The awesome feature of the AMD 8xx chipset that we never knew about!

[hunter315]

http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/19856

"Because the south bridge can monitor and power no fewer than five individual fans. Each one can have its own profile, and 3- and 4-pin fans are supported across the board.

All this functionality is offered for free in every SB800-series south bridge, with no additional hardware required. Motherboard makers need only to connect fan and diode traces to the south bridge and implement the necessary BIOS hooks to give users access to fan control variables. But none have."

I was surprised to read through there and find that no motherboard maker is using it yet, I would have expected them too since it would remove fan controlling from needing to be added separately to the motherboard.

What do you guys think of the built in fan controller in the south bridge, good idea, bad idea? Would you prefer that motherboard makes switched over to using that one instead, i would personally like to have that much control over my fans, it would let you find the perfect balance between cooling and noise.

 

[mosox]

Nice stuff, didn't knew that. At least they should put more fan headers.

 

[boiler1990]

I prefer hardware fan controllers; using software to turn up and down fans would be somewhat inconvenient. I'd rather just push a button.

 

[hunter315]

I think the precise control it offers might make it so you dont need a hardware fan controller, especially with the amount it could control in addition to the regular fan controller on the motherboard, you would have the ability to power a pretty significant number of fans with any fan curve you want.