H170M-ITX/DL CPU fan control

Hi parsec.
Thanks for reporting back.
The board's firmware should be capable of regulating the fan power according to the power/temp profile configured in the UEFI, without additional software. Correct? This it does not do. I've not tried any fan control software other than A-Tuning, but only resorted to installing that once I became aware of the fan problem, which incidentally exists whether you're sat at the UEFI or booted in to an OS, be it Windows, Linux. I believe the AXTU (thats's asrock a-tuning, right?) may be irrelevant.

Out of interest, are the A-Tuning software downloads individually packaged for each board? I'd assumed, from the size of the install!, the package was more universal and covered a large range of hardware.

Somewhere, I have an unused Intel HS/Fan that came with i5-3570K. If I can find it, I'm going to see how that performs on this board (H170M Pro4).

Normally I would have bought a Z series board and 3rd party cooler, but was on a tighter budget this time round and no longer interested in performance tweaking. So went with H series.
This board has proved to be more time consuming than any 'enthusiast' board!
Here's looking forward to an answer.

Dear customers,

iwik wrote: Great, I'm very happy that this issue was no fault on my side and ASrock support is investigating!

Thanks for posting this question,i get the same issue with a Z97 Anniversary,opened a thread and getted the same 1st answer...they blame the hardware fan pwm it is faulty.

But same fans works fine with previous motherboard.Look really some firmware fault...or at least they PWM 4 pins fans controller...dont work as must do.

http://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=1483&KW=bibbio&title=asrock-z97-anniversary-fan-speed


Edited by Bibbio - 07 Jan 2016 at 9:07pm

Just got an H110M-ITX with i3-6100 Skylake. Same issue here. Please resolve this, my new build is super loud as a result of this cpu fan control bug.

keeka wrote: Hi parsec. Thanks for reporting back. The board's firmware should be capable of regulating the fan power according to the power/temp profile configured in the UEFI, without additional software. Correct? This it does not do. I've not tried any fan control software other than A-Tuning, but only resorted to installing that once I became aware of the fan problem, which incidentally exists whether you're sat at the UEFI or booted in to an OS, be it Windows, Linux. I believe the AXTU (thats's asrock a-tuning, right?) may be irrelevant. Out of interest, are the A-Tuning software downloads individually packaged for each board? I'd assumed, from the size of the install!, the package was more universal and covered a large range of hardware. Somewhere, I have an unused Intel HS/Fan that came with i5-3570K. If I can find it, I'm going to see how that performs on this board (H170M Pro4). Normally I would have bought a Z series board and 3rd party cooler, but was on a tighter budget this time round and no longer interested in performance tweaking. So went with H series. This board has proved to be more time consuming than any 'enthusiast' board! Here's looking forward to an answer.

Each A-Tuning version is shared by many ASRock boards. Each board has its own fan speed control parameters defined in a file strictly for that board.

The fan speed control in the UEFI and A-Tuning both communicate with the same controller chip on the board. You can override the UEFI fan speed control settings with A-Tuning, but only by running A-Tuning automatically or manually, or applying settings for a fan manually.

Anyone that purchases a Skylake 'K' type processor does NOT get a Skylake stock CPU cooler. That is new for Intel with Skylake. I have a box of Intel processors boxes, all with the stock coolers still inside, unused. Except for my Skylake K processor. Otherwise I could test this cooler myself.

I am at a loss to explain what happened with the Skylake stock CPU coolers. Intel has used PWM fans on their coolers since at least their socket 775 processors, released in 2008. I use multiple PWM fans with my ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ board, from different manufactures, and they all behave normally.

Why Intel would change the PWM operating parameters of these fans recently to the point they run a full speed or not at all with the standard PWM signals, is very strange. IF Intel did change the PWM specs for the Skylake CPU coolers, modifying the PWM parameters on your boards would also affect all the other PWM fans currently available and in use. These other PWM fans would likely then behave in non-standard ways. This is why the theory that some of the PWM fans used on the stock Skylake CPU coolers are out of specification is potentially true.

It would be very interesting to try using an Intel stock cooler from ANY other processor generation on your ASRock Skylake chipset board. Any Intel 115X socket cooler will fit the Skylake 1151 socket, which takes us back to socket 1156 processors, released in late 2009 to mid 2010. I have an example of every Intel processor generation since Sandy Bridge/1155, so I could try any of those.

We would be very interested to know how an Ivy Bridge processor's stock fan worked with your ASRock board. It should fit fine in your board, and is probably larger than the stock Skylake CPU cooler.

What would your reaction be if the previous CPU generation Intel stock CPU cooler PWM fans worked fine with your board's PWM control?

All I'm trying to do is make the point that this situation is very strange, not that someone is right or wrong.