Z170 OC Formula CPU custom fan speed not working

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   Ugh, I realized that somehow I got the AHCI SM951s, damn it.  Oh, well, it shouldn't make that much difference.  Will have to be more careful in the future.

I swapped the stock fans that Silverstone provides with the TD-03 cooler for some random orange Cougar fans we had in the pile.  They are far quieter even with the default "silent" fan profile, so I may just do that, but they will also start at a much lower percentage (as set by the BIOS) than the stock TD-03 fans so I do have some more experimentation ahead.

Still, I am having trouble seeing this as something other than a BIOS bug at this point.  I'm not sure if anyone with ASRock actually reads this but I guess it would be good to know if the custom fan speed controls for CPU_FAN1, CPU_FAN2, and CHA_FAN4 actually work for anyone.  I still need to test CHA_FAN1 and 2, though CHA_FAN3 does appear to work OK.

I am currently running the 1.61 BIOS; it doesn't appear to work any differently than 1.50 in this regard (which isn't surprising since I believe the only changes are overclocking-related).

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epithumia Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 20 Oct 2015 Status: Offline Points: 14	Post Options Post Reply Quote epithumia Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: Z170 OC Formula CPU custom fan speed not working Posted: 21 Oct 2015 at 2:37am
	Ugh, I realized that somehow I got the AHCI SM951s, damn it. Oh, well, it shouldn't make that much difference. Will have to be more careful in the future. I swapped the stock fans that Silverstone provides with the TD-03 cooler for some random orange Cougar fans we had in the pile. They are far quieter even with the default "silent" fan profile, so I may just do that, but they will also start at a much lower percentage (as set by the BIOS) than the stock TD-03 fans so I do have some more experimentation ahead. Still, I am having trouble seeing this as something other than a BIOS bug at this point. I'm not sure if anyone with ASRock actually reads this but I guess it would be good to know if the custom fan speed controls for CPU_FAN1, CPU_FAN2, and CHA_FAN4 actually work for anyone. I still need to test CHA_FAN1 and 2, though CHA_FAN3 does appear to work OK. I am currently running the 1.61 BIOS; it doesn't appear to work any differently than 1.50 in this regard (which isn't surprising since I believe the only changes are overclocking-related).

epithumia Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 20 Oct 2015 Status: Offline Points: 14	Post Options Post Reply Quote epithumia Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 21 Oct 2015 at 1:13am
	I'm just using the plain customization entry, but the FanTastic thing displays the same curves. I have rearranged the fans somewhat and found that if I attach one of the CPU fans to the CHA_FAN3 connector, it will obey the settings I set (which means the fan doesn't spin until it exceeds the set T1 threshold). Connecting the same fan to CHA_FAN4 and configuring exactly the same settings for the fan curves in the BIOS results in the fan running identically to having it set in "Silent" mode. I really think the BIOS is completely ignoring the customization settings in some cases. Yes, the M.2 sticks are SM951s. Was planning to RAID0 all three of them. I have a couple of Intel Pro 2500 SSDs for the boot drive, though they have to go on the secondary controller along with the optical drive that I put in there for some reason. Linux won't care, of course, as it never needs BIOS RAID. And it's just for the OS anyway.

parsec Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Moderator Group Joined: 04 May 2015 Location: USA Status: Offline Points: 4996	Post Options Post Reply Quote parsec Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 21 Oct 2015 at 12:44am
	I'm not sure if you noticed and used the FanTastic Tuning tool in the Hardware Health Event Monitoring Screen in the UEFI, the first entry below the 3.3V display line. It's a drag and drop style UI with a graph of fan speed percentage vs CPU or mother board temperature. You can easily set the fan speed curve to 0% for any temperature you like. If you're using it now and it does not allow you to shut off some of the fans, then all I can tell you is I assume ASRock is being conservative (safe) with the programming of this feature. That means they are reluctant to allow someone that does not understand the potential danger of shutting off fans to do so. But user like yourself that know what they are doing are stuck with the idiot proof design. We find examples of that throughout our society today. The "why did you* let me hurt myself*" factor of responsibility is becoming increasingly pervasive. I know from past experience that when over clocking a CPU, when certain parameters pass a threshold, the UEFI would automatically set the CPU fan speed to full on. That can be changed and it won't be reset to full on except from a fresh start of the OC. Just another example of the better safe than sorry philosophy. Yes, different fans may have different results and is well worth trying. I can't guarantee that the Fan Test calibration feature of the Windows utility would make a difference for allowing a fan to shut off completely. If you want to try that, I would suggest simply downloading a Windows 10 ISO installation file from MSoft (free) for a test installation. You would not need to purchase an activation key for a month or so before MS begins complaining about it. If you want to try an experiment with your Samsung M.2 SSDs (SM951s? AHCI or NVMe?), it is possible to use them in a RAID 0 array with your board. I'm using two AHCI SM951s in RAID 0 as the OS volume for my ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ board PC. The only thing you really gain from this is very fast large file read and write speeds, ~3GB/s. These arrays are more fragile than SATA RAID 0 arrays, but fun to have, just because I can...


epithumia Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 20 Oct 2015 Status: Offline Points: 14	Post Options Post Reply Quote epithumia Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 20 Oct 2015 at 11:12pm
	Thanks for your reply. Yeah, I should have mentioned the nature of the fans. The two "CPU fans" (the ones attached to the radiator) are both 4-pin PWM fans. The two chassis fans (the 180mm "air penetrators") are 3-pin. They all do change speed. There's a significant difference between "Silent" and "Full Speed", for example. I understand that different fans require different voltages and that the percentages don't map linearly to any particular fan speed but I'd expect that the fans would at least stop if I specify 0%. Unfortunately the custom speed settings appear to be ignored completely. I do suppose this could be the fans, except that with some random arrangement of fans to fan headers I've actually gotten one of the CPU fans to regulate as expected. It's pretty obvious in that case if the speed percentage is set too low to start the fan, since it "bumps" without actually spinning up. But adjusting things so that the fans actually start is not the problem, since I can't get them to actually stop reliably. I don't need to do this kind of thing often, but the last "fancy" machine I built had the previous generation of Asus Maximus Impact ITX board and it will stop all of the fans completely when the machine is idle. That does, however, use a different cooler (with different fans, of course). I'll grab some other 120mm fans from the pile (which will probably be 3-pin) and see if they make any difference at all. I don't generally run windows on these but we have a site license so I can drop 10 on there and play with the utilities. And yeah, it's a fun experimental machine. Usually we use Asus boards (have about 150 of them around, mostly ITX or thin-ITX) but I've tried two ASRock boards so far and have been pleasantly surprised. I do wish there was a Z170 ITX board without WIFI, though. The H170 boards have no DisplayPort, so if you want that the price goes from ~$90 ( H170M-ITX/DL) to $130 (Z170M-ITX/ac). Makes a difference when you're buying fifty.

parsec Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Moderator Group Joined: 04 May 2015 Location: USA Status: Offline Points: 4996	Post Options Post Reply Quote parsec Report Post Thanks(1) Quote Reply Posted: 20 Oct 2015 at 3:58pm
	If you build PCs and other larger computers, you must know that all fans for PC use are not designed or built to a standard specification regarding fan speed for a given PWM percentage or voltage for non-PWM fans. Add to that the various starting voltages that fans have, again no standard exists, and that the starting voltage is normally higher than the running voltage (takes 7V to start spinning, 6V to keep spinning once started, for example), and you can begin to understand how difficult it is to design fan speed control software. For example, you may have noticed that when the board starts or restarts, there is a short burst of fan noise as all fans receive close to or exactly 12V, to ensure they begin spinning. CPU fan header 1 is a PWM controlled header, with CPU fan header 2 slaved (apparently) to CPU fan 1. Are the two CPU cooler fans four pin PWM controlled? They should be if they change speed at all. The PWM fan speed vs PWM duty cycle percentage graph or curve is not standardized in the fan industry. That is not practical given one fan's maximum speed is 1000 RPM, and another is 3000 RPM. Again, that is only one attribute of a fans behavior. Your board has a utility program called Formula Drive that runs in Windows. One feature it has is the fan speed control options found in the UEFI/BIOS are available in Windows. This program adds a feature not found in the UEFI called Fan Test. It is a (simple) fan calibration program that runs a fan at 100% (12V) and then steps it down by an amount (unknown to me) in ten steps that correspond to 90%, 80%, etc. The fan test program is not perfect. Some fans I've used on a very similar board to yours will stop running at 10%, others don't. The wide variations in fan motor designs and speeds, and fan sizes as well (40mm fan running at 5,000 RPM+) make it difficult to accomplish a fully usable calibration on every fan made. But it seems you've used other boards (and fans?) that were able to control all your fans as you desired? For an experimental PC, that sounds like a pretty nice machine...


epithumia Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 20 Oct 2015 Status: Offline Points: 14	Post Options Post Reply Quote epithumia Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 20 Oct 2015 at 10:50am
	Decided to try out some ASRock boards for my experimental builds; I admin a university department so I'm always building something. This time it's a Z170 OC Formula, BIOS 1.50, 6700K (not overclocked) with a Silverstone TD03 closed-loop liquid cooler and other random stuff I'll list at the end in the off chance it matters. I would like to have as few spinning fans as possible while the machine is idle, which will be the state most of the time. The cooler with just the pump running is capable of keeping the CPU cool when idling without any air moving over the radiator. I have all fan headers except the one powering the pump configured with custom profiles with 0% fan speed below 50C, but I'm simply not able to find a configuration where all of the fans stop spinning, and in some cases the fan behavior seems to change randomly on reboot. I'm just doing testing in the BIOS with no installed OS. (I know the fan speeds chosen in the BIOS only take effect after a reboot.) Chassis fans 1 and 2 appear to power down as desired. The pump is on chassis fan 3 and of course it's set to full speed. The two fans from the cooler are on the two CPU fan headers, and nothing I can do will get them to spin down below 50% consistently, which appears identical to the speed selected by the "silent" fan mode. A couple of times they've worked according to the speeds I've set, but most of the time they won't. I swapped things around so that everything but the pump was connected to chassis fan headers, but then I couldn't get chassis fan 4 to spin down below 50%. Is there any way to get all of the fans to obey the custom settings I've chosen and run at 0% speed below a threshold CPU temperature? Most of this won't matter, but just in case: Z170 OC Formula (BIOS 1.50), i7-6700K, Silverstone TD03 cooler, 64GB RAM (whatever Corsair DIMMs Newegg managed to have in stock), 3x Samsung 512GB M.2 SSDs, 2x 256GB Intel enterprise SSDs for booting, 2x EVGA GTX980 Ti Classified, Corsair AX1500i PS, Silverstone FT05 case. I think that's everything I've crammed in there so far.