To follow up on the 3080 based Cyberpower PC I mentioned upthread; I finally had time this weekend to do some computer surgery and confirm the source of the maddening whine. It is the PSU. While I am still happy with the price of the unit (especially after the 5% discount code) the build quality left a little to be desired.
I went with 3 additional Phantek fans in the build. The caseās built in fan was on the rear top, but for some reason connected to the CPU_FAN header. One of the fans was added in the rear position connected to CHA1, okay good. The cooler I chose was an Asetek 240mm. Itās not an āAIOā in that the fans donāt connect to the pump but to fan headers on the MB. The pump was on CPU_OPT despite the MB having an AIO pump header. Granted the manual for the unit does say connect the pump to the CPU_FAN, but it also says out need to set CPU_FAN to a constant 12v which as far as I can tell was not done.
The coolerās built in fans were on CHA2&3, which is proper. The two other extra fans were set on the other side of the cooler for a push-pull configuration. Those fans were connected via adapters to a PSU cable. However one of them wasnāt pushed in all the way. Major mark against the build considering how obvious it is when a fan isnāt spinning and how easy it is to double check. I rearranged things so the pump is on the AIO header, the extra āpullā fans on the cooler are on CPU_FAN and CPU_OPT, and only the basic three pin built in case fan is directly connected to the PSU.
The MB had two M.2 slots. The primary one is toward the bottom and has a heat spreader over it. The secondary is between the CPU and the video card. The secondary is more obvious and more easily accessible so thatās where they installed the system drive. While which slot was used might not seem like a big deal, the heat difference between the primary one with the spreader and the one sandwiched between the CPU and GPU is significant.
The cables were all out of the way and zip tied, but they didnāt take advantage of some of the cable tracks the case has. It was evident things were just quickly bunched up and zip tied rather than care taken to route things well.
There was also the issue of the little snap on screen that goes on the bottom front of the case had the little snap broken off. The screen was sitting in the box with the spare parts so they knowingly shipped it with the broken part.
Overall a mediocre build that was clearly rushed. I have doubts they did much if any testing since the turnaround was so fast. My last custom build was from Puget Systems and that build was clearly well thought and and immaculate so thatās my main point of comparison. There is of course a significant price difference between Puget and Cyberpower, but you do get what you pay for.
Their support has been good, but so far itās all been troubleshooting. They sent some documents with how to test if itās a fan and how to test the PSU. The PSU one involves pulling the cable from the MB and using a paper clip to bridge two pins. I knew to do this already but was quite surprised to see actual tech support advice telling a customer to do this. I will see if their support remains decent as Iāve requested they send me a replacement PS for me to swap in, and a replacement for the broken screen.
As an aside, while doing this I learned that the PSU side of modular PSU cables are not standard. My old PC has a Seasonic 850w gold. Turns out the CPU/PCI-E connectors are different between Seasonic and Thermaltake.
Hereās a picture. I specifically avoided RGB parts, but all the case options had the glass window so I ended up with my first window case. Itās an NZXT H510. I disabled the GPU lighting, but left the one little light effect on the MB on for now.
