bios settings

If it was me I'd lose the stock fan and get a Noctua fan running at a full 12v and be done with it.

timeless said:

lm having an issue with system cooling. long story short my CPU fan seems to drop occasionally in speed to 500rpm, lve never been able to get it to go full for some reason. and occasionally when lve booted its taken powering down once to get the fan to start moving.

lve read about changing the setting from passive to active to get the CPU fan to go on full (which ld prefer) but the only fan settings l can see in my bios relate to Q-fan and cool'n'quiet settings, lve been through every other page but cant seem to find anything about changing to active rather than passive cooling.

my motherboard is an ASUS M5A78LM-LX and my cooler is a Arctic cooling freezer 7 pro rev 2, l havent updated the bios as lve never been happy doing such changes.

From the motherboard manual instruction, you have to enable the Q-Fan to have options to appear.

M5A78L-M LX: Manuel & Document


For the Bios if you have installed the software from the Asus original CD (ASUS AI Suite), you should be able to update your bios while logged in onto Windows, which make far easier the process.

Plug the fan into a normal three pin header and then get a speed reduction resistor or a high quality fan that runs quiet at full 12v tilt !

timeless said:

Q-fan settings seem pretty limited. in fact originally l couldnt even get the fan to spin with q-fan settings active, only by disabling did the fan spin, tho when it did work l couldnt even get the fan to spin any higher than 1000rpm which was annoying.

that said lve not seen any options detailing how to just get the fan to go full whack rather than letting the pwm allegedly do its job which seems to be pretty poor in the summer months.

When you set the Q-Fan active to its low limits rpm and choose turbo Fan Mode in bios, you have to go in software Asus AI Suite & Fan Xpert tab to test/regulate the fan which is plug into the CPU Fan header, otherwise it can't know the PWM max speed it allows to. Then you'll have to manually set in software the RPM % / Temps C° of the CPU Fan .

But if you can't set properly, then yes grab a three pin fan and plug it into a PSU 4pin 12v molex to run at full speed (brand should provide the adapter).

This is what I do on my Asus motherboards.

Get the quiets fan you can get and run it 100%/ Noctua

Do this first.
Go into bios/boot/wait for F1 if error and set it to disable. You must do this because some keyboards F1 key wouldn't work until you get into Windows. If you get stuck you will be able to use a PSP keyboard for the F1 key and then switch back. Shut down the computer.
Now plug you fan into another fan header on the motherboard that is 12 volts.
Don't use the cpu header fan.
Boot the computer.

Now the fan will run 100% quiet and cool without any warnings.

timeless said:

after some thought, lve been contemplating using a 4pin molex to 3pin connector lve had laying around which was with a spare heatsink (Thermaltake Volcano) l have no use for no since lve no use for pre AM2 heatsinks. l guess connecting it via molex connector should allow the fan to use full speed and disregard all the pwm abilities it might be trying to access.

in which case, lve be interested in finding a temp monitor (other than ASUS probe) that can give off audible notifications when temps go over a level l can set. you see l like keeping an eye on my temps especially in the summer months.

Guess this alternate solution is working fine. Good on you watching this summertime temps coming along. My Pc case/ Cpu temps have raised slighlty in Less than 10 days by 4C° more.