# Fan Control for a Brix PC? [Solved]



## neogeo (Sep 16, 2022)

My main question: If there's support for variable CPU fan control in FreeBSD, could anyone help with pointing out a manual page or two?

The backstory/context:

After trudging along with FreeBSD 13.1 on a Panasonic Laptop and managing the base and port builds on an old Toshiba (eight threads, I think, but it's fairly heat-sensitive, limited to 8 GB RAM, and about a decade old) I'm looking at picking up something like a new PC. I haven't had any luck with the ASRock Deskmeet B660. It's a mobo/PSU/case combo with a relatively small form factor. For this  build, I'm also using an Intel Core i5-12600 and Silicon Power DDR4 3200 RAM (Model SP032GXLZU320FDA) with a Samsung SSD. I'm trying to troubleshoot this right now - it arrived yesterday. I'm waiting on the thermal grease to arrive tomorrow, before cleaning the oxidized stuff that was already on the CPU cooler, then refitting the CPU and CPU cooler and seeing if I can get it to boot then. I'm not sure if it's the RAM, the mobo, or something I can't figure out yet. It won't POST. The fans power up (PSU and CPU cooler) and the USB ports show power. There's no output on HDMI or VGA. My worst guess is that the mobo might not be compatible with that particular RAM, if it's not just a broken mobo. I'm going to try refitting the CPU tomorow, once the thermal grease arrives. Though of course it wouldn't affect the boot process up to POST, but from initial tests and some comments in reviews, the USB ports look kind of flaky. I don't really trust this hardware platform now. I'm hoping I can salvage it though. Maybe it won't need to be returned/exchanged/etc.

I'm trying to find something with a small form factor, but which could still be usable for normal desktop usage with FreeBSD. On the laptop, with 16 GB RAM, Root on ZFS, and an SSD for storage, I'm normally running  Windows 10 and alternately openSUSE in a VM. It works out, though it's kind of cramped lol. I'd like to find something that could be usable for port builds, too. As a sort of a benchmark, I'm hoping to find something that could build a Chrome-like browser in under two days' time lol. I'm using Firefox albeit, but I'd like to take a look at what they're using in VS Code, etc, if the builds could complete in a reasonable amount of time. After trying out some small-form-factor builds with the PC builder at Newegg, I'm looking at the Gigabyte BRIX GB-BRR7H-4800-BWUS "little box" PC as a possible all-in-one sort of desktop machine. This BRIX machine would use an AMD Ryzen R7-4800U.

Why I'm asking about fan control: Looking at reviews of the BRIX, it looks like the BIOS may not be controlling the fan rate in that model. In the reviews, a number of Linux users have mentioned concerns about the fan being noisy and afaict running at a single constant speed. Being more familiar with FreeBSD on a laptop so far, I'm not aware of what may be available for this in FreeBSD. Before trying to guess this out with apropos, I thought it might help to ask here at the forums.

Nico Cartron has written about installing FreeBSD 13 on an Intel NUC box. While there may not be many alternatives with a similar form factor for an AMD architecture, I thought it might not hurt to look at an AMD this time. Whether or not I can salvage the ASRock build, maybe a Brix could be useful as a normal desktop in kind, on an AMD platform tho.


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## VladiBG (Sep 16, 2022)

Press “Del” during device start up to enter -> Bios -> Advanced -> Hardware Monitor -> CPU Fan Speed Control


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## neogeo (Sep 16, 2022)

VladiBG said:


> Press “Del” during device start up to enter -> Bios -> Advanced -> Hardware Monitor -> CPU Fan Speed Control


I'm not sure if that's available on the Brix. One reviewer commented that it has a pretty limited BIOS - from the manuals, it doesn't look so limited though.

If it is that simple, will take a look, thx. Glanced at the manuals. From the screenshots, maybe there's more to it than the reviews indicated


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