Corsair AX760i issues (I know it's been covered but I wanted to add my issues)

[JohnOrion]

I have seen a few threads on this subject but none that seemed to quite mention the issue I'm having... though a couple are close.

When I launch HWiNFO64 v532-2900 The Corsair AX760i shows up but it seems like it scans for sensors over and over for the first minute or for a set number of times. What happens for me is there are 3 sensors I want to monitor, PSU Fan, PSU Power In and PSU Temp2 (which is the temp that matches CL's temp). The 3 sensors may or may not show at first... then they will show then one or two may disappear from the HWiNFO sensor list.

I know that you had an issue with it giving bad data at times and you made it so if it has a bad reading it just keeps the old reading but "grays" it out.. and that happens in this process ... during this 'rescan' sometimes the values are grayed out. Eventually it will stop rescanning and sometimes all the 3 will be showing or sometimes not. Is there any way to make it so that when it scans it keeps what it has already found instead of deleting them and starting over each scan?

Basically the way it is now, I have to restart the program over and over until the "final scan" has located the 3 sensors I want to monitor so they all show on the list. Once I get the 3 showing and its not rescanning .. they will stay showing until I reboot. Its just trying to get it to grab the 3 sensors on that final scan... sometimes I have to restart the program 20 or more times.

You can skip the next part but I figured I would give a little background of the issues with the PSU and the reasons monitoring is important for me.


I know that the Corsair Link dongle is total junk... hell ... they own the damn thing and they cant even figure out how to get their software to work with it. Corsair Link is absolute junk and the AX series of PSUs have a design flaw that make it necessary for me to monitor my PSU because it will either have erratic fan speeds (if drawing a small load the PSU will hit about 40-43 degrees and the fan will spin up full speed then shut off and repeat this over and over) or the fan may not turn on at all and the system will shutdown due to overheating if I don't notice and launch a game or something power demanding.

The Link software is total garbage but I need it because its the only thing that can set the fan to a fixed 40% so that the fan speed is stable and doesn't spin up to 1500rpm then shut back off a second later causing an annoying loud fan over and over. I had to write a small program and use some specially created tasks which will launch Corsair link, wait some time then close it every time I wake from sleep.

The software doesn't work when it comes out of sleep and resets the profile to the default with the 0 rpm fan and as I mentioned, the fan may not turn on at all as the temps rise or it will hit the 42ish degrees and the fan will spin up to full speed then shut off to 0 again and repeat this over and over... the noise is very annoying. The only time the software seems to be able to set the fan to a fixed speed like the profile is set to is when its launched once launched and set to 40% it will keep the setting even if the program is closed... thus the need to start it and shut it down at every boot and when waking from sleep.

Thanks for all your work on this program. I use HWiNFO64 with rainmeter and it is so nice to be able to monitor my system in an unobtrusive manner. I hope you will be able to figure out a way to work with Corsair's POS Link dongle.. I have begged them to release their API so companies that know what they are doing can actually have access since their own devs can't seem to figure out how to write software that works. I'm hoping HWiNFO can be able to get the proper information from Corsair to allow the monitoring to work properly and Speedfan to be able to access the hardware so I can set up a fan curve that is based on temp instead of load so I can finally get the fan to work properly on this PSU and then I can dump the POS Link software completely.

 

[Martin]

I understand your frustration, I had a similar experience when I tried to get the protocol working properly...
I can have a look at the way how values are reported, but first please attach the HWiNFO Debug File, so I can see what exactly is happening in the protocol.
Also two questions:
1. Are you running HWiNFO along with CorsairLink Software? This is not recommended and can cause those collisions as well.
2. Are you using fixed sensor order in HWiNFO, or have you unlocked this? If the order is not fixed (there's an option for this in sensor settings), try with this option enabled.

 

[JohnOrion]

I understand your frustration, I had a similar experience when I tried to get the protocol working properly...
I can have a look at the way how values are reported, but first please attach the HWiNFO Debug File, so I can see what exactly is happening in the protocol.
Also two questions:
1. Are you running HWiNFO along with CorsairLink Software? This is not recommended and can cause those collisions as well.
2. Are you using fixed sensor order in HWiNFO, or have you unlocked this? If the order is not fixed (there's an option for this in sensor settings), try with this option enabled.

Thanks for your reply. I have added the HWiNFO debug file. I think I stopped it after it was done with all the scanning. I did have one issue with it though that was strange. I don't use the normal startup on the program because I don't like hitting the Windows authorization every time I reboot so I have it set as a task to start with Login and set to run with highest privileges. This way it starts without user interaction. When I turned on the debug it would not run from the task and just hung in task manager and I would have to kill it but if I ran it from the normal shortcut or from the exe itself it would run and the debug file was created.

Unfortunately it seems that running it from a task does do something different though I did check and the program seems to have the same issues with the items appearing and disappearing during the initial scan/startup of the program. I was hoping to get a debug file on both but as I say ... if I try to launch it the way it is set to launch on my system it will just hang if the debug option is enabled.

As for your other questions....

question 1: Yes and No ... I do run the Corsair link at boot but within less than a minute after starting, it is shut down. Also when I wake the computer from sleep it will launch Corsair Link software and run for about 30 seconds then it shuts it down again. I have to do this to set my fan to fixed 40% or I have issues with the fan. Most of the time the Link software is not running and the service is stopped.

question 2: If you are talking about have I rearranged the order of the sensors, they are not changed from the default. In the Layout, the "Fixed order" is checked. I have all but the 3 sensors I want to monitor on the Corsair section disabled and hidden.... I did notice this when looking though that

[attachment=1961]

A lot of the entries for the PSU are hidden but are showing as blank rows instead of what I originally hid. I guess those are just entries for sensors that the scan didn't find this time when it was ran.

 

[Martin]

Thank you for the Debug File.
I can see that there are really lots of errors in communication with the device, so that explains why all the values don't appear at the first attempt. The problem is that it's not known what sensor values a particular device supports/can return. So HWiNFO shows them only once they provide a valid value. When at the beginning there's a communication error and no valid value is received let's say for the PSU Fan, then this entry is not shown in the list, but in the next cycle when it returns a valid value it's shown. Once it's there it should stay there until next HWiNFO start and if there's another problem reading the value it's shown as grey. That's the theory how it should appear and what I would expect. However you say that usually a value is shown, but later disappears. This is something I wouldn't expect to happen, so please can you give me more details about how this looks like? Perhaps attaching a few screenshots of the behavior might be useful.

 

[JohnOrion]

Thank you for the Debug File.
I can see that there are really lots of errors in communication with the device, so that explains why all the values don't appear at the first attempt. The problem is that it's not known what sensor values a particular device supports/can return. So HWiNFO shows them only once they provide a valid value. When at the beginning there's a communication error and no valid value is received let's say for the PSU Fan, then this entry is not shown in the list, but in the next cycle when it returns a valid value it's shown. Once it's there it should stay there until next HWiNFO start and if there's another problem reading the value it's shown as grey. That's the theory how it should appear and what I would expect. However you say that usually a value is shown, but later disappears. This is something I wouldn't expect to happen, so please can you give me more details about how this looks like? Perhaps attaching a few screenshots of the behavior might be useful.

I may have worded it wrong but here is some screen shots of what happens when the program starts and I can open the sensor window.
First I saw this
[attachment=1962]

Then while it was still open and I was watching .. maybe a second or two later it did this:
[attachment=1963]

Then a few seconds later it switched to this:
[attachment=1964]

After all this was over .. it stayed as the last picture and will basically usually stay that way until I reboot or in this case even though the 3 sensors did show for a moment .. they didn't end up being the ones that were "finally" shown so I would restart this until the last picture has the 3 sensors in it and then it would be ok until I reboot (usually though I have noticed a few times where they will go away even after the first few minutes but that is rare and may have to do with the computer going into sleep... I haven't paid enough attention to that to give you accurate information)

So its not that any values disappear its the sensors seem to be removed after they are found like in the pictures above .. the 3 sensors I want show up but 2 of them end up going away.

I really have no idea of programming or anything like that but my interpretation is it scans for sensors .. finds some as in the first picture .. then it scans again (though not seen in in picture 2 because it found the one it first found) then it seems to remove what it has already found and replaces it with the new scan which in the second picture has more sensors. Then in the 3rd scan it removes what it has found again and shows the new scan which only had the one sensor and that's where my question first came about. If this is how it is working is there a way to have it save each scan and add the new items it finds and not remove the ones it can't find on the additional scan?

I probably have this all wrong lol I know Windows pretty well, I can do some pretty complex stuff with AutoIt scripting but actual programming is way past my knowledge so I apologize if I sound foolish

The more I though about it, I guess that wouldn't work because if the last scan only finds one sensor out of the 3 but it found all 3 during one scan .. it would only be updating the one sensor and the others would still show but like what happens on occasion ... the numbers have to be repeated and grayed because they weren't actual readings... so the ones it doesn't find in the final scan would just show a old value and never change.

 

[Martin]

Thanks for the additional information.
There is no full re-scan performed in each cycle, but it seems there was a glitch when multiple sensors provided valid/invalid values at the same time.
I tried to fix it now, so that values should not disappear once the attain a valid value. I have just released version 5.33-2910 Beta, so please try it and let me know how it behaves.

 

[JohnOrion]

Amazing... I have been dealing with Corsair for over a year and have gone through 5 versions of their software complaining about the admitted fan flaw in the AXi series and trying to get them to fix their software so that my fan is set properly to avoid the fan flaw. With them I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall... each new version ... nothing changes.

You and this software .. I write an email not really expecting much because I knew what a nightmare that the Corsair Link dongle is, and the issue is fixed after a day.... absolutely amazing.

Thanks .. it does act a bit weird at startup ... all 3 sensors I'm interested do show up but a few times the values for it don't show up .. but after a few .. they will and everything is good. I have restarted it 5 times and each time within 30 seconds to a minute all 3 sensors I'm interested in show up and function as expected with what you have to work with. All the blank ones in the settings now are showing too.

Again .. amazing.. I know I have said that a lot but .. again after dealing with Corsair for so long and getting nothing out of it, it's nice to see a developer that actually is passionate about his work

Thanks again for your time and very quick fix in the software.

 

[Martin]

Thank you
Yes, a value should appear only after HWiNFO can get a valid reading from it. After that, it should stay and when an error happens again, it will be grayed out. They should no longer disappear.
Actually I think that communication with these PSUs could be made more reliable in HWiNFO, so that errors when reading values could be substantially reduced. The code used in HWiNFO is based on some unofficial sources without any support from Corsair. I (and several other developers) have tried to work with Corsair to either get relevant information, improve support of Corsair products in other tools, or at least make our tools work together with Corsair Link software. But Corsair simply doesn't care. It's a shame. And their own software - I better won't comment on that But a lot of users feel better when they uninstall it...

 

[JohnOrion]

lol yeah I would dump the software in a second if a company like Speedfan could get access so I could set up a fan curve for my PSU that is controlled by temp instead of load. So far... no other product can set the fan speed on the AXi series and because of the flaw of the fan being controlled by wattage instead of temp, I'm stuck with their software but as I said ... I have it set to launch at boot .. (set my fan) then shut down...and the same when I wake from sleep to reset the fan properly. Even a program called SIV can't control the Link Dongle but if you have the 100+ dollar Link Commander Mini then it could but I don't want to spend more money on another Corsair product so that I can get the original 200 dollar PSU to function properly.

I do have a Corsair Keyboard and their software there isn't too bad ... I truly think its done by someone else because I don't know why there are two separate products. The Corsair Utility Engine controls a lot of their hardware ... you would think that instead of having to run 2 items in the tray (with the exact same icon) they would have added the Link stuff to the CUE program but they didn't. Since the CUE seems to function properly without very many issues... I think its made by another company lol. Corsair's hardware seems pretty good .. well except for the AXi series PSU's (but I guess they fixed this issue in the HXi series) their software is usually garbage. Then again, that seems to be the way with hardware companies. Asus is just as bad... their software usually causes more problems than it solves but their motherboards are pretty good.

At least now... with your efforts... I'm able to reliably monitor the PSU and know if it failed to set the fan when waking from sleep (which it will do sometimes even with the way I have it set up). The other day I didn't realize that the fan wasn't spinning and hopped into a game... Had my PC shut off because it overheated because the fan even under load never turned on. Now I will be able to see that without having to make sure that HWiNFO has "acknowledged" all the sensors. My secondary monitor is a "monitor" lol .. I use Rainmeter to display a bunch of values of my system and its always there but doesn't get "into the way" like the Corsair Link.

Thanks again for making my life easier