Corsair Hydro H110i GT in a Hackintosh

[iHackMyStuff]

Corsair H110i GT in a Hackintosh

I recently bought and installed a Corsair H110i GT liquid CPU cooler into my Hackintosh. In this post, I will be talking about a few issues this cooler has with Mac OS and their workarounds. Please read through it before deciding to buy the H110i GT. This thread may be also applicable to other Hydro coolers.

The pump connects to a USB2.0 internal port for Corsair Link features such as LED light color adjustment. This connection becomes useless in Mac OS since we don't have Corsair Link support. This causes 2 problems:

1. The automatic fan speeds and custom RPM curves don't seem to work in Mac OS, so the fans don't speed up automatically when the CPU temperature rises.
2. The Link always tries to maintain connection with the software (which is not present when the system is currently running OS X). This completely messes up sleep. The moment the Hackintosh goes to sleep, it is instantly and automatically awakened by a some kind of refresh signal from the pump. The console shows something like this:

Wake reason: XHC
The USB device HubDevice (Port 4 of Hub at 0x14000000) may have caused a wake by issuing a remote wakeup (2)

The solution to both problems (a new 110i GT Hackintosh installation should also follow these steps after following Corsair's installation guide):

1. Boot into Windows. (Yes, if you don't have Windows installed you will have a hard time with your H110i GT.)
2. Finalize your pump speed and LED color settings in the Corsair Link software. I recommend putting the pump in performance mode, to prevent having to change it from quiet mode a some point, which will be cumbersome as you will see in the next step.
3. Shut down Windows.
4. Remove the cable running from the pump to the internal USB2.0 port. This means unplugging it and taking it out of the case. As a Hackintosher, you will no longer need it unless when you need to change the pump speed or lighting color. Removing the Link cable is necessary for sleep to work in OS X.
5. Unplug the 3-pin fan connector cable going from the pump to the CPU_FAN port.
6. Unplug the 4-pin fan headers, of the 2 radiator fans, from splitter going from the pump. Plug the 4-pin fan headers directly into the CPU_FAN and CPU_OPT ports so that the radiator fans' RPM can be directly controlled by the BIOS instead of Corsair's software solution (crucial for using Mac OS).
7. Boot into the BIOS and set your RPM curves for CPU_FAN and CPU_OPT.
8. Boot into Mac OS and do a CPU stress test to make sure the workaround the working well for you.

 

[Reactor-core]

Thank you for explaining this. I was considering getting one or two of these for my systems and forgot the simple fact they were in fact going into a Hackintosh system. This should help many, who are like me, a great deal.

 

[Asus-Freak]

Glad it works for you. IMO, here's an easier way.

1. No need for Windows at all.
2. Ignore Corsairs install instructions.
3. Don't use the splitter or the USB connector.
4. Plug the 3-pin pump to CPU_FAN header
5. Plug the 4-pin to CPU_OPT
6. Plug one radiator fan to SYS_Fan2 and the other to SYS_Fan3
7. Control Radiator fans in bios.

 

[ctek]

Hi there. I'm using a slightly different model - h110i GTX, thought i'd share my experience so far.

Contrary to the manual.... It has a sata power connector, one 3 pin cpu fan connector with only one cable attached and the radiator fan inputs (4pin).

Here are the different setups i tried and the results:

1) connect the pump sata cable and the two rad fans into the CPU_FAN and CPU_OPT, leave 3 pin cpu fan connector disconnected.

This worked well and I never had the wake from sleep issue you mentioned, the thing that annoyed me was how loud the fans would spin, seemed ott for dual radiator fans. Swapped the fans for silent noctua fans and it was still pretty irritating (I work in a music studio).

2) connect the pump sata cable, plug 3 pin cpu fan connector to CPU FAN header, plug radiator fans into fan inputs on h110i GTX, nothing in CPU_OPT.

Short of having to manage the fan and pump speed in corsair link on windows this is my preferred setup. The nature of my computer use allows me to leave the fans in quiet mode + the pump in performance mode for everyday work. Then if i boot into windows to play games i can increase fan speed as needed.

If I wanted more control I could plug the fans into the motherboard and set custom curves but my temps are great like this.

 

[buyjoey]

Hi there. I'm using a slightly different model - h110i GTX, thought i'd share my experience so far.

Contrary to the manual.... It has a sata power connector, one 3 pin cpu fan connector with only one cable attached and the radiator fan inputs (4pin).

Here are the different setups i tried and the results:

1) connect the pump sata cable and the two rad fans into the CPU_FAN and CPU_OPT, leave 3 pin cpu fan connector disconnected.

This worked well and I never had the wake from sleep issue you mentioned, the thing that annoyed me was how loud the fans would spin, seemed ott for dual radiator fans. Swapped the fans for silent noctua fans and it was still pretty irritating (I work in a music studio).

2) connect the pump sata cable, plug 3 pin cpu fan connector to CPU FAN header, plug radiator fans into fan inputs on h110i GTX, nothing in CPU_OPT.

Short of having to manage the fan and pump speed in corsair link on windows this is my preferred setup. The nature of my computer use allows me to leave the fans in quiet mode + the pump in performance mode for everyday work. Then if i boot into windows to play games i can increase fan speed as needed.

If I wanted more control I could plug the fans into the motherboard and set custom curves but my temps are great like this.

Hi, I have the same machine too.

My step is easy.

But you need window os at least once.

1. Connect every cables by corsair's manual.
2. Boot with windows.
3. open Corsair link.
4. Put Performance mode. Make it as an profile and Save.
5. Reboot with Mac.

Done!

I have Radeon R9 390 GPU.

I play games in Mac like Diablo 3 or SC2

I have no problem so far. no noise.but still temps are good.

Ty for your Sharing.

Joe

 

[deantonibrito]

Is Parallels a solution?

 

[gothic]

Is Parallels a solution?

Just purchased a Corsair Hydro H115i and installed it. Runs fine.
I had tought of installing Window$ onto a spare SSD just to play with the settings but seeing your idea tempted me to install the Corsair software onto my Parallels virtual Win 7 and lo and behold not only was I able to make the VM see the 115i I was able to configure it perfectly and all is well.
One word of warning though, ignore the sensor readings (in the Corsair Link software) it told me my CPU's were running at 110C .... thermal meltdown/sunglasses time.

 

[oklhost]

Also using Corsair H115i, works great. I'm playing around with OpenCorsairLink.

 

[skypano]

I'm using the H115i pro (configure it with ICUE on a separate Windows installation). But sometimes it changes the cpu fan from 2800rpm to 1000rmp, so that the CPU will get too hot. So I'm interested to get OpenCorsairLink running. But If I start it shows no devices ...

OpenCorsairLink-testing xxxx$ sudo ./OpenCorsairLink.elf

 

[oklhost]

I'm using the H115i pro (configure it with ICUE on a separate Windows installation). But sometimes it changes the cpu fan from 2800rpm to 1000rmp, so that the CPU will get too hot. So I'm interested to get OpenCorsairLink running. But If I start it shows no devices ...

OpenCorsairLink-testing xxxx$ sudo ./OpenCorsairLink.elf

Does it show up if you run lsusb? Maybe your internal usb header isn't configured to work in macOS?