Hi all,
first off, i'm new here in this forum even when not new to PC building and overclocking. Doing this since my first 486DX/2 40 back in the 90's so a bit of experience here - even when i'm not calling me a 'professional' since still a lot to learn. Thanks for any help that i get, i appreciate this.
I know this is the ROG Forum and my Board isn't stated as 'ROG' series, but plays easily in the same league with similar components, so i hope to get my answers here. If not, plz advise me to where i could ask my questions.
I have build a new system a few days ago with following relevant components:
ASUS WS Z390 Pro
Intel Core i9 9900k watercooled with 3 fans 420mm rad
32GB Corsair DDR4 3400
Asus GeForce RTX 2080Ti ROG Strix OC
BeQuiet DarkPowerPro 11 750W PSU
The System works flawlessly, got the CPU on 5GHz/4.8GHz AVX allcore on acceptable temperatures for everyday use.
To control the Fans, which are ...
3x radiator pushing out
2x case front pulling in
1x case bottom pulling in
1x case side pushing out
… i'm using the AI Suite Fan Expert 4 Tool, which gives me a bit more freedom to control than just UEFI options.
But using this, i realized some strange issues which i hope to get answers here.
1. CPU temeprature readout in AI Suite
The CPU temperature shown in the AI Suite differs massively from the readout of every other monitoring tool. Compared to the readout of HWinfo, Afterburner and AIDA it shows much lower values. I would expect it to show cpu package temp, but comparing it to readouts of HWinfo it shows more or less the lowest core temp, sometimes even lower on load - which can be 10° or more lower than readouts of HWinfo or Afterburner.
Questions:
Is this intended to be this way?
What kind of temperature is shown in the AI Suite display under 'CPU'?
2. Fan Control with AI Suite / Fan Expert 4
First plan was to control bottom fan and side fan with the fan connectors of the graphics card - but i realized that i have to use the GPU tweak II software to control those headers, otherwise they won't work. Since i wanted to stay with Afterburner for everyday monitoring and oc, i do not want to use another software which basically does the same stuff.
So i connected the fans to the board, knowing that gpu temperature was shown as an option to control fans with Fan Expert 4, which would have been great. But strangely the control doesn't work. The GPU temperature readout at itself works as intended and i'm able to see the actual temperature as number and of course in the graph, too. But the fans are not controlled by this temperature. I tried to change the control options in UEFI - of course there's no option there to control it by gpu but cpu, PCH, Motherboard and the external headers. It doesn't matter which one i use here, the result is always the same. When i select to control it by GPU in Fan Expert 4, it will not use this, but the selected temperature in UEFI. When i select a different option in Fan Expert 4, so let's say i selected 'CPU' in UEFI and choose 'PCH' in Fan Expert, it works. As expected, since i would expect the software to overwrite the UEFI setting. But sadly there seems to be no way of using the GPU temp option to control - which is strange since it reads out the temperature without an issue and i would expect the software to overwrite UEFI settings like it does when using a different option.
Question:
Is this something related to the software - and maybe being fixed in a coming update?
Is there a way to get this working as it should right now and i'm just overlooking something?
Is there a way to control the fans connected to the external headers of the graphics card without using GPU Tweak II ?
3. AI Overclocking
While this is a nice Option ASUS has created - it just doesn't work on my System. The predictions that are given aren't that far away though, but it seems to choose the wrong LLC/core voltage to keep it stable. Staying exactly with the given instructions and letting the Board control the Overclocking it tells me the CPU is able to go up to 5.2/5.0AVX with my configuration and dials in the values for it, but this never runs even near stable. Checking the voltages while stresstesting it gets clear that they drop much lower than the prediction shown in UEFI. That's of course why it's not stable. To get there i have to raise the core voltage massively or raise the LLC manually to very high settings, which is not what i want. On top the temperatures shoots to the roof (of course) when trying to use those predictions. When i understand the logic of AI OC right, this shouldn't be like this, since it should take cooling capabilty into account. And with cooling it's a strange thing anyway, since my cooling score changes massively all the time, varying from 165 to 190 all the time without changing something on the system. Since its a watercooling i wouldn't expect these massive changes and i double checked everything is working as it should. A changing cooler score should result in changing temperatures - which isn't the case. Temperatures are repeatable under testing conditions.
Since i know how to get the CPU stable and find my values for speeds,voltages and temperatures on my own, it's not that bad for me though, but anyway i just wondered why the logic isn't working on my configuration as it seems to be working on a lot of systems when reading on the net.
Questions:
Shouldn't the AI OC logic use values, that really fit on the configuration and use an OC that's maybe not top-end but stable?
Why doesn't it use a fitting LLC or core voltage though to keep voltages under load where it predicts them?
What about the cooling score - why does it change that massively all the time?
I would appreciate every hint or answer on my questions.
Thanks 🙂