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I've installed this program a few times over the years, and I almost always immediately uninstall it. This time I reinstalled it because I was considering a case fan that would be nice to have if I could control the speed profile (it might be very loud if ran at full tilt). The BIOS has an extremely basic control for throttling the fans - basically, below a set temp, it idles at the speed you pick, then above that temp the system slowly ramps up the fan speed until the temperature is back on target or the fan is at max speed. I remember AXTU having some kind of control over this, and it's received a few updates since I last tried it, so I installed it again to see if it was any different.

Not only is there no reason to install it (the controls are EXACTLY the same that the BIOS offers, just presented a little differently), and not only did it hang my system (I expected it to - the reason why it doesn't live here for very long), but this time it actually rendered my system unbootable! And I didn't even alter a single setting in AXTU! "Dr. Debug"  kept showing code 32, which apparently is a non-specific memory error, but clearing the CMOS got it to boot again.

Now, this won't happen to everyone. It probably doesn't even happen to most - I'm using an Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 (still kicking) and it clearly does not get along with it, but I see reports elsewhere of people being happy with it. If it fails like it did for me, you'll know pretty quickly - if it's working for you now, this will probably never happen to you.

IDK, I had to rant about it somewhere, this seemed like the best place to do it. Pretty cheesed about it - since AXTU has voltage controls, I was worried for a few heartstopping moments that it had actually blown something.

That does sound pretty bad - indicative of sloppy engineering, even if that issue doesn't happen much. I like ASRock's Z97 and Z170 stuff, but haven't had such good experiences with their older hardware. I wonder if the AXTU issues are the software itself, or some firmware problems that got fixed on more recent boards (or both)? It certainly wouldn't be the only thing they've fixed since then.

synthtel2 wrote:

That does sound pretty bad - indicative of sloppy engineering, even if that issue doesn't happen much. I like ASRock's Z97 and Z170 stuff, but haven't had such good experiences with their older hardware. I wonder if the AXTU issues are the software itself, or some firmware problems that got fixed on more recent boards (or both)? It certainly wouldn't be the only thing they've fixed since then.

I have an Asrock Z97 board and use Asrock's A-Tuning application for that sort of thing -- hadn't actually seen AXTU before. A-Tuning hasn't given me any trouble at all in two years, with the sole exception that it will sometimes fail gracefully - it simply stops running, and CPU clocks and fan tuning revert to stock defaults (i.e. slower and slightly louder). If that happens, I simply need to run the application again and it goes automatically goes back to my personalized clock and fan settings.

The interesting thing about AXTU is that it seems completely useless to me.

It will, for example, allow me to change settings that don't exist for my motherboard. I've tested this out and the settings reflected in the app don't actually change anything.

It's annoying because I'd love to base-frequency-overclock this ancient G550, but the board essentially has no BIOS options.

Are you running the latest BIOS?

Chuckaluphagus wrote:

synthtel2 wrote:

That does sound pretty bad - indicative of sloppy engineering, even if that issue doesn't happen much. I like ASRock's Z97 and Z170 stuff, but haven't had such good experiences with their older hardware. I wonder if the AXTU issues are the software itself, or some firmware problems that got fixed on more recent boards (or both)? It certainly wouldn't be the only thing they've fixed since then.

I have an Asrock Z97 board and use Asrock's A-Tuning application for that sort of thing -- hadn't actually seen AXTU before.  A-Tuning hasn't given me any trouble at all in two years, with the sole exception that it will sometimes fail gracefully - it simply stops running, and CPU clocks and fan tuning revert to stock defaults (i.e. slower and slightly louder).  If that happens, I simply need to run the application again and it goes automatically goes back to my personalized clock and fan settings.

TIL about A-Tuning . It looks like Asrock switched from AXTU to A-Tuning for new boards in mid-2013... would also explain why AXTU bites so much, b/c it likely hasn't received any development since then. I guess it's been getting bug fixes, but apparently not enough

just brew it! wrote:

Are you running the latest BIOS?

Yup

just brew it! wrote:

Are you running the latest BIOS?

Yes, the newest BIOS is from.... 2013. H61M-DGS is apparently options-free.

EDIT: Sorry folks, thought it was a response to my post. Oops.

Also, your options for motherboard fan control aside from OEM software on Windows is either Speedfan, or Argus Monitor. That's it