this out bud. I had similar problem. All started from wrong mobo chipset driver

Edit: Keep the Legacy on Auto for now

Gurn Blanston said:

So, bottom line, if you are having trouble getting your H100i running in iCue and the rest of your Corsair USB devices disappear, plug the stuff into USB 3.1 ports.

I've got both an H100i (original version) setup on a Gigabyte GA-Z270X-Gaming 8 board and an H115i setup on a Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Xtreme board and both pumps are connected to the internal USB 2.0/1.1 header and there are no issues with the pumps, or any of my other USB ports, whether 3/3.1 or 2.0.


I've also got other USB devices connected to my Z390 system including a printer, KB/Mouse, and USB DAC. Also used both Link and currently using iCUE without issue.

BTW also had no issues with my other Gigabyte boards as well. Perhaps some weirdness with that AMD board?

sygnus21 said:

Perhaps some weirdness with that AMD board?

It could be weirdness, yes. The funny thing is that the pump did not actually bork the USB 2.0 ports, only the Corsair devices attached to them wouldn't work. My keyboard and mouse worked fine through the whole thing, and so do flash drives.

@Pluginz gave me a good idea though. I'm going to check the mobo driver and make sure it's OK.

On a fresh install of Windows 10, at the part where you can delete or create a partition, select add drivers from the original disc, then install Win 10.
Once Windows installed. Turn on DEP for all executables and disable automatic Windows updates for drivers.
Could work out

A little update:

Ok, so I moved everything to a new case and re-connected the pump to the USB2.0 port (after I reinstalled the iCue software again), and the system can see the pump now. So this is great. The headphones still don't work unless I plug them into a different USB port than the hub that I have been plugging into for the past two years.

It turned out to be the hub. When I plug the headphones directly into a port, they work. Through the hub they don't. I don't really understand why this is since it has worked well for two years, but I'm glad I got it fixed.

So, short advice: Reinstall your mobo drivers, and the iCue software (a couple of times), and don't use a hub for other Corsair devices even if they were previously working with the hub. Lesson learned.

Gurn Blanston said:

It turned out to be the hub. When I plug the headphones directly into a port, they work. Through the hub they don't. I don't really understand why this is since it has worked well for two years, but I'm glad I got it fixed.

I'm shocked it didn't turn out to be the pump's cable going into a USB 2.0 port

Anyway not all devices work well with hubs and some devices will even warn about that or state the hub needs to be powered. Also note that all USB 3.0 hubs require a power source.

sygnus21 said:

I'm shocked it didn't turn out to be the pump's cable going into a USB 2.0 port

Anyway not all devices work well with hubs and some devices will even warn about that or state the hub needs to be powered. Also note that all USB 3.0 hubs require a power source.

Agreed. The hub is powered and USB 2.0. I've been reluctant to get rid of it as it is small and has four ports. It's very convenient, but maybe it's time to change it over to 3.0 to see if that works better.

It the devices plugged into it are USB 2.0 it should work. The only issue then is was the hub powered? If not, that's probably the issue. Today a lot of devices are 3.0, but there are still quite a few devices only requiring 2.0 ports. There are also some USB 2.0 devices that'll run on fine on a USB 3.0 / 3.1 port while some won't.

In today's world if you're going to use a USB hub, it should be powered - whether 2.0 or 3.0 (required).

My two cents.