MSI fan control

[Joss]

Hi.

Those of you with experience on recent Asus and MSI motherboards, how do you compare the respective Bios fan controllers? Does MSI have the same fan tuning (to check min/max rpms)? And how about the UI, is it as intuitive as the Asus one?

Thanks

 

[rtwjunkie]

IMO ASUS always had good fan control on their boards. Haven't used a new one recently, though. I CAN tell you that my recent MSI is not very intuitive, and other than the CPU fan, I'm not sure it changes or controls anything.

 

[Komshija]

I have an MSI Z170A Krait Gaming 3X and it has the ability to set all fan speeds - either in BIOS or in the OS via MSI Command Center. I adjusted my fans according to MOBO/CPU temperatures, but it's also possible to adjust all fans to some fixed RPM percentage.
In MSI Command Center, I can engage quick cool-down which sets all fans (of course, except GPU fans) to their maximum with two or three clicks.
In short, yes, it shows fan speeds and some temperatures in BIOS, while max and min fan speeds can be easily checked by setting RPM percentage to 30% and 100% and waiting for a few seconds after each setting.

 

[Joss]

I took this pic from Anandtech and I find it confusing.
You have two scales, temp and RPMs, but they're both vertical. So what happens when you move the slider up? 50 Celsius corresponds to 3500 rpm ???
What am I missing here ?

 

[rtwjunkie]

I took this pic from Anandtech and I find it confusing.
You have two scales, temp and RPMs, but they're both vertical. So what happens when you move the slider up? 50 Celsius corresponds to 3500 rpm ???
What am I missing here ?

View attachment 87809

Exactly the point I was making. It is unintuitive.

 

[Komshija]

When you hold and move each dot in either direction, it will show you fan's RPM perfentage for certain temperature range, eg. at 55°C your fan is set to approximately 38% speed. According to my opinion, RPM values on the right mean nothing as each fan has different RPM settings, so they cannot be used as a guideline.
From your image, your fan speeds are set incorrectly, as you shouldn't set fan speed below 40% regardless of the temperature. You cannot reduce RPM for overhelming majority of fans under 40%, even if you manually set their speed at, let's say, 30%.

For the example, Arctic F12 PWM rev.2 fans are rated for 1350 RPM, while they actually spin around 1430/+-30 RPM (this is a good thing) and will not spin under ~670/+-20 RPM regardless of settings (this is also a good thing).

 

[Joss]

When you hold and move each dot in either direction, it will show you fan's RPM perfentage for certain temperature range, eg. at 55°C your fan is set to approximately 38% speed

You mean the relation temp/percentage is predefined, you cannot control granularly?
Or when slide the dot vertically the temp number changes, and when you slide horizontally the rpm percentage changes?

From your image, your fan speeds are set incorrectly

It's a pic from Anandtech.

 

[RejZoR]

I took this pic from Anandtech and I find it confusing.
You have two scales, temp and RPMs, but they're both vertical. So what happens when you move the slider up? 50 Celsius corresponds to 3500 rpm ???
What am I missing here ?

View attachment 87809

The scale on the right corresponds to real-time (current actual) RPM of the fan. It's not evident since they've been in this menu for 5 seconds apparently, but if you look at the lower right corner of the graph, you'll see something going up to around 2800 RPM. That's the real time graph of fan speed. If you're long enough in the menu, it'll move from right to left across entire graph. It does not directly correspond to the fan speed % on the left side though (as that would mean 7000 RPM at 100%).

I've been on ASUS Sabertooth X99 before and now I'm on MSI X99A Gaming 7. In a way, MSI has easier to use fan control though it lacks some things ASUS has, like pre-selectable Quiet, Standard and Turbo profiles where on MSI, you have to fully set each fan on your own (though default curve ius reasonably well balanced, maybe more on the quiet side actually). But it's really easy to do. Needed a bit re-adjustment from the ASUS system, but I'm liking MSI method a lot. A bit more than ASUS actually because fan headers placement on motherboard was better and fans are more easily identifiable inside interface (I basically just look at RPM and name on top where ASUS just has generic fan names with numbers (system fan 1 through 4). In ASUS I had to constantly open up the case and inspect where fans are using the manual because I had to route them all over the place.

Also, MSI's Control Center software is kinda better than ASUS's Windows software whose name I forgot. ASUS was just weird and inconsistent, tend to even override BIOS without actually changing data in it), MSI one just works and it's basically a copy of BIOS fan control with option to save/load fan profiles from file to/on disk and fan speed calibration. ASUS is good, but I think I prefer MSI fan system a bit more.

If you want to know anything really specific, fire away and I'll try to answer it for you.

 

[Komshija]

You mean the relation temp/percentage is predefined, you cannot control granularly?
Or when slide the dot vertically the temp number changes, and when you slide horizontally the rpm percentage changes?
It's a pic from Anandtech.

Surely you can control it. Since I'm currently not at home, I'll try to explain by memory.
There's no need for constant adjustment (that would be completely unnecessary), so set one all four dots once for all. As temperature rises, fans speed-up to a certain "percentage" and vice versa. I think that vertical positioning is for RPM and horizontal for temperature.

You can set RPM percentage and temperature values as you wish, meaning that you can precisely adjust either RPM percentage or temperature range for a single (1) value. It's pretty straightforward since it exactly informs you about the current values when you hold and move the dot. At the same time it shows you current values on the right side for all fans as well as fans RPM on the upper portion of the screen. It will show 0 RPM values for fans that are not installed and, logically, you cannot set values for dot 2 (blue) lower that for dot 1 (dark blue) etc.

If you assembled components by yourself, you should know which fan in your PC case is fan 1 (System 1), fan 2 and fan 3. If you don't, check 4-pin (SYSFAN1, SYSFAN2, SYSFAN3) connectors along with wires connected to them to find out which fan is connected to which connector. If you have a PWM fan splitter 1-in-2 like I have, SYSFANx will correspond for two fans connected to that particular connector. In my case SYSFAN2 corresponds for two front F12 PWM fans.
You can latter virtually position your fans in MSI Control Center to know about their positions in PC case.

 

[RejZoR]

In a nutshell, you can adjust the fan curve for your system to be dead silent under low loads, but can ramp up the fans very high during intense gaming when things heat up. And when you find a sweet spot, that's what you'll keep basically forever, it's fully automated from then on. You can also define what's the temperature sensor used for the fan curve. It can either be CPU based and quickly responds to temperature differences or you can set it to be based on motherboard temperature (case air temperature) which responds slower and ensures certain ambient temperatures. Fan can fluctuate a lot more with CPU based which can be annoying sometimes if you can hear fan ramping up during 100% CPU load, but instantly falling down as soon as load drops. With other sensor, fans will raise slower and also run at that speed for longer even when CPU doesn't have the load anymore as the temperature in case will still remain for a while. It's up to you then to decide which mode you prefer. Main difference is, with CPU based, you're "carving" the fan curve at higher temperatures (even up to 85°C) on the graph where with ambient you'll probably want them below 50°C as having this hot air inside the case, it means something is emitting quite a lot of heat.

Btw, one really annoying thing with ASUS is that on every BIOS update, ALL settings get erased, even stored (saved) settings, which include fan curves as well. I had to write each down before updating BIOS and because I had quite complex setup, it was quite annoying. My MSI already came with latest BIOS so I'm not sure how it behaves in this regard... Settings profiles are certainly more flexible and easier to use on MSI than on ASUS, so it's likely they store it separately...

 

[Joss]

Thanks a lot all for your answers
Just one last doubt,
if you slide the dots to produce the following:
40ºC/50%
60ºC/65%
it'll mean 50% fan speed up to 40ºC, 65% fan speed up to 60ºC ...
is that it?

 

[erixx]

It will draw a line from dot 1 to dot 2. So yes... A bit more clumpy in MSI than in ASUS, but at the same time, very easy
If you want the (case!) fan to be halted under certain temp, just move the first dot to the fan starting temp, and keep it at 0% speed.

What I miss compared to Asus is the "ramp up" and down timings, which are limited. (I liked it that the "slow down" time could be set to p.e. 25 seconds)

 

[RejZoR]

I didn't have anything like that on my Sabertooth X99. Must be a new feature on newest X370 or Z270 ASUS platforms...

 

[erixx]

I didn't have anything like that on my Sabertooth X99. Must be a new feature on newest X370 or Z270 ASUS platforms...

It's in AI Suite 3 and UEFI BIOS of Rampage V Edition 10th Anniversary (X99) for sure.

 

[cadaveca]

I didn't have anything like that on my Sabertooth X99. Must be a new feature on newest X370 or Z270 ASUS platforms...

Fan control options on both ASUS and MSI vary with board model. It really depends on what SuperI/O chip is used as what options you have available to you.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Mine is pretty good and allows for individual fan adjustment if you take it out of smart mode, you can adjust the rpm to correlate with the temps to suit you, a bit like setting a custom fan profile in Afterburner or Trixx......................................