How to detect MOBO fans (chassis + CPU) for CoolerControl?

English Hardware
1

I have a clean installation of Tumbleweed (20250405) with the ASRock B650i Lightning WIFI motherboard. My CoolerControl detects all the temperature sensors properly, but it can only see the GPU fan(s), not the CPU nor the chassis fans that are connected to the motherboard.

I ran sensors-detect and got this result with no new fans found:

Sorry, no sensors were detected.
Either your system has no sensors, or they are not supported, or they are connected to an I2C or SMBus adapter that is not supported.
If you find out what chips are on your board, check https://hwmon.wiki.kernel.org/device_support_status for driver status.

However, that website appears to be dead.

I am looking for help with two things:

  1. How to get my CoolerControl to detect (and control) my CPU and chassis fans as well?
  2. How could I have figured that out myself without asking for help? For example if the solution is to install driver X manually, how could I have found out which driver?
2

Doesn’t this mobo have a fan/cooler control in the UEFI Bios? If the fans are not detected, make sure they are connected to the right connectors on the mobo. Also check that you don’t have any cheap fans without speed control.

What kind of app/program is this and from where did you install it?

lm-sensors didn’t get an update since 6 years. The project is dead
https://archive.kernel.org/oldwiki/hwmon.wiki.kernel.org/lm_sensors.html

3

Doesn’t this mobo have a fan/cooler control in the UEFI Bios?

It does, and I can see that the fans are connected properly and all. The problem is with the GPU running at 90+ °C and its fans at 100 % speed, yet the chassis fans are barely spinning at all because they’re only linked to the CPU temp. The my MOBO can’t see the GPU temp so I need an external software that can control MOBO fans based on GPU temps as well.

What kind of app/program is this and from where did you install it?

It’s this one: CoolerControl / CoolerControl · GitLab
It allows me to create custom control like “set fan speed based on the higher of CPU and GPU temps”. Or it would allow me to, if it could detect the MOBO fans.

4

I would return this mobo and buy another one. If it has a temp/cooler control in Bios but can’t see the CPU temp, it isn’t worth the money. If you can’t even see the temp and fans with external tools like CoolerControl, then the reported error from lm-sensors is correct:

5

I would return this mobo and buy another one. If it has a temp/cooler control in Bios but can’t see the CPU temp, it isn’t worth the money.

You must have misread; it can of course see the CPU temp, but it can’t see the GPU temp. Which is very normal for most MOBOs.

If you can’t even see the temp and fans with external tools like CoolerControl, then the reported error from lm-sensors is correct:

I’m not sure what you mean with this. Obviously the sensors were not detected, which is why I’m here looking for help on how to get them detected?

It all works perfectly fine with FanControl on Windows, so clearly the issue is somewhere on Linux or CoolerControl.

6

In late 2023, I built a computer for a friend and used a ASUS PRIME X670E-PRO WIFI. His sensors and fan control are not working but will be soon.

He can monitor CPU temp but CoolerControl can’t control anything, so I’ve been watching the driver developments.

His board is getting sensor monitoring etc with Linux Kernel 6.15 that’s due in June I think?

You can search here. Many B650 boards received support for sensor monitoring in Kernel 6.13 and 6.14.

CoolerControl works perfectly with my “old” Asus ROG Strix x570 board. I think it’s just a matter of having the proper drivers. I’m not sure if I used lmsensors or not. I’ll check when I’m on the computer.

Here’s his board so you can see what I’m talking about. Just search for “sensor monitoring” and look for articles about ASrock boards. Note that just because a board uses the B650 chipset, that’s doesn’t mean it’s included in the drivers. The boards have different monitoring chips etc.

ASUS PRIME X670E-PRO WIFI & AMD BC-250 Sensor Monitoring With Linux 6.15

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7

Find which monitoring chip you have on mobo. Then find needed driver.

8

According to my research your board uses a NCT6686D which is included with the NCT6683 driver. After a Google search for that driver I found a post here on this forum.

Note that the kernel website says for Non-Intel systems that you need to force it to load.

They included that link in the thread. They also explain how to ID your chip.

Here’s the thread about it.

lm sensors Asus motherboard ROG STRIX B450-F GAMING II

Also note that CoolerControl says this.

CoolerControl depends on Hwmon kernel drivers and
liquidctl to access and control supported hardware. Note
that your hardware is not guaranteed to be supported, as this depends on open-source
drivers and contributors. The following are the steps you should take to maximize hardware
coverage:

Install lm-sensors and run sudo sensors-detect. For more details see the
Arch Wiki. Additionally, you can
check out the official lm-sensors repository
for tips on manually loading unofficial kernel modules for hardware that isn't supported
out-of-the-box yet.
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9

According to

modinfo nct6683

driver is available.

To OP: enable it.

10

May i ask what is the current replacement of lm-sensors then, what can we use?

11

Off coarse you can ask, but a simple search on the github issue list does give a project status issue that will much better info.

12

i got confused, so how is the current TW reports temperatures if the sensors are depricated, i mean is there some new mechanism of doing so?

13

AMDGPU sysfs fan control

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14

deprecated…

Temperature sensors are there already in 20 year old PC’s so not surprised things are working.

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