BIOS fan control (again)

[Wild Penguin]

Hi,

I'm building (or upgrading) an mATX Gaming build (to Haswell). I've read this article and the corresponding battle for the two best MBs in this article.

BIOS fan control would be more reliable and hassle free - provided the BIOS provides good options.

Are there any MBs out there that offer target temperature guided fan control (as opposed to temperature --> fan speed curve)?

I.e. what I'd like is able to set a minimum fan speed (that I consider quiet) and a target temperature, and the BIOS would then decide the fan speeds automatically according to more than just CPU temperature sensor (and possibly somewhat differently for different fans). Possibly there could be a max fan speed setting, and a fail-safe upper limit which would cause fans to be reset to 100% (to prevent overheating). This is something that speedfan can do AFAIK (but that's for Windows, and I've never actually tried it). AFAICT neither of the above MBs can do this. (edit: in addition a setting for minimum startup temperature for guiding fan startup could be usefull, but for the build I'll be using, I think the fans will be always on, since partially passive setup is not feasible for my current plans)

Which of the MBs mentioned would you prefer if you were using BIOS-only fan control (considering neither seems perfect)? The article is not clear on this (IMO) and the information is quite difficult to gather elsewhere, too. I'm not going too much into depth here how fans can be controlled, but one thing to mention is, that neither seem to have any hysteresis setting, for example (I've checked both MBs manuals BIOS sections). Are there any other good MBs which I should consider with better fan speed control in BIOS?

I'll be using Linux so Windows software for fan control is useless. This is also an adventure, it's exciting to test wether the fan controls work in Linux for the MB I'll be buying (if BIOS control is inadequate, which I believe it will be), or if I'll be the one adding the support / or if I'm skillfull enough to do that (lm-sensors is the keyword here). I like to live on the bleeding edge and am comfortable, and to some extent enjoy, compiling kernels etc.. (I've actually achieved target temperature guided fan control currently on Linux by modifying someone elses Open Source fan control utility).

Cheers!

EDIT: some random typos and wordings to make it more clear

[Wild Penguin]

Replying to myself again =),

I've found MSI has CPU smart fan control.

Does anyone have any idea, how well does it work, in practise compared to the ASUS and Gigabyte in the article I've mentioned above?

What about pover usage / on-board cooling - how does for example the Z97M Gaming compare to the other two? Or, is there much difference at all in this aspect?