Potential workaround for controlling the 3rd fan on the EVGA 3xxx series with MSI Afterburner.

Hi everyone.

A quick primer for those who may not be in the know. MSI Afterburner is unable to control the 3rd fan on the 3xxx series since EVGA has their own proprietary fan control. EVGA Precision X is necessary for this. The issue is, Precision X is generally unreliable and the two programs conflict with each other if they are running at the same time.

I think I have found a reliable way to control the 3rd fan though!

1. Completely quit MSI Afterburner
2. Start Precision X
3. Click the button near fan control to link all 3 fans together.
4. Increase the fan speed from 0 to some random amount.
5. Completely close Precision X
6. Open Afterburner and move the fan speed value to some random value.
7. Check your case and you'll notice all three fans moving.

Note: This does not last through restarts. You'll need to repeat the process if you restart (and probably between log outs). I don't sleep or hibernate my computer so I don't know if it stays through those.

Lat note: I am on the latest release of Precision X, Geforce Drivers, and am using MSI Afterburner 4.6 Beta 4 (this is critical).

 

Let me give you a little advice. Remove any and all EVGA software from your PC. It's going to do nothing but cause issues. It causes stutters, uses way too many cpu cycles, and will leave your fans at 0 intermittently and unless you are monitoring that's dangerous. It will also crash and leave the icon in the tray and you won't know it's gone.

While I'm at it let me just say do not buy EVGA cards since they refuse to supply a working fan controller via software and their bios files are wanting as far as cooling the cards properly alone. Practically speaking there was no reason for EVGA to deviate from the reference design as far as cooling. Yes we have icx and we can see the temps but they gave us no practical way to control our fans.

While I appreciate your solution -- it's cumbersome and not really a good one. I've been trying to solve this for years and I'm finally going to solve it by purchasing a gpu from another company and using MSI Afterburner. Afterburner works and Precision is not something I will ever install on my machine again.

 

I definitely do not like Precision X and am only "using it" it get this solution to work, as janky as it is. And to clarify, Precision X is not even running in the background. This work around works with Precision X completely not running.

 

Would this be the same on the Asus TUF 3080 OC with three fans? Or does AB already work for that one and this issue is something specific to the EVGA fan controller?