jo1 wrote:Ahhh now I understand what those pictures mean!!! Thank you! Where can I find information about what % PWM speeds motherboards can reach?
Asus using fanXpert dont have a limit, meaning it can reach 0% pwm, the pictures that you see is the fans being ran on FanXpert2 on a Asus mothebroard (some are Asus GENE VI and other son Asus H170 Pro gaming, but its the same). Now on pure bios.... on asus is hard to say, as it has very high restrictions until you run QFan tunning (a similar wanna be FanXpert but on bios), if the fan is read correctly in the testing, it can reach as low as the bios tested, here is where its tricky, for example the Scythe Ninja 4 fan the lowest i was able to reach with bios was around 700rpms, but with fanXpert2 i was able to reach 400rpms, so in this particular case the bios didn't allow to reach as low as FanXpert can, that said not all fans behave the same, thus the results do vary from bios to fanxpert, also remember bios are change and sometime upgraded, so i cant tell you fully how it will behave, for this reason i no longer use Asus on as my main mobos, i prefer AsRock but you need to understand how it work, for the average user Asus is a better choice.
Now either of those cooler will handle an i3 very easily even under heavy load, probably even fanless or running the fans at 300rpms, really, an i3 wont heat much, the trick for a very quiet setup is you be able to drop the fans very low, i recommend you if you use Asus to go with FanXpert, i personally never had an issue with it, and i have done multiple builds on them, and their fan control is second to none, bios on the other hand, it might work great, or like my personal experiences not so good with all fans.
Now if you going to run linux, i would probably go with AsRock, as their bios fan control is very good, as long as you understand that in most of their mobos, they only have 2 true PWM/Voltage control headers, usually CPU_FAN and CHA_FAN1, the rest in most cases are only PWM, meaning CHA_FAN2, CHA_FAN3 are PWM only, if you plug a 3pin fan on them will run at full rpms or 12v. For a Fractal Design Define R5, i would probably change all fans to Noctua NF-P14S 1200 PWM and control them all with PWM Fan Splitter connected to CHA_FAN1, and use the CPU_FAN to control the cooler, and it would end up really quiet, as long as you enter the bios and setup the fan curves, that in AsRock have no restrictions, contrary to Asus.
jo1 wrote:How is the Asrock H-110 fan control like?
Checking AsRock main webapge for the mobo, it seems to have 2 fan headers, CPU_FAN and CHA_FAN1, and seems to be both autodetect, so they can use 3pin or PWM, as i said before, i recommend using PWM fans as you can use a PWM splitter and grab 12V from the PSU and use the mobo PWM singal to regulate the fans, so in a mothebroard like this, using the R5 (there are mini itx and micro atx versions, but seems very similar overall), i would use CHA_FAN1 to
Splitter or
Swiftech to all 3x
Noctua NF-P14R Redux 1200PWM.