Gigabyte GA-x58a-Extreme (or UD5) CPU fan speed control?

[chinesestunna]

Hi all,

I have an ESXi box built around the GA-x58a-Extreme board, basically same as the plain-jane UD5 board. I have the "CPU Smart Fan Control" enabled in BIOS and "CPU Smart Fan Mode" set to auto (also tried voltage and PWM) but the CPU fan will only spin at full speed despite the system temps are low (around 24C right now) and CPU temp is fairly low as system is idling.
I did some research and it seems the only way to control SmartFan speed is with the EasyTune but since I'm running ESXi 5 I can't install that program.
Does anyone have any ideas how to lower the fan speed? The loud 100% speed hum is starting to get to me. The heatsink/fan is a Corsair A50 with the stock Corsair 4pin PWM fan.

[wazza300]

i thought it would work being a pwm fan,you could try plugging it into syst 1 fan header as it usually runs at a lower voltage than the cpu fan header which will result in a lower fan speed

[chinesestunna]

i thought it would work being a pwm fan,you could try plugging it into syst 1 fan header as it usually runs at a lower voltage than the cpu fan header which will result in a lower fan speed

That's what I figured too, but strangely this board acts opposite of what my MSI board in another system does, the MSI would spin fan at full speed at post and then immediately lower it to minimum speed unless chip gets hot. This board would start at minimum speed and on POST would spin fan up full speed and keep it there...

Weird