Shuriken problems on Asus M3A78-T & 4850e

[chromis]

Hello,

I have some problems with my Scythe Shuriken fan. I'm running it on an Asus M3A78-T and a 4850e AMD CPU.

I'm not able to use the Asus Q-Fan feature, so it seems. When enabled, the fan stops and I get a fan error. I suppose this is due to the "PWM" functionality on the fan? I left Q-Fan off, and I can live without it since the system has worked well... until mid November.

Nowadays, every time when my system boots up I'll get a fan error. The fan speed is really low. At this very moment, the CPU temperature is 37'C and the fan speed is 450~470 RPM. This speed is displayed in red since the BIOS regards this speed as intolerable. It does not seem possible to change this setpoint.

37'C is not really hot, of course.

Today, I was annoyed by a very strange sound in my case. I opened it, and I saw the Shuriken fan starting and stopping at regular intervals of approximately 5 seconds. When i checked the fan speed in the BIOS, i noticed that the speed fluctuated between 0/NA RPM and around 1200 RPM.

I tried to connect the fan to a different fan connector on the main board (one designated for the chassis), and the problem disappeared. I have connected it back to the CPU fan connector again, and I'm not able to reproduce this problem yet, and perhaps it was a cabling issue or a strange fluke. I'll keep an eye on it though, and I find the event rather worrisome.

I have some questions,

- Is the Q-Fan issue known, or does it hint at a defect in the fan?

- Assuming that the Shuriken fan does temperature measurement and PWM adjustment by itself, is 450~470 a normal speed for 37'C (~ 99'F) ?

Since the fan blows air from the case to the cpu (and not vice versa), it likely measures the case temperature rather than the CPU temperature, unless it measures the temperature of the heatsink.

- starting and stopping at regular intervals doesn't seem healthy at all. Can you provide me any insight about that?

- Suppose that I buy a Scythe Kaze Jyu Slim as a replacement 100mm fan, then I would probably lose the PWM functionality but I will probably be able to use Asus' Q-Fan, assuming that the Q-Fan issue is due to the PWM control of the Shuriken fan?

If the above question is true, is it possible to remove the temperature sensor from the Shuriken fan? (apart from warranty issues ofcourse), assuming that there is such a thing?

I'm considering buying a replacement fan if this fan is not good, since I believe that the heatsink is pretty good, and since the amount of money for such a new fan is neglegable compared to lengthy RMA procedures, shipping costs and that kind of annoying things.

Thanks for your advice in advance,

Greetings,

Raymond.

[Shinigami]

Hi Raymond,

Thank you very much for your inquiry and trust in Scythe items.

Your mentioned problem is not really that big if I may call it like that. The Fan will just spin up as the BIOS is telling it to. Maybe you'd like to check the PWM definition on wikipedia for a better understanding.

The Q-FAN is programmed and will act as ASUS set it by default or you modified. The fan will spin up to a certain amount of rpm at a defined temperature of the CPU. So that is out of our hands and you should do the check in the BIOS settings or even update the BIOS, because they fix/change those things usually.


Q1: Is the Q-Fan issue known, or does it hint at a defect in the fan?

A1: The mentioned error while booting up is normal and you can simply deactivate it, because it is simply annoying and if you plan to use the PWM control, there is no way around. (Or maybe if you buy a super hot CPU)
Our manuals do state the solution for this problem by deactivating the BIOS bootup message.

The fan spins up and stops sounds so much like PWM. If you read how PWM works, you will understand probably why. The fan can not break because of the PWM function, it still should get constantly 12v voltage but the signal has a separate line here.

Q2: Assuming that the Shuriken fan does temperature measurement and PWM adjustment by itself, is 450~470 a normal speed for 37'C (~ 99'F) ?

A2: You have a misunderstanding here. The Shuriken CPU Cooler and the fan have nothing to do with temperature measurement nor have they any sensors on their own.

Q3: Since the fan blows air from the case to the cpu (and not vice versa), it likely measures the case temperature rather than the CPU temperature, unless it measures the temperature of the heatsink.

A3: The temperatures is taken either from the core sensor or from the motherboard sensor somewhere close to the cpu.

Q4: starting and stopping at regular intervals doesn't seem healthy at all. Can you provide me any insight about that?

A4: As mentioned above, this is how PWM would react, it constantly sends a spin up signal to reach a certain amount of rpm. Read the wiki for more details: Pulse-width modulation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Q5: Suppose that I buy a Scythe Kaze Jyu Slim as a replacement 100mm fan, then I would probably lose the PWM functionality but I will probably be able to use Asus' Q-Fan, assuming that the Q-Fan issue is due to the PWM control of the Shuriken fan?

A5: To be honestly with you, I do not see any issue here and ASUS Q-FAN is not as good as Gigabyte fan controller, which particularly means that the non-PWM fan will not be controlled at all and will spin with full rpm. As far as I know there currently is no function to control fans by voltage with ASUS Boards.

I hope this answers would help you with your further plans and solve the problems.

Regards,
Andy - Scythe EU

[Oli]

I am using an Asus board with Scythe Slipstream fans @500 rpm. Due to production tolerances these fans sometimes are detected with 470 or less rpm which leads to the mentioned CPU fan warning just because the rpm are less than 500.

I also switched the warning off as Shinigami proposed.

Concerning Q-FAN Shinigami is totally right - it only works with PWM fans - no possibility of voltage control with Asus boards and non-PWM fans at the moment.

[chromis]

Hello Shinigami,

Thanks for your reply,

I now realize the reason of my confusion.

This page: "ADI - Analog Dialogue | Fan Speed Control" describes the difference between 2 pin, 3 pin and 4 pin fan types. I was not aware that the functionality of 4 pin fans such as this Scythe Shuriken explicitly includes a PWM control pin. I was approaching this problem with functionality of a 3 pin fan in mind, and I was therefore under the really false impression that the "PWM functionality" mentioned on the Shuriken box must have been some special feature that was really built-in the fan rather than an extra control line provided to the main board. Oops!

The M3A78-T has a 4-pin fan connector, by the way.

A different reason why I was under this false impression is that in the end the main board/BIOS or BIOS settings are to blame. The problem now is that the fan behaves as if Q-Fan is enabled, but it is not. I also tried experimenting with the Cool'n'Quiet options, but those are for CPU throttling anyway, so they didn't help either.

I'm going to look for a BIOS upgrade for this ASUS board,

Thanks for your help and clarifications,

Greetings,

Raymond.