RS480M2-IL now has BIOS fancontrol

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Fri May 06, 2005 7:45 am

The MSI RS480M2-IL motherboard now has a three trip point fancontrol in the BIOS. When I bought the mobo, it didn't have it. But I upgraded the BIOS yesterday and got this nice surprise.

You can set three "voltages" for the CPU fan and SYS fan each. These are not really voltages, but PWM settings and go from 00h to 3Fh. For normal people, who rather work with decimal numbers in stead of hexadecimal numbers, this means from 0 to 63. I'm used to control my fans with SpeedFan, which uses percentages for the PWM setting. So I calculated the following table to get the speeds I want.

You can set three CPU temps at which the speed of both fans will change. When the system starts it sets the fans to the lowest speed. If the temp rises and goes over the lowest temp nothing happens yet. If it rises further and goes over the middle temp, then the fanspeed is set to the middle speed. The temp has to go down to below the lowest temp before the fanspeed is set to the lowest speed again. The speed switching between the highest temp and the middle temp works the same. So if you pick the right temps and speeds, you won't get the irritating up and down ramping some simple fancontrollers have.

There is one possibly irritating bug. When the system boots, the SYS fan is set to the lowest speed set for the CPU fan. Once there has been one occasion for the fans to change speeds, it uses it's own settings.

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winguy · Post by **winguy** » Fri May 06, 2005 8:22 am

A couple of questions:

- The Fan High/Med/Low Temp refers to CPU Temperature? Does that mean SYS Fan Volt. changes according to CPU Temperature (and not System Temperature)?

- I don't know how SpeedFan works but does Fan High/Med/Low Volt. mean it changes the voltage supplied to the Fan (ie a fan with no rpm monitoring works too)?

StarfishChris · Post by **StarfishChris** » Fri May 06, 2005 8:47 am

It appears that it's all controlled by CPU temperature. Speedfan gives you an advantage here because you can make fans dependent on any number of sensors, but you have to wait till Windows loads for that to kick in.

You can't set a fan's RPM exactly, so RPM monitoring isn't going to help you. Speedfan, Q-fan & all permutations I know of check temperature and adjust voltage/duty cycle irrespective of whether the fan has a sensor wire or not. Some of the more expensive fan controllers may do, but I have no experience with them.

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Fri May 06, 2005 9:33 am

Yep, chris has it all right.

Wraith · Post by **Wraith** » Sat May 07, 2005 7:18 pm

I just installed this board tonight. The fans ramped down automatically, so it must have this latest BIOS.

One thing I noticed: when I opened SpeedFan the first time, it showed speed for both fans as 43%. When I closed SpeedFan, the fans ramped up to 100%. I could open SpeedFan again and lower them while SpeedFan's running, but it didn't seem to follow the BIOS fan control after opening then closing SpeedFan.

One question regarding SpeedFan & this board: I have three temps reported:
Ambient (currently 34C)
Remote 1 (20C)
Remote 2 (115C)
HD0 (29C)

Am I correct in assuming: Ambient is the CPU temp, Remote 1 is Case temp, Remote 2 is unused or incorrect?

This is running 3500 90nm w/ XP-120, 3700AMB.

(Edit) After going to standby while SpeedFan's on (during which my fans stopped completely) and coming out of standby, my temps are currently:
Ambient: 34C
Remote 1: 48C
Remote 2: 35C
HD0: 30C

yeha · Post by **yeha** » Sat May 07, 2005 8:57 pm

i'd just like to remind anyone using this board that a clockgen has been released for it - check the clockgen homepage for the rs480m2 build. since the onboard clock generator is a bit on the crippled side, the highest value you can choose is 220 mhz. regardless, that's a 10% faster machine for free.

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Sun May 08, 2005 3:24 am

Yes, 43% (or 1Bh) is the default low speed for the BIOS fancontrol. I think the BIOS fan control only adjusts speeds when it measures a trip point, not continuously. As the default trip points are 65°C, 60°C and 55°C, that won't happen in your setup, unless all your fans fail or you change the defaults. That SpeedFan turns the fans to 100% when it closes, is an option. You can turn it on and off in the options tab of the configure screen.

The CPU temp is Remote 1. You can check this by starting something that taxes the CPU (e.g. CPUburn) and watch the different temps on the graph tab of SpeedFan. Remote 1 is the only temp that rapidly rises then.

Ambient hardly ever budges from 34°C. I don't know what it measures. It can't be the northbridge, as that is hotter. I can almost burn my fingers with the NB heatsink. It can't be the case temp. I have the board on an open platform and my room isn't close to 34°C. So the only guesses left to me, are somewhere around the mosfets (I once measured one of the mosfet heatsinks as 31°C.) or inside the SuperI/O chip itself (the name ambient vs. remote).

Remote 2 is indeed bogus. On my board it read -5°C at one point yesterday.

rei · Post by **rei** » Sun May 08, 2005 3:18 pm

remote2 reads 120c on mine.

tabbal · Post by **tabbal** » Sun May 08, 2005 5:06 pm

>...used Everesthome_build_0283 and SpeedFan 4.22 at the same time and then my cpu fan and my case fan just turn off when I close up one or the other program...
>...be careful if you use Everesthome_build_0283
>I have found that it will shut any fan connected to the motherboard off when exiting the program...

It did happen to me when I first assembled the pc - At first I thought either the AMD 3000 or the mobo is defective!... so beware!

This is what Speed Fan shows:

Ambient: 35c
Remote1: 36c
Remote2: 116c
HD0: 38c

+3.3: 3.28v
+12v: 15.94v ????????????
all other Volts: 0.00v

winguy · Post by **winguy** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 6:30 am

What's the selectable range for Fan Low/Med/High Temp?

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 6:59 am

Minimum temp is 30°C.
Maximum temp is 89°C.

Same temp range for all three trip points.

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 8:05 am

The BIOS used in my first post was 3.30. I just tried BIOS version 3.40 to see if they fixed the bug with the system fan startup speed.

NB !!! They removed the speed settings in this new BIOS. They only left the trip points. So you get only limited control with this newer BIOS. You need this newer BIOS however if you have a rev.E A64 chip.

Needless to say I downgraded my BIOS to 3.30, since I have a Winchester chip.

winguy · Post by **winguy** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 8:11 am

What were they thinking, seriously?

meterman · Post by **meterman** » Mon Jul 11, 2005 8:57 pm

Tibors wrote:They removed the speed settings in this new BIOS.

Any idea what the now-not-configurable speed setting are?

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 1:34 am

The low setting was 40% for both SYS and CPU. I didn't try and find what the others were, but just downgraded the BIOS immediately after I saw this.

B.T.W. 40% is very quiet when you use an AC Freezer 64 cooler like I do. The difference between 30% (the minimum at which the fan still runs) and 40% is hard to hear on an open platform setup like I use and probably insignificant inside a case.