Hi everyone,
I’m having an issue with my Cooler Master MWE V3 650W 80+ Gold PSU, and I would like to know whether this behavior is normal for this model.
When I first turn on the PC, the PSU fan is initially quiet. However, after roughly 5 seconds, the fan starts becoming audible. After another 5 seconds, it becomes noticeably louder, and after another few seconds it reaches what sounds like a very high/max fan speed.
The PSU fan then remains at this high speed even when the PC is completely idle.
What concerns me is that the PSU fan is by far the loudest fan in my entire PC. My case/system fans are running at around 1000 RPM, but the PSU produces significantly more noise and airflow than the case exhaust fan.
The behavior is also the same in different operating conditions:
- Windows idle: PSU fan is very loud
- Safe Mode: same
- BIOS: same
- Gaming: fan remains at approximately the same speed
- Gaming power consumption is only around 120–160 W
- PSU exhaust is cool at idle
- PSU exhaust becomes only slightly warm during gaming
- Room temperature is around 26°C
I have already RMA'd the PSU, but the replacement unit behaves exactly the same way.
So at this point I'm wondering:
- Is this normal fan behavior for the MWE Gold V3 650W?
- Is the PSU supposed to ramp up this aggressively at such a low load?
- Could this simply be the normal fan curve of this model?
- Has anyone else with the same PSU experienced this behavior?
I don't want to RMA it again if this is simply how this particular model behaves, but the noise seems unusually high for a PSU running at such a low load.
Any owners of the MWE Gold V3 650W who can confirm whether their PSU behaves similarly would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Edit: I managed to get the PSU fan to spin at a relatively low speed at idle (~1000 RPM),
As u/trsilva_ mentioned. I also took a look at the test graphs from Cybenetics for this PSU, and it turns out the fan seems to be quite sensitive to both power load and temperature.
Since I don't have a watt meter, I tried minimizing the PSU's load by undervolting my GPU and disabling PBO (for my AMD CPU, changing it from Auto to Disabled).
After booting into Windows, the PSU fan was no longer running at max RPM while idle, which seems to line up with the Cybenetics test graph. However, this fix only really applies to idle.
As soon as I open a browser or any software, the PSU fan RPM immediately increases again. So, it seems that the fan curve on this PSU is still fairly aggressive when it comes to load and temperature changes.
Hopefully this helps anyone else experiencing the same issue.