Gigabyte Z77X control fans?

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fantazio

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 21, 2002
Messages
203
Hi guys,

I recently got a Gigabyte Z77X UD3H. Everything is great with this board EXCEPT that it's fan control is horrible. What was Gigabyte thinking?! There are 4 sysfan connectors, and only 1 of them (sysfan1) can be voltage controlled, which means I could not use my 3 pin case fans or else they run at full speed. I just bought some Arctic F12 PWM fans but still cannot get fan control to work properly. Does anyone have a similar board and got it to work?

Easytune 6 is probably the worst piece of software I've ever used. System fans, unlike CPU fan, can not be controlled in relation to CPU temperature. Instead, it goes with system temperature, and mine does not budge even if I run Prime95. I want to set the case fans to ramp up when CPU temp goes up, but this does not seem possible with Easytune6. In BIOS, I tried setting fan control to 1 pwm per C, Does not really change anything. I'm thinking it still sets that according to system temperature for whatever reason. I'm checking RPM of fans with HWMonitor and they do not budge when running P95 vs idle. Does anyone have any tips on how to get this to work?
 
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True I had to get all new 4 pin case fans when I got a Gigabyte board,the fourth pin is for PWM.
 
fantazio said:
Hi guys,

I recently got a Gigabyte Z77X UD3H. Everything is great with this board EXCEPT that it's fan control is horrible. What was Gigabyte thinking?! There are 4 sysfan connectors, and only 1 of them (sysfan1) can be voltage controlled, which means I could not use my 3 pin case fans or else they run at full speed. I just bought some Arctic F12 PWM fans but still cannot get fan control to work properly. Does anyone have a similar board and got it to work?

Easytune 6 is probably the worst piece of software I've ever used. System fans, unlike CPU fan, can not be controlled in relation to CPU temperature. Instead, it goes with system temperature, and mine does not budge even if I run Prime95. I want to set the case fans to ramp up when CPU temp goes up, but this does not seem possible with Easytune6. In BIOS, I tried setting fan control to 1 pwm per C, Does not really change anything. I'm thinking it still sets that according to system temperature for whatever reason. I'm checking RPM of fans with HWMonitor and they do not budge when running P95 vs idle. Does anyone have any tips on how to get this to work?
Click to expand...

I have the D3H version of this board... only the fan1 header and cpu headers support 3-pin fans. I have 3 running off a splitter for the sysfan1. It works in voltage control.

Make sure you go into the BIOS settings and set the control to either voltage or PWM, and set control to Auto/Normal.
 
Thanks for the replies

The new fans I have are 4 pin (PWM) and in BIOS there is no way to change from voltage to pwm. For cpu fan there is, but sysfan I can only change mode to normal, quiet, or manual (pwm slope). PWM slope should work but the speeds never change for me. Easytune lets me change the speed manually by using the "Smart" graph. I can set % of rpm minimum and maximum, but it's tied to system temperature which is always 28c for me. So whatever rpm I have set for 28c is what it constantly stays at, but I can change the graph so it's a different RPM. Point is that the motherboard is able to change the speed of the fans, but it will not control according to CPU temp, which I would think would be the most desired setup
 
Had a similar issue with my ST mobo when I first got it last April. A BIOS release addressed the issue. Are you running the latest revision? Maybe Gigabyte implemented a fix.
 
 
reb00tin said:
I have the same defect with Z77X-UD5H, see my post here on how sys fans work on UD5H
http://www.overclock.net/t/1239993/official-gigabyte-z77x-owners-discussion-information-support-thread-and-club-ud5h-ud3h-d3h-and-all/3030_30#post_17837757

then a description of the problem
http://www.overclock.net/t/1239993/official-gigabyte-z77x-owners-discussion-information-support-thread-and-club-ud5h-ud3h-d3h-and-all/3570_30#post_18090214

and some more
http://www.overclock.net/t/1239993/official-gigabyte-z77x-owners-discussion-information-support-thread-and-club-ud5h-ud3h-d3h-and-all/3390_30#post_17979010

and some tips if you use speedfan
http://www.overclock.net/t/1239993/official-gigabyte-z77x-owners-discussion-information-support-thread-and-club-ud5h-ud3h-d3h-and-all/3840_30#post_18345833
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply. Super lame! I can't believe Gigabyte would release a motherboard with such terrible support for fan control. They really need to update EasyTune to bring it into the 21st century. It's not that the motherboard doesn't have PWM capability. The software/BIOS is just awful.

So i'm curious if you got Speedfan to work at all? I played around with it earlier and couldn't see any changes to RPM. Does it work with PWM fans? Just curious if it's worth investing time to set it up properly. If not, what are you doing with your fans?

What I find odd is that the fan control is tied to system temperature instead of CPU temperature. Does your system temp change at all? Mine stays at 28c whether idle or running P95/Linx. I have absolutely no idea why they chose to do it this way.
 
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DejaWiz said:
Had a similar issue with my ST mobo when I first got it last April. A BIOS release addressed the issue. Are you running the latest revision? Maybe Gigabyte implemented a fix.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply. Yes I am running the latest stable bios. They do have a beta bios but I don't think I want to mess with that.
 
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fantazio said:
Thanks for your reply. Super lame! I can't believe Gigabyte would release a motherboard with such terrible support for fan control. They really need to update EasyTune to bring it into the 21st century. It's not that the motherboard doesn't have PWM capability. The software/BIOS is just awful.

So i'm curious if you got Speedfan to work at all? I played around with it earlier and couldn't see any changes to RPM. Does it work with PWM fans? Just curious if it's worth investing time to set it up properly. If not, what are you doing with your fans?

What I find odd is that the fan control is tied to system temperature instead of CPU temperature. Does your system temp change at all? Mine stays at 28c whether idle or running P95/Linx. I have absolutely no idea why they chose to do it this way.
Click to expand...

Nevermind! I read through that last link you gave and figured out how to get Speedfan to work. It does seem to work fine and I set up the case fans (pwm2) to go along with cpu temperature (core 1 since that's the highest). Works ok for now! Thanks!
 
fantazio said:
Thanks for your reply. Super lame! I can't believe Gigabyte would release a motherboard with such terrible support for fan control. They really need to update EasyTune to bring it into the 21st century. It's not that the motherboard doesn't have PWM capability. The software/BIOS is just awful.

So i'm curious if you got Speedfan to work at all? I played around with it earlier and couldn't see any changes to RPM. Does it work with PWM fans? Just curious if it's worth investing time to set it up properly. If not, what are you doing with your fans?

What I find odd is that the fan control is tied to system temperature instead of CPU temperature. Does your system temp change at all? Mine stays at 28c whether idle or running P95/Linx. I have absolutely no idea why they chose to do it this way.
Click to expand...

Speedfan is not a solution for the reason I mentioned in the link. It’s also a cpu hog, hangs occasionally, keeps spinning up al the hard disks or goes into limbo and you have to reboot. BIOS sys_fan control is defective on these mobos. Mobo also has a some minor BIOS bugs, and some network cards will cause BCLK frequency to drop below 100, but otherwise it’s excellent hardware.

The good thing is that ivy bridge platform doesn’t make a lot of heat, so case fan RPM doesn’t make a lot of difference. I’ve set case fans on manual (disabled) and using a couple of Noctua “ULNA” resistors to run sys fans at a fixed 700-800 rpm and that is adequate for cooling.
 
As I have checked the manual of this motherboard Z77X-UD3H, On SYS_FAN 1, we have speed control design on PIN2, which allow user to use a 3Pin/4Pin FAN to get speed control.
On SYS_FAN 2/3, we have speed control design on PIN4, which allow user to use a 4Pin FAN to get speed control.
Maybe you should try to update bios.
 
pchealth 2 said:
As I have checked the manual of this motherboard Z77X-UD3H, On SYS_FAN 1, we have speed control design on PIN2, which allow user to use a 3Pin/4Pin FAN to get speed control.
On SYS_FAN 2/3, we have speed control design on PIN4, which allow user to use a 4Pin FAN to get speed control.
Maybe you should try to update bios.
Click to expand...

No offense but did you read this thread? I have latest bios and speed control has nothing to do with motherboard capabilities but rather crappy fan controls in BIOS/EasyTune 6
 
reb00tin said:
Speedfan is not a solution for the reason I mentioned in the link. It’s also a cpu hog, hangs occasionally, keeps spinning up al the hard disks or goes into limbo and you have to reboot. BIOS sys_fan control is defective on these mobos. Mobo also has a some minor BIOS bugs, and some network cards will cause BCLK frequency to drop below 100, but otherwise it’s excellent hardware.

The good thing is that ivy bridge platform doesn’t make a lot of heat, so case fan RPM doesn’t make a lot of difference. I’ve set case fans on manual (disabled) and using a couple of Noctua “ULNA” resistors to run sys fans at a fixed 700-800 rpm and that is adequate for cooling.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I had no idea Speedfan had such issues. Good to know. I will avoid using it.

Are you overclocking your Ivy? Mine does get very hot, much hotter than SB would get at same clock. I even saw a video on Youtube of someone taking an IB apart to show that Intel used cheap thermalpaste inside. Once he removed the cheap paste and replaced it with something good, his temps went down like 15-20c at load. Pretty amazing. I do not plan on doing this though haha. I have my 3570k at 4.5ghz with 1.224 voltage, and at load my highest core goes up to 75c in P95. Real world never gets higher than 70c, so I don't really worry about it too much.

Im curious why you chose to do it that way? If you are just running them at a steady speed, ET6 works in that regard. Whatever works, I guess. Maybe it's better not to rely on software to do it, but I did run ET6 for a week and the fans were fine at a steady speed.

I regret having to get PWM fans ($30 for 2) and cannot even take advantage of fan control with this mobo. For shame, Gigabyte. For shame. Anything we can do? Would contacting them and telling saying how I am going to buy Asus/MSI until they fix this do anything? I just can't believe that Gigabyte is such a great hardware company but has awful software. I ended up returning an Asrock mobo which had a faulty PCI-E port, but the BIOS fan control on it was pretty damn good. BTW not sure about your bios, but mine has a bug where a USB keyboard will cause a stuck directional key (it will keep going down on menus for example). PS2 doesn't have any such issues. Very weird.
 
Hey fantazio

Why did you chose the GB board? Just wondering one of the great things we have been focusing on on ASUS boards is fan controls for multiple generations.

Our current Z77 has full 3 pin and 4 pin support availbe and indepedent of each header. Additionally there is options of target temperatue and speed adjustment per each header. If you go within the OS as well the control gets even better offering full gradient control. A large part of this is the development of the UEFI, Software and firmware for the super I/O control and even layout ( power ) of the motherboard. So software even if you get speedfan to recognize the controller will only get you so far.

The only limititaiton current is the CPU header only offer 4 pin PWM control ( while chassis headers offer both ).

Would appreciate your feedback. Feel free to PM me.
 
Juan,

Honestly it was a matter of price point I had a bad experience with an Asrock motherboard that kept frying video cards, so I wanted a mobo with good build quality but also reasonably priced. I think that the Asus boards I was looking at in comparison (vs. the GB Z77X UD3H) were more expensive, at least on Amazon. I only buy from Amazon because last time I had an issue with Newegg, it took over a week and a half to get a replacement, where Amazon will overnight you a replacement without needing the RMA unit first. Anyway, I also heard that Asus's customer service is bad where it takes weeks to get an RMA processed. I'm too lazy to take everything out and return this motherboard and spend even more money I might definitely go with Asus next time. Seems you guys definitely have much better software than Gigabyte. Have you seen their BIOS and Easytune? Quite horrid. If I had to do it over again, I probably would've gotten the P8Z77-V

EDIT: Just read the part about your CPU fan headers being PWM only. So how does it handle 3 pin fans then? The cooler I have is the Noctua NH-U12P SE2 which has 3 pin fans with a Y splitter. Would it just run on full speed then?
 
I have an Asus P8Z77-V LK board and can confirm that the CPU_Fan header can only control PWM (4-pin) fans, which is kind of lame. So yeah, your 3pin fans will run on full speed when connected to the CPU_Fan header. I had to buy a PWM fan because of this and the thing is, I don't really like PWM fans, as most of them make a clicking sound.
Anyway, fan control with a PWM CPU fan and 3 other standard 3pin fans is really good via the Asus software. They can be controlled individually, but cant be turned off.
Still don't understand why it is so hard for MB manufacturers to implement a good fan control (to be able to choose pwm and voltage control) for all of the fan headers. Back in the days I was really happy with the fan control functionality of my DFI Lanparty nF4 Ultra-D (yeah I know it only had voltage fan control, but it was done right).

PS: Sorry for the little rant.

Edit: btw, my previous board was Gigabyte EP45-UD3P and behaved the same way as mentioned here - the CPU_Fan header can be controlled via PWM or Voltage. The other 3 sys_fan headers were all 3-pin headers, but only sys_fan1 can be controlled via bios or software. So the Asus board I have now is definitely better in this regard, but the thing about the CPU_Fan header is a little disappionting.
 
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Ah, interesting. So good thing i did not get an Asus board then. It would be much more of a pain in the ass if my cpu fan ran at full speed. Seems like there is no perfect option for a motherboard with good fan control? What about MSI or other brands?
 
Sorry to hear it was price based as generally we have a board in comparable price range especially at Amazon.

Yes I am ware of the poor state of software controls on GB boards it is an area we have spent a lot of time to really try to provide a great experience with a high degree of usability.

In regards to the control you can of course connect you CPU to a chassis fan header and have full control and have a chassis fan CPU header should you need 3 pin control. To clarify though yes the CPU header powers both 3 pin and 4 pin fans but can only control 4 pin. Chassis fan headers offer full control for both types of fans including our full fan auto calibration.

More and more vendors even Noctua are moving to PWM which in my experience is superior due to the ramping control based on PECI data I also have never experienced the clicking issue that "alike" noted. This may have been specific to the bearing or fan he had used.

Hope this helps.
 
No you don't. Show me an Asus motherboard with supplemental pci-e power for $180. The UD5 even does tri-fire. Asus doesn't have a comparable product in the price range.

Also, speedfan works with the UD5H so you can use that for pwm controls. I use it to control my pwm pumps. It'll give you more options than what you'll see in bios. I agree the GB fan controls are awful.

To get speedfan to work you'll need to find which setting effects the header that you are using. For example my pumps are plugged into "sys fan 3" in speedfan pwm2 is what controls them. In speedfan click on configure then another tab will pop up. On that click on advanced. There is a tab that says chip. Your board may be different but with the UD5 you want to select "IT8728F at $830 on ISA". Then you'll see a few settings. I had to change pwm2 to "software controlled". Once you find what works for you click "remember it" so that the option will stick.

Once you get that working you can follow some guides on speedfan to set up a curve or just use it to maintain a certain speed although if thats what you want to do a fan controller is probably the way to go imo.
 
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fantazio said:
Hi guys,

I recently got a Gigabyte Z77X UD3H. Everything is great with this board EXCEPT that it's fan control is horrible. What was Gigabyte thinking?! There are 4 sysfan connectors, and only 1 of them (sysfan1) can be voltage controlled, which means I could not use my 3 pin case fans or else they run at full speed. I just bought some Arctic F12 PWM fans but still cannot get fan control to work properly. Does anyone have a similar board and got it to work?

Easytune 6 is probably the worst piece of software I've ever used. System fans, unlike CPU fan, can not be controlled in relation to CPU temperature. Instead, it goes with system temperature, and mine does not budge even if I run Prime95. I want to set the case fans to ramp up when CPU temp goes up, but this does not seem possible with Easytune6. In BIOS, I tried setting fan control to 1 pwm per C, Does not really change anything. I'm thinking it still sets that according to system temperature for whatever reason. I'm checking RPM of fans with HWMonitor and they do not budge when running P95 vs idle. Does anyone have any tips on how to get this to work?
Click to expand...


Get high quality fans, why do you need direct control of all your fans? The gigabyte boards will still report fan speeds and through energy saver features reduce the other fan speeds though I never reduce any of my fans and run them at max speeds anyhow.

If you buy HIGH QUALITY fans with hydrowave or fluid dynamic bearings they will be very quiet and last a long time.

Ive used Scythe S flex in the past and currently using the new cougars at 60cfm and 70 cfm, these fans are very quiet around 18db at max output with good CFM.

Cooling fans are designed to cool things which they dont do if they arent running or running too dam low.
 
I don't care how good your fans are they still get loud at higher rpms. I don't run any fan at over 1000rpm.
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
No you don't. Show me an Asus motherboard with supplemental pci-e power for $180. The UD5 even does tri-fire. Asus doesn't have a comparable product in the price range.

Also, speedfan works with the UD5H so you can use that for pwm controls. I use it to control my pwm pumps. It'll give you more options than what you'll see in bios. I agree the GB fan controls are awful.

To get speedfan to work you'll need to find which setting effects the header that you are using. For example my pumps are plugged into "sys fan 3" in speedfan pwm2 is what controls them. In speedfan click on configure then another tab will pop up. On that click on advanced. There is a tab that says chip. Your board may be different but with the UD5 you want to select "IT8728F at $830 on ISA". Then you'll see a few settings. I had to change pwm2 to "software controlled". Once you find what works for you click "remember it" so that the option will stick.

Once you get that working you can follow some guides on speedfan to set up a curve or just use it to maintain a certain speed although if thats what you want to do a fan controller is probably the way to go imo.
Click to expand...

ASUS still thinks they are as highly regarded as they were 8-10 years ago. They just aren't as ahead of the pack as they used to be. I see AsRock and Gigabyte coming to the front with most of the new features on motherboards nowadays.
 
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