Fan & Pump control from BIOS or Software

Light1984

Gawd
Joined
Dec 31, 2004
Messages
616
As title says, I'm curious about the two routes to control fans and pumps. What does everyone prefer? I've been out of the game for a long time, my current case has a fan control knob on top which should date it quite well. My pump has a speed control dial in the back that I haven't adjusted since installing. For my new build, I will have case fans, radiator fans, and a pwm pump. I'm debating on whether to get the D5 next and use aqua suite for control/throttling, or just a regular D5 pwm and use the bios. Please let me know your thoughts, what you've had experience with, and your preference. TIA.
 
I managed to get a good deal on an Aquaero unit with Aquasuite. Being able to control everything based on a liquid temp delta curve is pretty much the best way to go about it.
 
I usually try to keep me software pretty lean, is aquasuite heavy or does it take up a lot of background performance? I'm kinda leaning towards doing it in bios. I imagine there is some way to bring temp into the bios and run it from there. Although what little I researched on aquasuite it looks pretty comprehensive. Is it hard to setup?
 
I've been using the bios to control all my loops with PWM pump or fans as far back as it's been possible thru the mb. I use a water temp sensor and set my pump/fans to that. I've not run into a reason to use software or any addictive.
 
I usually try to keep me software pretty lean, is aquasuite heavy or does it take up a lot of background performance? I'm kinda leaning towards doing it in bios. I imagine there is some way to bring temp into the bios and run it from there. Although what little I researched on aquasuite it looks pretty comprehensive. Is it hard to setup?
For what I do? It was easy to setup after a tad of reading. Have a liquid temp probe somewhere in the system and an ambient air temp probe somewhere. Then you just create a "virtual sensor" in aquasuite, telling it to subtract the air temp from the liquid temp input. There's your delta.

Then it's just creating a custom fan curve using that virtual sensor. Set whatever you want your min-max delta to be and your min-max fan speed and off you go.

As for performance hit, idk, I really don't notice it impact anything.

*Edit* Running in the background it uses a whopping 41mb of ram for me and 0% cpu.

aqua.PNG
 
I usually try to keep me software pretty lean, is aquasuite heavy or does it take up a lot of background performance? I'm kinda leaning towards doing it in bios. I imagine there is some way to bring temp into the bios and run it from there. Although what little I researched on aquasuite it looks pretty comprehensive. Is it hard to setup?
Then you're gonna love the Aquaero, because it is standalone. Once you've configured it using Aquasuite, you can uninstall the software and unplug the USB cable - the controller will run your setup from onboard memory.
 
I use the bios with a fan splitter. Honestly I set the d5 to a speed and forget it. I prefer some fan noise over fans ramping up and down, so I set bios to an aggressive setting so they stay as steady as possible.
 
I have everything setup in the bios. All fans and pump are at a speed I can't hear. They are setup to ramp up to 100% after 90 deg so I will know instantly if there is some kind of problem. I also like to not run additional programs of not needed. Granted it really doesn't hurt performance at all when you have 16 cores and 32gb of ram.
 
Then you're gonna love the Aquaero, because it is standalone. Once you've configured it using Aquasuite, you can uninstall the software and unplug the USB cable - the controller will run your setup from onboard memory.
Huh, I didn't know you can uninstall afterwards. Really though, it uses almost nothing. It's good to know if you're really picky about extra processes running.
 
Huh, I didn't know you can uninstall afterwards. Really though, it uses almost nothing. It's good to know if you're really picky about extra processes running.
I keep mine running because it manages my desktop readout on my mini screen:

16019928938961243989965224636643.jpg

...but if I didn't use that feature I'd likely still keep it installed because I'm constantly tweaking it.
 
I keep mine running because it manages my desktop readout on my mini screen:

View attachment 286035

...but if I didn't use that feature I'd likely still keep it installed because I'm constantly tweaking it.
Huh, that's actually pretty neat. I need to add a flowmeter sometime, I just keep putting it off because I hate fiddling with it when it's already setup lol. A couple of PWM pumps would be neat too....do you know if any PWM works with the unit, or just the aquacomputer ones?
 
Huh, that's actually pretty neat. I need to add a flowmeter sometime, I just keep putting it off because I hate fiddling with it when it's already setup lol. A couple of PWM pumps would be neat too....do you know if any PWM works with the unit, or just the aquacomputer ones?
Any PWM device. The Aquacomputer devices can be set up with Aquabus in some cases, which allows the Aquaero to poll the device for additional information - integrated temperature sensors, power consumption, things like that. Nice to haves, but certainly not necessities.
 
Any PWM device. The Aquacomputer devices can be set up with Aquabus in some cases, which allows the Aquaero to poll the device for additional information - integrated temperature sensors, power consumption, things like that. Nice to haves, but certainly not necessities.
Good to know, I'll probably mess with that stuff the next time I have to replace the gpu (maybe cpu depending on how good ryzen 4000s are). Thanks for the info!
 
BIOS - set to a relatively "low" baseline for all fan headers
Software - Argus Monitor with nearly all of the fan headers set to some curve based on the water temperature, with an extra profile for an aggressive fan speed
 
I don't get it... some of you guys really love your dials and graphs.
A long time ago I pushed all data (cpu usage, clock speed, temperature, framerate, memory utilization) to an Elasticsearch cluster in order to visualize/track over time, but... it was a pain in the ass. Ain't nothing wrong with data (y)
 
I don't get it... some of you guys really love your dials and graphs.
They're very handy when you're tuning a complex control system. Not that a control system this complex is needed, but hey - watercooling my computer isn't needed either, and I do that anyway. :D
 
I've been using the bios to control all my loops with PWM pump or fans as far back as it's been possible thru the mb. I use a water temp sensor and set my pump/fans to that. I've not run into a reason to use software or any addictive.

Which temp sensor are you using and how does that get fed to the MB? Does your MB have a temp probe header?
 
Which temp sensor are you using and how does that get fed to the MB? Does your MB have a temp probe header?

I'm using a temp fitting, iirc a bitspower but any of them will work. My mb has a standard 2pin temp header which the sensor fitting connects to. The mb pwm controller can then use that temp sensor to set pump/fans to.
 
Right now, BIOS controls my PWM pump speed and the pump speed on my Asetek AIO that's cooling the GPU. The Asetek is set to 100 percent all the time. I have the CPU pump set to ramp from 50% to 100% at 55C based on a water temp sensor. In all actuality, I should just set the pump to 100% all the time. Can't hear it over the fans. Fans are controlled by iCUE and a Corsair Commander. iCUE does cause a performance hit while running, but I set it and forget it. I don't launch it unless I want to make a change. However, I have noticed there are always some corsair services running in task manager and if you kill them, they will restart.
 
Right now, BIOS controls my PWM pump speed and the pump speed on my Asetek AIO that's cooling the GPU. The Asetek is set to 100 percent all the time. I have the CPU pump set to ramp from 50% to 100% at 55C based on a water temp sensor. In all actuality, I should just set the pump to 100% all the time. Can't hear it over the fans. Fans are controlled by iCUE and a Corsair Commander. iCUE does cause a performance hit while running, but I set it and forget it. I don't launch it unless I want to make a change. However, I have noticed there are always some corsair services running in task manager and if you kill them, they will restart.

icue also causes observer effect on Ryzen cpus.
 
icue also causes observer effect on Ryzen cpus.
I'm thinking I'm going to get my fan curves and lighting where I want and uninstall it. The commander saves the settings. It's a shame all of the crap that icue has going on all the time.
 
I'm thinking I'm going to get my fan curves and lighting where I want and uninstall it. The commander saves the settings. It's a shame all of the crap that icue has going on all the time.

You have a Asus X570 ROG Crosshair VIII, you should be using a water temp sensor. Set your fan headers and pump header to read from your water temp sensor. Then you don't need no stinking software to control fans. Then use hwinfo to display stats via afterburner. Now you have no stupid apps causing issues with the cpu and hwinfo is the only one that shows correct stats anyways.
 
You have a Asus X570 ROG Crosshair VIII, you should be using a water temp sensor. Set your fan headers and pump header to read from your water temp sensor. Then you don't need no stinking software to control fans. Then use hwinfo to display stats via afterburner. Now you have no stupid apps causing issues with the cpu and hwinfo is the only one that shows correct stats anyways.
I am using the water temp sensor on the board and running the pumps from the board, but I have 8 fans. I guess I could use a bunch of fan splitters. However, once I set things up, I can uninstall iCue. I think my Temps and clockspeeds are crap especially considering how loud it is. Once I figure that out, I'll ditch iCue.
 
Thats what i do. I have 3 splitty9 fan splitters and run them off 3 mb headers, then use the msi software for pwm control. Have 10 (3/3/4) fans running this way no probs. Much easier than going into the bios to make adjustments.
 
I am using the water temp sensor on the board and running the pumps from the board, but I have 8 fans. I guess I could use a bunch of fan splitters. However, once I set things up, I can uninstall iCue. I think my Temps and clockspeeds are crap especially considering how loud it is. Once I figure that out, I'll ditch iCue.
The cpu radiator fans are now controlled by the motherboard. I've also added in the der8auer OC bracket and reconfigured the positioning everything in the case. I uninstalled iCUE as well. First run on CB20 hit 9221 with basically stock settings other than RAM timings. Single core is 534. Fastest stock score I've ever had. I ran boost tester as well and got 4715 on core 0, 4690 on core 1, and two other cores at 4640. I think disabling spread spectrum and making the bus clock 100 instead of 99.8 will net me up to 4725 on core 0, 4700 on core 1, and 4650 on two other cores. FWIW, temps are not any better, but then again, I've changed the fan curves by going to BIOS. Not sure if it's the bracket or what. Either way, clocks are higher as is CB20 benchmarking.
 
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