It seems that this makes a lot of stuff we talked about pretty irrelevant, could this be the single most important asset for silence?

Watch the entire video before responding.

You don't even need the case fan controller with this or any other kind.

If you for some reason use more than one fan it's a nice feature I suppose. And yes very "revolutionary."

It's obviously a very sophisticated multi-fan controller, but Im not sure I would not call it revolutionary -- it's the latest, best, and maybe the end point (because who really needs anything more?) of an evolution that began a decade ago, with SilentTEK, AOpen's mobo-embedded fan controller, which was then unique, innovative, and a harbinger of things to come. It provided manual user control of many features that the Asus fanexpert2 automates. Asus did not even have a clue about fan control at that point.

I spoke with JJ at Asus this morn. He says fanexpert2 is on every Asus Z77 mobo. It probably won't be retrofitted on earlier fanexpert(1) boards, but moving forward, is likely to be widely implemented on Asus boards.

I'm planning an article specifically on fanexpert2. The most unique aspect seems to be its analytical ability to establish min spinup speed (I think that's what it really is) for each fan under its control and to remember it. This is something we've examined manually in fan tests for years.

Outboard fan controller makers are probably cursing.

Is it a replacement for quiet fans? I doubt it.
Will you still want or need to consider the acoustic qualities of the fans for a quiet system? If you're looking for SPCR-quiet, yes.

What i am sure it will miss and makes it unusable for some will be missing graphics card or hard drive temperatures. It's nice to have such system on board, but if your hard drive or graphics card will be baked because board thinks it's fine to run fans on low speed, then it will be a problem.

Exactly the same situation applies using manual fan controllers, low noise adapters and the like to hold down fan speeds and limit system air flow. Asus BIOS fan controls and Fan Xpert have been around for a while, so what they do is hardly revolutionary now. The Puget Systems Serenity SPCR Edition for example uses an Asus motherboard and a manual profile for the CPU fan. From what I recall, Puget set the manual profile in the BIOS and don't resort to using Fan Xpert. That said, Fan Xpert2 seems a nice evolution, and autosensing the speed range of fans is a neat touch. It prevents the situation where the voltage to a fan is set low enough for it to run but too low for it to start on boot up.

That is why i use bigNG+Speedfan in one system and aquaero 5 LT + OHM in other system. It would be a nice replacement if it could get these 2 extra temperature measurements too. Hard drives through SMART (UEFI uses it, so why not read temperatures too?) and graphics cards - well, Asus does all types of them, so they should know to pass this information to the fanxpert2 too.

Interesting and welcomed though it becomes more useful when it arrives on mid to lower end boards.
I can't say (with some good fan selection) that it's been a problem making a quiet pc even without controls like this as I've tended to go for lower speed case fans and just about every board out there offers reasonable speed control on the CPU fan. But nice to see anyway.

I've used the FanXpert feature (from AMD 880G chipset) for a while now, and unsurprisingly, I've been a big proponent of FanXpert since then. And know ASUS have me even more impressed with v2! FanXpert is the reason why I prefer ASUS compared to other brands. So I am really looking forward to the SPCR article about this feature.

I do have some expectations to this program, however:

- FanXpert 2 should be implemented in every single mainboard that ASUS produces. For some years now, I've never observed an ASUS mainboard that didn't have FanXpert however, so I expect that ASUS implements FanXpert in all their mainboards from now on.
- I hope that ASUS provides an extra one or two fan headers. Usually, mainstream mainboards only have a 4-pin PWM header for the CPU, one 3-pin header for the chassis fan, and on 3-pin header called PWR-fan (meaning no fan-controlling; the fan will run at 100% whatsoever). The Pro-versions usually have two 3-pin chassis fans. My hope is that ASUS provides two or more 3-pin chassis fan headers.

If they really do include it on a lot of motherboards then I'll love it.

Fax Xpert 2 relies on a new hardware component, a revised input-output chip, that currently is only present on the Asus Z77 motherboards.


Asus are going the route with their Z77 chipset boards of providing more 4-pin chassis fan headers. Some boards have two CPU (CPU + OPT) headers that are four pin only, and as many as four chassis fan headers, in some cases with individual control of each. What is not so obvious is that the 4-pin chassis fan headers are in fact dual 4-pin/3-pin and that 3-pin fans plugged into them can be controlled via the BIOS and/or Fan Xpert 2.

This news made me very happy.

This could have been done several years ago, do you hear that you lazy MB designer bums!
I see it mentioned that similar stuff has been done before, but this seems like a big step anyway - maybe UEFI plays a role?

..now hopefully the race begin to make this a killer feature beetween manufacturers

Will the settings be saved to the UEFI/BIOS? Or will it only run within Windows? If this was mentioned in the video I must have missed it.

Fan Xpert 2 only runs within Windows, and the profile it creates is written to the hard drive. The UEFI/BIOS settings are independent of Fan Xpert 2, and as before it is possible to just use the BIOS fan controls and not use Fan Xpert at all. The case for doing that would now seem to be somewhat weakened given the extra functionality and usability that Fan Xpert 2 offers.

How hard can it be? The parameters can't represent that much data - a few k perhaps?

It's not hard just at the moment it's limited to the top end Intel boards. Personally until it comes to more mainstream products it's not really something that's worth shelling out a premium for. I doubt the cost is much either probably very little. It should turn up on mid level boards in the future, but mobo makers like to keep nice bits for the top of the range boards, trouble is it's often a poor investment buying top tier for boards (I'm not suggesting buying iffy stuff just it's rarely worth the investment for most users). Then we can expect enhanced or similar types of control from other makers no doubt.

No, I really think someone (...) should have done this a long time ago. While we've had fan headers and some degree of reporting and control through BIOS - there's always been waay too little control options and waay to many flaws (3pin only running on full and so on). The MB never had any idea what I plugged into pwr_fan for example - intake/exhaust/radiator/circulation/component? This ASUS initiative (evolution?) is so blessed because finally we are getting somewhere. We're talking cheap components and basic tech here, shouldn't the MB easily be cabable to have total control of its fans and sensors. I agree with Mike that what ASUS did to check the fans min. rpm is quite cool (my words and excuse the pun), and yes 3rd party makers may loose some sleep over this, hope they find ways to get into this league. I dunno if ASUS is using the temp sensors to determine which fans(headers) affect which components how? Maybe only for a 'best suggestion' in the fan placement setup?

..and all of this shouldn't depend on the OS in my opinion, with all the massive amount of data&tech on todays (and yesterdays) systems, fan control should come cheap and complete.

Is there ever a situation in real world conditions when CPU load is heavy but GPU is not?
Isn't that why CPU load is an indicator for an entire system and that's why HDD and GPU regulation is not needed?

I talk about exactly the opposite situation - high GPU and average CPU load. That happens more than often - graphics card at full load at 75-80C, while CPU has only average load and it is at 50C. Normally, for 50C CPU temperature you would set maybe a 30-40% fan speed - but that is sometimes not enough when you get high GPU temperature.

Well,at 10:50 he talks about setting options for each individual fan behavior regardless of the general profile, so I don't really see a problem.

For example you could have a side fan, which directly blows at GPU, to have a set speed.

Are you fcuking serious?

Fan Xpert 2 looks great. In the Anandtech interview (around the 11 min mark), Asus says it'll be in all the IVB mobos.

Which I'm still waiting for...wasn't ivy bridge supposed to be released already?

Most Z77 motherboards are on sale for weeks now. IB CPU will be on sale next week Monday, only the NDA for reviews was lifted this Monday.

And about the GPU - what i mean that i would like more airflow in my system when i game (high GPU usage), but very silent system when i don't game. I can do that now with aquaero 5, but if there is no way to monitor GPU temperatures, then it can't be done with FanXpert2

This can be achieved with PWM based airflow control driven by the CPU temperature and there is no need to monitor GPU temperatures directly. This would be true for just about any motherboard with CPU PWM control and neither does it require supplementary fan control software such as Asus Fan Xpert/Fan Xpert 2. It works better if a PWM fan chain is used, particularly a CPU plus exhaust combination. PWM chains normally require a PWM splitter cable, but some motherboards such as the higher end Asus Z77 motherboards have two CPU PWM headers (CPU + OPT) which obviate this need. Where Fan Xpert 2's flexibility and functionality would help is in supplementing the CPU temperature based cooling with the ability, given the right choice of Asus Z77 motherboard, to balance the airflow and noise generated by individual chassis fans. For example, as demonstrated in the video Fan Xpert 2 would allow the chassis fans to be turned off under idle conditions and only turned on when the system load increased.

Fair point, but I also would prefer if the case fans had the option to respond to GPU temps rather than/as well as CPU temps. For my setup (i5 2500K at stock, GTX460 SLI), the video cards have a far wider temperature range than the CPU when playing games:

(Idle ~ Load)

CPU: 35 ~ 55c
GPUs: 35 ~ 80/90c

I think that the fan control software would be better off responding to GPU temps, instead of the relatively sluggish CPU temps. Also, I'm more concerned about the GPUs getting up to 80/90c, than I am about the CPU <60c. Wouldn't this be more suitable and accurate for a system such as mine? Also, having an option for the software to tune the fans to hard drive temps may also be beneficial for storage servers.

I guess what I'm saying is that it would be awesome to be able to set the case fans to ramp up and down with CPU, GPU, and/or HDD temps. Rather than just CPU temps as it is now.

Ramp up/down with CPU temps -- good for the majority of systems
Ramp up/down with GPU temps -- good for systems where the GPU/s are usually hotter than the CPU, or have a wider temperature range
Ramp up/down with HDD temps -- good for storage servers if you want to keep the drives cool, or at least maintain a constant temperature

Or better still, a combination. So for example the CPU fan still ramps up and down with CPU temps, and the case fans near the video card/s ramp up and down with GPU temps.

You assume GPU load implies CPU load (and the other way around), I'm not sure that always holds.

Yes. Lots... There's more than gaming!

Does it provide an API / is it programmable?
Being limited by whatever software Asus provides would be a shame.

And does Asus plan to provide some more fan headers on *all* boards? Some boards only have a single header.
I'd like to see at least two headers for top/rear fans and two or three headers for bottom/front fans. And one or two for CPU of course.

I would guess that the premium boards will always have more headers. Companies like ASUS attempt to have products at every price point and artificially excluding features is the way that they do it. The cost differential may be just pennies, but if you want to entice someone to spend an extra $20, $50, or $150 dollars, then the higher priced board must have more features.