ASUS, your BIOS fan controls are atrocious

Till very recently when I upgraded to AMD Ryzen 5800X with ASUS Strix X570-E Gaming, I was running Intel based system with MSI X99A Gaming 7 motherboard. And it had one of the best BIOS-es I’ve used in decades. Especially fan controls are nothing short of spectacular. Fan control separated into CPU and SYSTEM sensors, meaning you can set fans to ramp up through a defined fan curve based on CPU temperature or SYSTEM temperature for each individual fan. What this means is that you can set CPU fan to react based on CPU temperature where chassis (case) fans can react based on SYSTEM temperature. Which usually fluctuates way less and remains high for longer after heavy workloads. Benefits of this is that chassis fans can follow entirely different fan curve, react to heat inside chassis instead of CPU and when workload is done, fans remain running at elevated speed and slowly go down as chassis internals fully cooling the inside of chassis. Not only such behavior is much more pleasant on ears, it also cools internals more steadily instead of leaving them scorching hot as it instantaneous cuts fan speeds. On top of that, MSI uses slower reacting hysteresis on ALL fan headers which dramatically improves noise perception as fans ramp up gradually as well as slow down gradually and not react to temperature changes instantaneously, making fan acoustic profile much less erratic and noticeable where ASUS is the exact opposite of that unfortunately.

Now that I’ve described how MSI does fan control in their BIOS, lets turn our attention to ASUS and their ASUS Strix X570-E Gaming motherboard. It’s one of better if not one of the best motherboards when it comes to VRM design and it’s made to really push Ryzen CPU’s to their limits, including Ryzen 5950X powerhouse with 16 cores and 32 threads.

What really bothers me about this board is how poor fan control is. The general pre-defined Standard, Silent, Turbo and Full Speed profiles sort of work and are easy way for casual users to set fans. It’s quiet in idle and ramps them up under load. Problem with this is, it’s just so absurdly basic it makes it bad. And that’s on a motherboard that costs over 300€. THREE HUNDRED EUROS!

Only temperature sensor that can be used for fans is CPU temperature. Which, despite of using Artic Cooling Liquid Freezer II 240mm, tends to jump quickly under heavy load. And no matter how I adjust the curve, fan speed is jumping up and down like stupid, causing fans to ramp up to high speed (and high noise) for a second or two, maybe up to five after burst loads and then instantly drop down. There seems to be no fan speed hysteresis involved. If you change fan speed, it does that instantaneously. And it does the same when it’s following fan curve based on CPU temperature. For both, CPU fans and also all chassis fans. I’m just playing Shadow of Tomb Raider with everything cranked to 11 and it keeps occasionally ramping up fans instantaneously during gameplay. And my god it’s so incredibly annoying. Starting Windows after restart? Fans ramping up and down like mad. Starting browser? Fans ramping up and down. It’s absurd. And same for chassis fans. The moment CPU load is gone, chassis fans go down to minimum RPM and then it takes forever for air and components inside chassis to cool down. I just don’t get it why ASUS has BIOS fan controls on such sad and basic design level. Hell, motherboard has bunch of temperature sensors and you can’t use ANY of them to control fans based on that. Fan hysteresis. None. Something is telling me the fan controls are no better on 700€ boards from ASUS either. Where MSI had all that on a relatively affordable Gaming 7 board. And checking their latest BIOS versions, they even gave users hysteresis controls for fans. On X99A Gaming 7 it was there as a fixed feature that always worked the same. New MSI boards have ramp up and slow down hysteresis controls. So you can make fans operate the way YOU want it and you can do it in total control. You can make them ramp up and down slowly. You can make them ramp up quickly and then creep down slowly. Or make them ramp up slowly and slow down quickly. And what ASUS does? Nothing of this. It just knocks fan RPM around instantaneously like it’s 1999… It’s pathetic and sad how little they’ve done to this feature. I had 2 ASUS boards through years, ASUS P5Q Deluxe and ASUS X99 TUF and they’ve literally done NOTHING to the fan control since back then. Where MSI pushed it to a whole new high with full hysteresis controls on top of what they offered before.

Oh and I forgot to mention how difficult it is to create a perfect fan curve when mouse lags around with half a second delay for some stupid reason (same mouse on same monitor didn’t on MSI’s X99 board) and how moving fan curve control points also moves adjacent fan curve control points when you go below or above adjacent control points level. ASUS, why are you doing this? It’s not saving time or being useful, it’s straight up annoying! If I move a control point in the middle of curve down, it should stop at the lowest adjacent control point and not push that one lower too. It’s just so bizarre and hard to control. And same when going up. It’ll move the adjacent fan control point higher instead of stopping the current one until you move the adjacent one higher. It would just be so much better if it behaved like that instead of how it does  now.

It’s unlikely anyone at ASUS would even care what I say, but just maybe by some weird chance, someone will read this and actually take care of it, hopefully on existing still relevant boards like X570 ones for Ryzen and not sometime in very distant future…

• Add option to control fans based on CPU temperature or SYSTEM temperature and not just CPU temperature
• Add option to designate CPU or SYSTEM sensor for ANY fan header on motherboard
• Add option to adjust fan hysteresis for ramping up as well as spinning down individually (for every individual fan header)
•  When moving fan curve points, do NOT allow moving of adjacent curve points when going below or above their level with the currently controlled control point.

I hope it’s understandable enough. If ASUS added this stuff to their Q-Fan, it would be amazing. But it just isn’t anywhere close to that with current Q-Fan fan control panel. And no, I don’t want to use Windows software to control fans. I want cooling control to be baked into motherboard, so it always behaves as expected regardless of what OS I’m running or what I’m doing with the system.

It’s also weird that out of all people using ASUS boards, I seem to be the only one complaining about it. Do people care so little about their acoustic profile of the system or they haven’t ever used any MSI’s motherboard to see how absolutely superior their fan controls are?

ASUS, you seriously need to address this and make it better. Far better than it is currently. If you want me to ever consider ASUS boards again. Coz if you don’t, I surely won’t. It’s that bad.