Great! Thanks for this, was looking forward to some coverage on the new features. I can't help but think how precise the control can be outside the OS level though, say if I weren't running Windows? =P. Do you basically only lose the dynamic calibration of the specific fans? Or are you strictly limited to presets?

Can this motherboard control 3-pin fans by voltage, or only 4-pin fans by PWM?

If it can, what fan headers can be used to control fans?

The information regarding board support for Fan Xpert 2 is incorrect in that the Sabertooth Z77 is also supported.

The four pin CPU fan headers can only control PWM fans.
The remaining chassis fan headers can control 3-pin fans by voltage.

It's frustrating as I have a number of high quality non-PWM fans that I cannot use on the CPU header, and my PWM fans all have terrible bearing chatter.

Why only Fan Xpert 2 for premium products? Why? (I know, a reason to buy their premium main boards). But I'd wish that Fan Xpert would be part of all their current-gen main boards!

Do anyone of you guys know how the FanXpert+ is like? I know FanXpert 1 and 2, but I've never heard of the plus-version.

Thanks for the review! Isn't there an easy undervolting utility - have you had a chance to play with it?

There is no undervolting for idle clocks for any SB/IB CPU. And undervolting for max clocks ? Set your max CPU/Turbo multipliers, set a stable voltage and here is your undervolt/undeclock.

It's easy to run your CPU fan from a 3-pin header and set the board to ignore the CPU fan header (so you don't get any error messages at boot.) Even rename the header you choose as CPU FAN.

Hi,

great article, TU!

???

I recently purchased an i5-3570K and an ASUS P8H77-MPRO and one of the CPU voltage options is "offset". (Also shown in this article). I set an offset of -0.1V and the idle voltage dropped from 0.92V to about 0.78V. More than the 0.1V offset. There's not a whole lot of room to drop power at idle but I think I saw a watt difference on my kill-a-watt at idle. ASUS also has their EPU which has a voltage downgrade option. Seems to drop the CPU voltage by about 0.025V for normal and 0.05V for extreme. I accidentally had this on when I first undervolted manually and crashed it with about a -0.15V offset. Opps.

Are you sure your CPU didn't enter C6 state for first time when you seen 0.78V ? When i was playing with offset voltage with my 2600K, it didn't look like it affected idle voltages at all - they were 0.9-1.0V all the time.

Thank you for replies.

Is Mugen 3 compatible with this motherboard?

Note that it has a large retention module. I remember that its predecessor, Mugen 2, isn’t compatible with P8P67-V DELUXE (it is with PRO).

Ahh good call. I didn't think about setting it up that way.

BTW one thing to note, although this motherboard has four different display outputs, unfortunately it does not allow more than two simultaneous outputs. I was hoping I could get away with a triple-head setup but it just will not work. The manual has a line stating it supports only two simultaneous displays.

This is a good question and I would like to know the answer, too. Especially, because the reviewer at Anandtech had some problem installing his cooler: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5793/intel-z77-motherboard-review-with-ivy-bridge-asrock-asus-gigabyte-and-msi/4. I am a long time reader of SPCR, but don't post often; I hope it is not against the forum rules to include a link.

The Asus Maximus Gene V also supports Fan Xpert 2 according to the manual's list of specifications.

Yes, all Z77 motherboards support triple displays using integrated graphics only if at least two of the three connections use DisplayPort. Asus P8Z77-V Pro actually will support triple displays using integrated graphics if you install optional Asus Thunderbolt PCIe card ($40).

Outside of the OS you are limited to the BIOS options.
They are pretty limited - they provide options such as:
Silent
Standard
Turbo
Manual

The manual control allows for a linear program to be set, however, ASUS imposes such tight min, max controls of the fan % and cpu temp that my fans are still too noisy via the BIOS options. Also, the silent setting is not aggressive at all. I have to wait until Windows boot for my box to go silent.

Another note on this; the AsusFanControlService.exe, version: 1.0.0.7 currently fails every restart. Most users do not notice as they have the AI suite software automatically load upon *user login* which restarts the fan service.
I had to go into the service manager and tell it to retry starting this service after 1 minute to ensure it starts. This service provides the fan profile control in Windows.

Other than that, the software rocks!

I got the bog standard ASUS P8Z77-V and it supports Fan Xpert. It perhaps just has less fan headers, but you can sortof get around it:

It has 2 PWM 4-pin fan headers and 3 voltage controlled 3-pin fan headers.
I understand that each fan header is rated for 12V, 1A operation.

All my fans on my current build are non-PWN so:
I connected 2x 120mm cpu fans to chassis 1.
I connected 1x 180mm (0.45A) case fans to chassis 2.
I connected 2x 180mm (0.45A) case fans to chassis 3.

The 180mm fans are the Silverstone ones (FT02).
Works fine, even the dual fans, with fan Xpert.

As noted in the article, the P8Z77-V is supported and at $200 it is a premium priced product.

Websur - Is speedfan able to control the fans, or is it only the fan xpert software? And is it really true that it only can regulate according to the cpu temp? I mean, usually my northbridge (NB) chip is the hottest (but with ivy bridge that shouldn't be a problem as it is integrated in the cpu )

It appears that the boards that say FanXpert+ actually use the version 2 software if you check the download section for those boards. I only looked at two boards so this might not be universal.
So it’s possible that the + signifier was initially given to the new controller/software and they haven’t fully amended that in all specs.

I didn't think about C6 at all. But under the same idle scenarios, I saw 0.92V before with maybe a short little bit at 0.908V or so. After undervolt, I see 0.78V as the same amount as I saw the 0.92V before. This is confirmed with both the ASUS AI and CPUz. So I definitely am seeing lower voltages with the offset.

Hey Billy - get out the watt meter and fill us with knowledge

What kind of power savings are you seeing at various loads with your undervolt?

OK short answer - no, Speedfan cannot.
Long answer - while playing around with Speedfan, once it did detect the appropriate chip and it could see (and i expect control) all the fans!
Interestingly it did this when i launched speedfan WHILE running IBT at "very high" load.
Anyways I would say this detection is flaky and would be a pain to replicate so you are stuck with FanXpert at the moment.

And yes fanXpert will only regulate according to the CPU temp. Not a huge problem in practice (as you say, the NB isn't there anymore) unless you want to link fans to GPU temperatures as that is probably the only other thing that gets hot.

Just a note, fanXpert uses the sensor called "CPU" as determined by AIDA64, which by default is lower than the individual core temp sensors, but scales similarly with them.

Its pretty decent software though, being able to make a fan response curve is neat. Watching auto fan tune work is cool!



Haha I didn't expect it was considered premium. I kind of boiled it down to:
Z77-V - "standard"
Z77-V Pro - "pro"
Z77-V Deluxe - "deluxe"
And nearly everything else being sub-standard - of course these models also start with Z77-V just to make things confusing

webs0r - thank you for your quick response
Were you able to control the fans or not? I understand you could read the temps.

I have googled for an answer for this regarding asus Z77 micro-atx motherboards in specific. Speedfan fan control usually is a must for low noise freaks. But I hear you praise of the fan xpert 2 program.

Cheers!
Casper

No.
Don't worry though, fan Xpert is better than speedfan with respect to fan control (well the ability to define a fan response) - you will get your silence.

Okay, thank you again webs0r!




Well, I checked the Asus Z77 micro-atx boards and under the utillities download section a "ASUS FAN Xpert Plus V1.01.11 for Windows XP/7 32bit & 64bit." program is mentioned for the P8Z77-M and P8Z77-M PRO.

The Maximus V GENE on the other hand uses Fan Xpert 2 as I also mentioned earlier ("ASUS FAN Xpert 2 V1.00.13 for Windows XP/7 32bit & 64bit.")

So, to repeat kuzzia's question, Do anyone of you guys know how the FanXpert+ is like?

Some boards show both the + and version 2 of FAN Xpert in the download area such as the inexpensive P8Z77-V LX, LK and LE:
http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_S ... /#download
http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_S ... /#download
http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_S ... /#download

The + version is usually bundled in with about 20 other utilities in a single 160+ MB download with Xpert 2 being a standalone 24MB download.

My initial tests were with a picoPSU150XT + 60W 12V DC brick. Idle at stock was 24WAC. With the -0.1V offset I saw 22WAC. My lowest power Pentium M system was able to get 16W with this same PSU. So not too bad. I did start a load test at one point but quickly stopped it when I saw 70W+ to avoid hurting the brick. I've since put the system in my main box with a Seasonic SS-460FL. Idle there is 28W. I haven't done any load tests comparisons between stock and undervolt yet. Still fighting with ZeroCore on my HD7770. Normal idle is about 35W and I've seen it drop down to 29W when ZeroCore kicks in. But that doesn't seem to be happening every time.