FanControl, my take on a SpeedFan replacement

[SnoopyCute98]

ASRock Z590 Steel Legend works with this software. Cheers.

 

[Valorheart]

Hello, 

 

i have found a small bug with windows 11. Previously this worked fine in windows 10. So here is the problem. The fan speed does not match anymore with the set graph. The minimum constant fan speed of my asus strix 3090 is 45%. So when its idling i like to target this fan speed. But when i set the graph to 45 percent at least the gpu fans actually report a fan speed of 63% and they actually also spin faster. In order to get 45% fan speed with the gpu i need to adjust the graph curve lower to 21% minimum and then the gpu fans will then report a fan speed of 45% as i wanted. So there is a misadjustment.

[Rem0o]

@Valorheart

Expand the card please?

[rafe_28]

Ok so i do understabd if this would be wayyy to much effort for you but is a Linux version a thing i could ever expect? There isnt any gui based ones and i like my graphs.

 

Ik u would like have to rewrite the entire thing almost as it is built on WPF

[Valorheart]

On 10/8/2021 at 4:16 PM, Rem0o said:

@Valorheart

Expand the card please?

Thanks I just reinstalled the software and now everything works as before. 

[DeSinc]

@Rem0o bit of a bug report. When I set a stop % for a fan, but apply a % offset to equal it, then allow a curve to bump it up by 1% to start the fan, upon the curve going back to 0% the fan no longer stops at that stop % and just keeps trying to spin to no avail. Attached image to show what I mean.

 

 

The fan should, and does ordinarily, stop at 42%, but when a curve raises it by 1% or however many percents, and then lowers back to 0%, it just sits at the stop percentage still spinning - or trying to spin.

 

If I raise the stop % to 43% instead, it still doesn't stop spinning. it just keeps attempting to spin at 42% even though the stop % is set to 43%.

[Rem0o]

I'm trying to reproduce the issue. Set the control exactly as you did, then changing my flat curve from 0 to 1 and back to 0, but it doesn't behave like you are describing. Am I missing something?

@DeSinc

[DeSinc]

13 hours ago, Rem0o said:

I'm trying to reproduce the issue. Set the control exactly as you did, then changing my flat curve from 0 to 1 and back to 0, but it doesn't behave like you are describing. Am I missing something?

@DeSinc

Aha, I just figured it out, I had a feeling it was this. It's the fractional percentages thing you put in a few updates ago. If you do a fractional percentage, it counts as "42.1%" and thinks it's okay to start trying to spin the fan up. However this is clearly not okay because the fan only starts at 43 and definitely should be stopping at anything under that. If your program allows it to spin at 42.1%, the fan simply keeps trying to spin up and stopping over and over.

 

The threshold should be whole percentages or nothing. If the fan stop value is set to 42% it should consider that to stop at anything up to 42.9% and only start at the next whole percent above that. @Rem0o

 

While I have your attention on the fractional percentages, I thought I'd bring up that these are making config creation a bit harder too. Every time I want to get a fan to go to a certain exact percentage, I have to tell the graph to do some fraction UNDER the percent I want it to go to. So, at any given level, instead of setting a point to 1%, I have to carefully aim and make sure it's set to 0.9% or lower, otherwise if I make it 1% it will raise the fan speed by a whole 2% which is not what I want it to do at all. Perhaps could you consider a tickbox to round up to whole percents instead of fractional percents for people like me to be able to enable as an option?

[Rem0o]

@DeSinc
If your fan stops at 42 and you try to operate it at 42.1 or close to that range in a precise manner, you should put the stop at a more conservative value ( higher ).  In your example, why don't you put your stop at 43 and your start at like 50 ?  In that case, you won't get in a potential start/stop loop operating in the 42/43 range.

Btw, what is your use case for such precise values, where 1% matter?

[DeSinc]

13 hours ago, Rem0o said:

@DeSinc
If your fan stops at 42 and you try to operate it at 42.1 or close to that range in a precise manner, you should put the stop at a more conservative value ( higher ).  In your example, why don't you put your stop at 43 and your start at like 50 ?  In that case, you won't get in a potential start/stop loop operating in the 42/43 range.

Btw, what is your use case for such precise values, where 1% matter?

because the fan runs at 43% and that is its minimum speed. I want it to run at 43% exactly when the fan curve gives 1%. I also need it to turn off when the curve goes to 0%. If the curve keeps bouncing between 0.1 and 0.9% instead of just giving a flat 1%, it will put the fan speed to 42.1% or whatever, and be stuck in between in this state. If I set my minimum to 44% instead to deal with this issue, then it runs faster than it needs to run (granted not that much but it would involve me having to carefully set my curve to be exactly 0.1% to switch on the fan) and it's just a bit of a bad time to set up compared to how it actually worked before with whole percentages

 

> Btw, what is your use case for such precise values, where 1% matter?

 

well actually I just came back now because it became an issue again. the fractional percentages I assume are making it so that even though I have my fan curve to 21.5% at 51 degrees, it actually ends up coming out as 27% fan speed at 51 degrees because the next tick along is 28% at 52 degrees and it tries to "interpolate" between these two points or something like that. So now I have this fan bouncing between 19% and 27% making noise and bumping around in the space of 1 degree, even though I have a whole other step in between that it should be using.

[Rem0o]

Can you send your json config file?
 

With these 


I get those two for 51 and 52, which is as expected.



Also don't forget to set the hysteresis to 1% and not anything else, as it will ignore 1 deg changes.
  

[DeSinc]

22 hours ago, Rem0o said:

Can you send your json config file?
 

With these 


I get those two for 51 and 52, which is as expected.



Also don't forget to set the hysteresis to 1% and not anything else, as it will ignore 1 deg changes.
  

I will - next time I can replicate it. I already fixed it because it was annoying but I'll try replicate it and post config.

[LestatDK]

Thanks for an awesome tool. So glad I found this. I will donate when I can to support.

Maybe a noob question, but is it possible to move the boxes around ? 

[Rem0o]

28 minutes ago, LestatDK said:

Maybe a noob question, but is it possible to move the boxes around ? 

You can drag and drop to reorder them in their respective section.

[JimmiC]

Doest it work on Asus TUF GAMING B550-PLUS? I'd like to buy that mobo for new build.

[DeSinc]

On 10/14/2021 at 2:32 AM, Rem0o said:

Can you send your json config file?
 

With these 


I get those two for 51 and 52, which is as expected.



Also don't forget to set the hysteresis to 1% and not anything else, as it will ignore 1 deg changes.
  

Here, you can take a look at this one. The GPU fan is set to have a 42% offset with a 42% fan stop value. This works and has 0% fan speed until the combo graph gives it 1% and bumps it to the minimum speed of 43%. Then when the combo graph goes back to 0% as expected, instead of turning back off it just drops to 42% again and keeps trying to spin the fan. I'm guessing because one of the graphs is giving it an 0.4% value or something by being wedged half way in-between a percentage. This is why I want an option to round to whole percentages.

a20211015_WAYhigherIdleTempsAllowed.json

I can only fix this by raising the minimum stop fan percentage but then this means there's a delta of 1% that is entirely unusable, and I have to make my graph raise in a 2% interval to make sure it goes a whole percentage point so the fan actually starts and stops correctly, which is not ideal. Hope you see the issue I mean now.

 

[DeSinc]

On 10/17/2021 at 2:50 AM, JimmiC said:

Doest it work on Asus TUF GAMING B550-PLUS? I'd like to buy that mobo for new build.

it almost certainly does. I confirmed it works on both an ASUS Prime X570-P and an ASUS ROG B550-F Gaming. I see no possible reason why it wouldn't work on that one you listed as it's probably the same chipset.

[Rem0o]

@DeSinc yes I can see how your config can hide sub-1% values from the control card display. Don't worry I got you.


 

First change is to show 1 decimal place if applicable in the control card. That was more complicated than expected, as FanControl works with %, and the computer works with an 8 bit value ( 0-255 ).  When converting from % to 8 bit then back to %, you get a rounding error.  I made a little logic for the displayed value so that if the error is smaller than the maximum conversion error (100 * (1 / 256 ) ), show the target %, not the actual control %, to not trigger any OCD.

Second change is the notion of a selected point in the graph with a numeric up/down control for it, so you can input a precise %.

It's not called Fan CONTROL for nothing eh 

 

Lots of other small tweaks / nice to have coming, stay tuned.

[Raviehn]

Hi there. FanControl is great and good looking tool. Thank you :)

 

I just lost quiet some time to make 2 of my fans stop spinning. After many tries i found the solution and with it i found that post. Perhaps a good candidate for a FAQ post?

https://linustechtips.com/topic/1099996-fancontrol-my-take-on-a-speedfan-replacement/?do=findComment&comment=13812040

 

The interesting thing is, that i wasn't forced to set DC while i still had FanXpert installed. Cause there i could set the full stop flag for PWM fans too and somehow FanControl was able to stop them. After deinstalling FanXpert my fans weren't able to stop anymore, till i set them to DC mode in bios.

 

I still have three questions:

1. In which mode does FanControl communicate with the the fans? BIOS setting, DC, PWM? Can i change that in FanControl?

2. Is there a hidden option to allow full stop for a fan? (since it doesnt work without manual changing the mode in bios)

3. I have a nexus 9p slim fan hub which pretends to be a PWM hub and i cant set the RPM lower than 600RPM, any idea what i can do to get it slower?

Is it possible to use the fan hub without the SATA connector if there are only 3 fans connected? (just if someone knows, otherwise i will try it^^)

 

Thanks for any help :)

[Rem0o]

13 minutes ago, Raviehn said:

I still have three questions:

1. In which mode does FanControl communicate with the the fans? BIOS setting, DC, PWM? Can i change that in FanControl?

FanControl doesn't change the configuration options of the fans. It just inputs a manual value, then the control chip chooses what to do with that value, either via DC or PWM or whatever it was set at previously.

13 minutes ago, Raviehn said:

2. Is there a hidden option to allow full stop for a fan? (since it doesnt work without manual changing the mode in bios)

See answer above.

13 minutes ago, Raviehn said:

3. I have a nexus 9p slim fan hub which pretends to be a PWM hub and i cant set the RPM lower than 600RPM, any idea what i can do to get it slower?

Is it possible to use the fan hub without the SATA connector if there are only 3 fans connected? (just if someone knows, otherwise i will try it^^)

No idea, I don't know about that hub, how it works internally and so on. If it is connected to your CPU-Fan header, then that header might limit the lowest possible value to not burn down your CPU, as it's meant for a CPU cooler.

[Raviehn]

Thanks for the quick answers and the information  I'll just test to run the hub without the SATA connector hoping it will accept the MB power. If it doesnt help, the y-cable will.

[King_PIN]

I uninstalled AI Suite3 because I used it for OC'ing and there was no way to reset it without removing it.  But I loved the easy fan control so when I was doing benchmarks it was basically 1-click to choose different speeds. 

 

Is this a good replacement for someone who doesn't know much about fan curves and all that? 

All my fans are hooked to my Dark Hero.  

[Diffracted]

1 hour ago, King_PIN said:

I uninstalled AI Suite3 because I used it for OC'ing and there was no way to reset it without removing it.  But I loved the easy fan control so when I was doing benchmarks it was basically 1-click to choose different speeds. 

 

Is this a good replacement for someone who doesn't know much about fan curves and all that? 

All my fans are hooked to my Dark Hero.  

A 100 times better! And it's very easy to set up.

[King_PIN]

Downloaded and installed.  

Looks like it will work out for me great once I get familiar with it I just don't have a lot of time right now.  

I did go through the setup and it gives me control of my CPU fan for the moment but not the fans on the other 3 mobo headers it just shows their speeds.  

I take it I have to change the fans in the BIOS to PWM and download the sensors on the first page? 

 

MOBO- Dark Hero

4 - NBeloop 140mm for exhaust connected to CPU_OPT
3 Lian Li AL120's on my Liquid Freezer II radiator connected to CPU FAN

3x3 sets of Lian Li AL120's each set connected to the remaining 3 fan headers on mobo. 

 

 

EDIT:  I think I got it all now.    

 

[Raviehn]

EDIT - Solutions:

1. The spin on behaviour was optimized by rem0e in v95. My problem was fixed

2. Setting the start and stop values of a fan control to 0% disables the feature and solves the spin off problem

 

@JimmiC

The ASUS B550 TUF Gaming Plus works. I have it myself.

 

@Topic

I'm still very happy with the tool. But at least on my configuration, i have problems with the starts and stops:

 

1. My CPU fan is in PWM mode and FanControl identified 15% as the spin-on value. I set it to 25% after some spin-on fails. It looks like it works (manual, flat curve) but with a graph curve as reference, after some time, the fan does not spin-on. If it failed one time, it won't start even if it should set e.g. 50% or more. Since it is the CPU fan, i need it to kick in 100% of the times.. So what am i doing wrong? 

 

CPU start = 25%, CPU stop = 12%; Graph: 26% but the control "CPU" is at 0%

After this happened, i set it to manual mode. The fan does not spin-on till i set 0% manual.

Thats my curve:

 

2. This behavior is more or less exactly the other way around. I have 2x180mm case fans in DC mode with fan stop flagged which a graph curve setting a full stop, if the MB Temp drops under a certain value. Most of the times they do stop but sometimes one stays at min RPM and refuses to stop for good. I need to switch the referenced curve or set it to manual for a sec. Afterwards it goes directly to sleep. It only happens now and then, so im still waiting for a chance to take screenshots.
Both 180mm fans use the same curve.

 

Any ideas how to fix that? Is something off with the graph curves? Did i fail to get a important restriction?