BIOS Auto Fan Speed - Not Adapting

I recently purchased a Z97 Formula OC motherboard and I have noticed my temps have been extremely high because the fan speeds, when set via the BIOS, never speed up when the system gets hot. I can use SpeedFan to adjust them manually, but I would prefer to have the BIOS control my fan speeds, and want to make sure its not a sign of a bad Mobo.

I am using the Noctua NH-D15 with the same model fan that comes with the cooler. I plugged one fan into the CPU slot and the other into the three pin CPU slot. I have trued Silent, Standard, and Performance and they all have a different static fan speed. I stopped speedfan from running, but come to think of it I think the settings to allow speedfan to control fan speed turn off Motherboard fan controls.

Casper5632 wrote: I am using the Noctua NH-D15 with the same model fan that comes with the cooler. I plugged one fan into the CPU slot and the other into the three pin CPU slot. I have trued Silent, Standard, and Performance and they all have a different static fan speed. I stopped speedfan from running, but come to think of it I think the settings to allow speedfan to control fan speed turn off Motherboard fan controls.

I've used many Noctua fans, both four pin PWM and three pin voltage control. I also have two Noctua NH-D14 CPU coolers, used with various Noctua four pin PWM and three pin voltage control fans. I always use the fan headers on my ASRock boards with these CPU coolers, and I can control the fan's speeds fine and automatically with ASRock's fan speed control in the UEFI/BIOS.

If SpeedFan is running, that will override any mother board fan speed control. You may need to restart the PC after stopping SpeedFan (turn of autostart of SpeedFan if enabled) before control is returned to the board.

Do you have the ASRock Formula Drive utility installed? If you do and have it configured to auto-run, its fan speed settings will override those in the UEFI/BIOS.

The two CPU fan headers have a combined control on your board. The Noctua four pin PWM fan can be controlled via voltage with the three pin CPU_FAN2 header, but the lowest RPM possible will not be as low as when the fan is PWM controlled.

The NH-D15's two NF-A15 PWM fans have a (PWM) speed range of 300 - 1,500 RPM. Are you using the Noctua LNA adapters with your fans? If so, they can change the ability of the board's fan speed control to work, depending upon their configuration. Are the LNA's four pin in to three pin out? Of four pin in and out?

What are you using to monitor the CPU fan's speeds, other than SpeedFan?

Each built in fan speed profile will provide a different "base" speed, depending upon the CPU temperature. I prefer to use the Custom fan speed settings in the UEFI, particularly for the CPU fans. Chassis fan headers may have the option to monitor CPU or mother board temperature. Monitoring mother board temperature will provide no change is fan speeds, since it changes very little and has a very small range of temperature change.

Try using the manual/custom fan speed settings for the CPU fan, you'll get much better results.

Casper5632 wrote: I have not installed any motherboard utilities as of yet. The speed of the fan changes until it hits the OS and then it sticks to whatever speed it was when it reaches the OS. I can see a difference in RPM when I change to Silent, Standard, and Performance in the BIOS, but that only changes the static fan speed and the curve no longer comes into effect. I have tried manual fan speeds using speedfan until one day speedfan crashed and I found my CPU was burning up because it was at idle fan speeds while running a resource intensive task. Not falling for that one again.

That does not sound good about the fan speeds never changing in the OS. Your board's fan speed control is fully capable of controlling the fan speeds. I've been using the Custom fan speed controls for years with ASRock boards starting with a Z87 model that has similar fan speed control. Earlier, simpler fan speed control on a Z77 Extreme4 board works fine controlling the CPU cooler's PWM fan.

You never said what you are using to monitor the fan speeds.

I sounds like SpeedFan has done something to override the fan speed control from the UEFI. For at least a test, download and install your board's Formula Drive utility, which includes a FAN-Tastic Tuning feature. You can change the fan speed curves or modify the Custom curves with it in Windows. If applying the fan speed curves there has no result on the fan speeds, something is blocking the fan speed control from working. The only thing that seems to be the possible cause is SpeedFan, or something it has done that is left over from its installation.

You could try flashing the same or newer UEFI/BIOS version as a fix, but I cannot guarantee that will work. Beyond that would be a fresh Windows installation, or at least try one on a different drive as a test. Clearing the UEFI/BIOS is a quick and relatively painless attempt to fix this, save your UEFI settings in a profile first for a quick reset. Removing the CMOS battery may be necessary.

The main reason I gave up on SpeedFan is it deals with the fan controller chip at its lowest, direct level, and if not done correctly can cause side affects like you have. SpeedFan should provide automatic control of PWM fans, assuming it supports the controller chip in your board.

Actually, I just checked SpeedFan's supported temperature monitoring chips. ASRock has been using Nuvoton monitoring chips for several years. My Z270 Gaming K6 board uses a Nuvoton NCT6791D monitoring chip, and my ASRock Z97 board also uses a Nuvoton monitoring chip. The monitoring program HWiNFO64 will display the monitoring chip it detects in its sensor reading display. SpeedFan does not support any Nuvoton monitoring chips, and does not support any newer ASRock mother boards.

http://www.almico.com/forumsensors.php

http://www.almico.com/forummotherboards.php?man=2126181

https://www.hwinfo.com/download.php