Best BIOS Fan Control?

[Srotten]

I built my P4 with an ASUS motherboard and it had very good fan speed controls that helped keep the system quiet. The BIOS will automatically control the speed of the CPU fan, Case fans and also monitors the PS fan speed.

I've had some other issues with my ASUS, so I want to look at another brand for my new build... but none of them seem to have the level of fan control that ASUS has. Anyone had any experience with good BIOS fan controls for Gigabyte or MSI etc.?

Any help is appreciated.
-Mark

 

[Modelworks]

Not the newest of boards but I have a abit ab9pro that has excellent fan controls.
I have 6 fans I can control, cpu, system, Northbridge, aux1, aux2, aux3
I can specify how each fan is controlled, cpu temp, sys temp, pwm temp and what voltage ranges each fan will receive based on that from minimum to maximum.
12 voltage points are monitored.
3 temperature points.
It also allows overclocking while in windows, fsb, voltages for ddr, MCH,ICHIO, PCI speed.
So you can set a default boot profile of 33% overclock, then switch to turbo 75% overclock with just a mouse click.

I had that feature on other boards but it was always unreliable, on this board it works.


http://www.uabit.com/index.php...id=48&page=1&model=323


http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813127004

 

[BonzaiDuck]

If it was a P4 board by ASUS, it might be in one of two successive generations, and there were improvements. With my P4P800-SE (865PE chipset), I seemed only able to control the CPU fan with SpeedFan, but now that I think of it, I had the Q-Fan options turned off.

With boards from more than a year ago, ASUS was giving you 8 or 9 fan-plugs on their "flagship" models, of which 3 could be controlled using tape-on thermal sensors (plugged to the mobo), with a CPU, CHAssis -- possibly another fan controllable through mobo thermal sensors. And BIOS upgrades actually improved this feature.

What Modelworks describes for the ABIT board seems very impressive. ESPECIALLY -- given the price of this board he's linked to his post!

 

[imported_Scoop]

With the Abit IP35-E you can control the CPU fan and one casefan, which is nice.

 

[Modelworks]

I really wish Abit would do another board like the ab9pro.
You can grab the boards manual to better understand how it works from :
http://www.uabit.com/downloads...english/ab9_series.zip


I want to add the guru panel to my system if I can find one.
http://www.newegg.com/product/...x?Item=N82E16813999405

 

[scrawnypaleguy]

I just picked up an Abit IP35 Pro and one of the main reasons I got it (besides its widespread use and support in online communities) is for its fan control options. Like ModelWorks said, the BIOS allows complete control of every fan attached to the motherboard (up to 6), with the CPU fan having PWM control and all the others traditional 3-pin headers.

HOWEVER

When I activiated these controls I was disappointed to discover that the BIOS only allows voltage adjustments between 8 and 12 volts, nowhere near the 5 volts I usually run my fans at for complete silence. This was very disappointing, as I assumed I'd have the full range of fan speeds available to choose from. The uGuru windows interface allows further control down to 6 volts (which I find odd that they couldn't extend those limits to the BIOS) but it seems that uGuru doesn't like to save my settings so I have to reload them each time I reboot my computer.

*sigh* There's always speedfan though, which is probably what I'm going to end up using.

 

[seemingly random]

Originally posted by: scrawnypaleguy
I just picked up an Abit IP35 Pro and one of the main reasons I got it (besides its widespread use and support in online communities) is for its fan control options. Like ModelWorks said, the BIOS allows complete control of every fan attached to the motherboard (up to 6), with the CPU fan having PWM control and all the others traditional 3-pin headers.

HOWEVER

When I activiated these controls I was disappointed to discover that the BIOS only allows voltage adjustments between 8 and 12 volts, nowhere near the 5 volts I usually run my fans at for complete silence. This was very disappointing, as I assumed I'd have the full range of fan speeds available to choose from. The uGuru windows interface allows further control down to 6 volts (which I find odd that they couldn't extend those limits to the BIOS) but it seems that uGuru doesn't like to save my settings so I have to reload them each time I reboot my computer.

*sigh* There's always speedfan though, which is probably what I'm going to end up using.

I assume you've checked out the 800rpm scythes...

http://www.silentpcreview.com/...le695-page5.html#sflex {scroll down}

http://www.silentpcreview.com/...cle832-page4.html#SS-L

Although this might not help if you don't want to purchase new fans...

---

I have been impressed with abit fan control starting a couple of years ago. It does seem that it's not very granular, but at least there are headers with some control as opposed to some others. It seems that biostar (and sometimes) asus have gone backwards as far as fan control goes.

Gigabyte seems to have the smoothest fan control but fine control is attainable only through a windows utility and not bios. You can go bios only if you spend the time (and money) matching the fans with the desired rpm. The only problem with this is that a future bios update might upset this balance.