Question about Asus M4A87TD and M4A87TD EVO motherboards

[hrchelios]

Hello. I hope someone who had experience with these motherboards can help. I want simple and effective cpu fan and chassis fan speed control. I’m having a hard time finding suitable motherboard. I want to buy one of these: Asus M4A87TD(USB3) or M4A87TD EVO (and maybe Phenom II X6 cpu). I have read both user manuals but many things are unclear.

1. Is it possible to control chassis fan (3 pin) speed on M4A87TD(USB3)? I don’t see any bios options for chassis fan but hopefully it is possible to control that in windows with asus utilities like QFan or fan Xpert (?). Simple options on/off or min/max speed would be perfectly fine.
2. Are those CPU quiet fan options effective? Can I control fan speed in windows?

Asus M4A87TD EVO has two 4 and 3 pin chassis fan plugs and auto control so no worries about that. But for CPU fan there is slightly different description and only 3 bios options in motherboards manual, performance/optimal/silent. And similar question. Is it possible to adjust min CPU fan speed/temperature settings in bios or windows?

 

[alyoshka]

For 1 the answer is yes...... you can control the speeds of the the fans.....
For 2 The CPU quiet fan options are very effective and yes you can set the fan speeds in windows..... but it's like adding more weight onto a system so, it's more effective to go the Bios way when it comes to fan control.
I use the silent option and haven't seen my temps go above 40C on full load and nearly absolutely no sound coming from inside the case....
Yes, Asus does give the Min temp, trigger limit and fan speed options in the bios itself for nearly all the fans connected to the Mobo..... even the DC ones..... not only the PWM ones.....
Adjusting the speeds in windows works..... but isn't failsafe.... I would still vouch for the BIOS settings....
Or you can invest a little more and buy one of those cool pre-programmable 4 to 8 Fan controllers with the temperature sensors..... and that really does do a very efficient failsafe job....

 

[hrchelios]

For 1 the answer is yes...... you can control the speeds of the the fans.....
For 2 The CPU quiet fan options are very effective and yes you can set the fan speeds in windows..... but it's like adding more weight onto a system so, it's more effective to go the Bios way when it comes to fan control.
I use the silent option and haven't seen my temps go above 40C on full load and nearly absolutely no sound coming from inside the case....
Yes, Asus does give the Min temp, trigger limit and fan speed options in the bios itself for nearly all the fans connected to the Mobo..... even the DC ones..... not only the PWM ones...

Hi there . I also asked this in some other places and got opposite opinions in asus forum and later found this in manual "only CPU_FAN connector supports asus Fan Xpert feature". So.. can you confirm that you have this M4A87TD/USB3 motherboard and it IS possible to control chassis fan?

 

[alyoshka]

Yes, I can confirm, since I'm using 3 Different Asus boards in different HAF 932 &922 cases. Earlier even I was under the impression that you couldn't control the fans of the Chassis, so I just bought the front panel external controller bays along with everything else.
Later to my surprise the controllers weren't able to the power the Chassis fans as they take more voltage and so had to plug them all onto the board directly.
Though I still don't need to control the speeds of those fans since they are pretty big air blowers and go fast and slow automatically with my bios settings.... so I really never needed a windows program to let it do it for me.....

The utility from Asus that you have spoken about FanXpert Feature is available only for the 4 Pin Fan Connector, that feature does not allow you to control the other fans on the Mobo.
It's the BIOS that allows the other fans to be automatically controlled......
That's the main reason, I tend to stay away from the utilities for fan controlling in windows..... they tend to control only the PWM fans and not the others..... where as the BIOS has a threshold temp to change the voltages supplied to the DC fans too..... thereby increasing and reducing the fan speed according to workload and internal mobo temps....

 

[hrchelios]

It's the BIOS that allows the other fans to be automatically controlled......

First of all this mobo has no automatic case fan control. And I don't see any options in bios related to case fan.

 

[alyoshka]

In the HW Monitor Section of the BIOS it will ask for profiles.....
They actually control the way in which the other fans act, but on these boards, the CPU's thermal is managed Q Fan.....
So if you were to switch on monitoring and not leave it on ignored it will ask you for threshold RMPs and Temps....
Check and reconfirm....