ASUS Extension Fans

[bachastain]

I have a ASUS Strix Z270F motherboard.  To add more fans I bought the optional Extension Fans Card and connected today.  The card adds 3 more fan connectors and 3 more temperature sensors.  I'm not using the temperature sensors but am adding additional fans.

The good news is the added card fan works perfectly.  I've added a BIOS.JPG that shows it being displayed by the BIOS.  Extfan1 in the lower left corner.  I have purposely set the fan speed higher so I won't confuse it with other fans.

HWInfo does display the new fan (HWInfo.jpg) but the RPM is blank.  The BIOS shows the speed correctly.

I've also attached a screen capture of System Information Viewer (SIV.jpg) that shows the fan speed being correctly displayed.  Only HWinfo doesn't show the correct RPM.

I've also attached the temperature sensors but those are correct as nothing is attached to them.

For some reason this forum refuses to allow me to attach HWiNFO64.DBG.  I have no idea why.  I even tried zipping it.  It just won't attach.

Anyway, I hope you can figure out why the Extension Fan1 is not displaying the RPM correctly.  I assume Fan2 and Fan3 probably don't work either.

Thanks.

 

[Martin]

The red cross sensor icon indicates that monitoring of the value is disabled by user.
Not sure how that happened for you, but just try to hit the Ins key (or right mouse key + Enable Monitoring) on the sensor value and it should become available

 

[bachastain]

Very interesting. I had right clicked on it and in the popup menu Enable Monitoring was grayed out and Disable Monitoring was enabled. From that state I assumed it was already enabled. It wouldn't let me select Enable Monitoring because it was grayed out. But after reading your update, and unable to select Enable Monitoring, I tried the Insert key and that put everything right. The popup menu now properly reflects the current Enabled state.

I had never tried to change the Enabled state.

Looks good now. Thanks for your help!

 

[Martin]

Well, that's indeed interesting. Such a state isn't expected and I don't know how that could happen.
Anyway, I'm glad that it's working now.

 

[bachastain]

Here's a bit more info.  For reasons unknown, HWInfo was not initially displaying this warning about reading a Asus Embedded Controller when I first installed the controller, but it started showing it yesterday.  The warning warns of possible dire consequences of monitoring the sensor.  Capture attached.

I assume that warning was responsible for getting the popup menu in a strange state.  Anyway, I now get the warning every time I start it

So far I haven't seen much of the effects it warns about.  Comparing reading the sensor versus not reading the sensor shows a trivial increase in a single thread in the Task Manager performance graph.  See attached.  It adds just a tiny bit of "grass" along the the graph bottom of one thread.

Anyway, the default state after the warning and selecting to not read the sensor has the Enable menu choice grayed out.  But Insert still works so I can enable reading the sensor even if I initially disable it.

Is there anything else you can tell me about the sensor?  I mean, am I risking a BSOD crash or damage to my system by reading it?  Would these negative effects also occur in other monitor programs that read the same sensor, like Asus's own AI Suite 3?  I was depending on being able to add up to 3 more fans to my motherboard so this is an unwelcome kink in my plans.

Thanks.

 

[Martin]

That warning is general for most EC types of sensors and on majority of systems you won't see any negative effect. It's not possible to know in advance which system might be affected, so it's always shown that the user is aware in case there would be some problems.
Yes, I believe any other tool reading data from that sensor would cause the same potential effects, it's due to the design of the sensor.

 

[bachastain]

Thanks.