MSI H81i PWM issues

[craigster1991]

I recently bought a MSI H81i motherboard and Noctua NH L9i cpu cooler for my mini itx build.

When putting it all together I noticed the Noctua 4 pin PWM fan wasn't being controlled on the PWM CPU header.

I tested an older intel cooler with PWM and it worked fine.

Weirdly, both work on the System fan header, which is also PWM.

I've spoken to both Noctua and MSI and they blame each other's hardware.

The cooler works in the System header, but not the CPU header and other PWM fans work in both.

Any ideas?

I've got the latest BIOS and I've not even got into controlling it via the OS.

I'm using the controller in the MSI Bios, setting the right temps etc and even manually changing the fan speed has no effect...

Any thoughts and suggestions would be appreciated!

 

[DRagor]

Can you change in BIOS which header gets controlled by each temp sensor? Gigabyte boards for example have such feature, so it would be possible to connect CPU fan to system fan header and set it to be controlled by CPU temps. Then you connect case fan to CPU fan header and all works fine. If MSI board allows such trick.

 

[craigster1991]

Can you change in BIOS which header gets controlled by each temp sensor? Gigabyte boards for example have such feature, so it would be possible to connect CPU fan to system fan header and set it to be controlled by CPU temps. Then you connect case fan to CPU fan header and all works fine. If MSI board allows such trick.

Unfortunately not 🙁

 

[DRagor]

One more thing. PWM fans can usually be DC controlled to. If your board allows that, swap CPU fan control in BIOS to DC mode and see if that changes anything.
Other then that, I don't see any other workaround. Your tests have shown that motherboard headers work fine with other coolers, so for me Noctua is to blame for it.

 

[craigster1991]

One more thing. PWM fans can usually be DC controlled to. If your board allows that, swap CPU fan control in BIOS to DC mode and see if that changes anything.
Other then that, I don't see any other workaround. Your tests have shown that motherboard headers work fine with other coolers, so for me Noctua is to blame for it.

I don't think this is a thing but I will definitely double check

UPDATE:
No as I thought this is not a thing with the MSI motherboard

If it is the fan, the only way to test is on other systems, right? (which I don't have... 🙁 )