[Feature Request] Wattage

[MarekBeers]

I don't know how you can implement this with a varying wattage and stuff, but I removed my fan from my PSU and now control the PSU fan speed by temperature, but I think it's cool to have a fan curve of wattage over multiple components.

Combine multiple items for the wattage so CPU+GPU And make a curve with a custom end point that the user can set e.g. 300W (in my case a 3900xt and a GTX 1080)

I think this maybe can be a cool addition! Or not you tell me. xD

[Rem0o]

Well why not use temperature? Watts ultimately convert to heat, then temperature, which is what you want to control.

[sctanf]

Temperature takes some time to rise, maybe you want to catch the heat load before it hits. Wattage would be a slightly faster indicator than temperature, although it doesn't compensate for ambient temperature. Otherwise I see no benefit, unless your temperature sensor is hopelessly broken or something.

[Rem0o]

Catching before it happens? You'll catch more than heat, which will result in erratic fan speed changes. You never want to overcomplicate a control loop.

[sctanf]

I didn't say it would be a good alternative. Wattage fluctuates even more than temperature does.

[Rem0o]

@MarekBeers if you don't have a good case for your feature request, I will close this issue.

[MarekBeers]

As i said I had a noisey fan in my power supply so i replaced it with a normal 120mm fan but its plugged in to my motherboard for pwm control and my power supply does requlates the fan based on wattage but i dont have that funcunality anymore and maybe some other people also have this niche use case. And i dont have the temprature of the psu saddly.

And as said for the wattage spikes maybe implement a 1 minute average.

Maybe you dont like the idea and that's fine so you can close the thread if you want.

[sub20hz]

Is there any chance this could be reconsidered? I too am looking to control a custom psu fan that ultimately should respond to system wattage (or really just cpu+gpu wattage). This is the primary use case I have in mind where temperature sensors simply won't work here. I know this is a bit of a fringe use case, but wattage sensors would alleviate some serious safety concerns for those who mod their psus, which is really common in the SFF community among folks running those 1U flex psus

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On top of that, with higher and higher cpu core counts, I find that even average temperatures aren't simple indicators to use when tuning a fan curve for a particular noise profile, as opposed to just setting it based off of cpu package wattage. Similarly, when setting fan curves for case fans, I find wattage to be a very reliable indicator to use when balancing a noise profile. This could be particularly useful for people that are running high wattage hardware in absurdly small form factors, among other things. With raw wattage sensors it would be possible to define timed averages that suit case fan profiles more than any mathematical combination of cpu/gpu temps, which can never be as reliable an indicator for how much heat is being exhausted into the case.

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To add one more absurd use case where I relied on wattage for a cpu fan profile, I was gifted a 12900k and used it in a 4L case with a tiny noctua-l9i cpu cooler and had some interesting results. My cpu was almost always at 100°C irrespective of if I was pulling 45watts all the way up to 125watts of package power. While temps are almost always maxed, it doesn't always make sense to run the cpu fan at full speed when noise is considered:

In gaming or synthetic benchmarks that used 4-5 cores, physical heat transfer from individual cores is the rate limiting step, so setting the fan to 100% vs 50% provides only single digit percent improvements, despite a massive change in noise and only pulling 60 or so watts from the wall. In this case, I'm better off keeping the fan at 50-60% because I value low noise over small performance improvements.

In fully threaded benchmarks, setting the fan to 100% vs 50% results in scores that are much higher, as I'm able to pull something like 125-150 watts from the wall. In this case turning up the fan is a no brainer as the hit to acoustics is well worth the 50%+ performance improvements.

In either case average temperatures and single thread temperatures are >90-95°C which would make setting an appropriate fan curve that's optimized for acoustics a nightmare. Cpu wattage on the other hand became a simple and easy indicator to use to determine when it's worth the hit to noise to ramp up the fan.

I understand these are fringe use cases, but I'm sure there are others out there who have come across times where they are frustrated that they have to use temperature as a proxy for the amount of power being burned. Wattage is a reliable indicator that literally measures the amount of heat being dissipated, while temperature readings can vary wildly and don't scale linearly with heat/power.

[dr04e606]

I'm also one of those who replaced their fans inside their PSU's...

I have tuned my radiator fans towards silence, so they barely spin until the corresponding chip reaches 55C and only after that they ramp up. With such variability in cooling performance, the ability to create a mix custom sensor with CPU+GPU power consumption sum would be a much better way to control PSU fans.

FanControl is already great, but having the ability to use power consumption sensor data for controlling your fans, would make it even better.