A plugin for Fan Control to add support for the Acer Predator Orion 3000 PO3-640 CPU and case fans. The GPU fans can already be controlled independently by Fan Control.
This plugin works by reading from and writing directly to the correct registers in the Embedded Controller (EC) on the motherboard. This approach is inspired by NoteBook FanControl.
Contains the source code from Soberia/EmbeddedController, used under the BSD 3-Clause License. The license and modified source code are present in the ECLibrary directory.
Warning
This plugin uses the extremely powerful and potentially exploitable WinRing0x64 driver, which may be flagged by Windows Defender.
Fan Control also uses this driver via LibreHardwareMonitorLib. Use both Fan Control and my own plugin at your own risk. Also see the Fan Control issue here.
Acer's own PredatorSense also has this driver in its program files, but I don't know if it actually uses it.
The initial release of the plugin is hardcoded to my machine, and will expect yours to be exactly like mine.
Unless you motherboard is exactly the Predator PO3-640, it's likely that this plugin won't be able to control your fans. You also risk overwriting random information in the Embedded Controller.
Check your motherboard model with the following command:
wmic baseboard get product
You can confirm whether your motherboard is compatible with my build of the plugin by completing the first section of the adaptation guide - check this especially if you have a slightly different model of the Acer Predator Orion 3000. Let me know if it ends up working so I can add your motherboard to the README!
If you have an incompatible Acer Predator tower, or even a completely different machine, you may wish to adapt the plugin for it.
Unless you have the same fans as I do (or ones with similar RPM ranges), this plugin will likely run them inefficiently or at limited speeds.
My fans are:
- CPU Fan: Noctua NF-A9, the one that comes with the popular Noctua NH-U9S cooler (rated 400-2000 rpm, tested 500-2000)
- Front Case Fan: Stock (tested 600-3400 rpm)
- Back Case Fan: Stock (tested 800-3400 rpm)
(The lowest steady speed I found on each stock fan was different.)
If you have a different fan setup, you may wish to adapt the plugin for it.
- Ensure you have the .NET 8.0 (or greater) version of Fan Control installed. Open the About tab in Fan Control. If it says NET 4.8 you'll need to download the .NET 8.0 version from the official repo.
- Download the FanControl.Acer-PO3-640.zip file from the latest release.
- In Fan Control, go to Settings -> Plugins -> Install Plugin and select the downloaded .zip file.
Important
You need to open PredatorSense before this plugin will work. I've obviously missed some initialisation step it does.
Configure PredatorSense to run at startup (as it does by default) and everything should work correctly. Re-enable the Predator Service if you've disabled it.
You can leave its "Fan Control" tab on the Auto or Custom setting, it shouldn't matter. The Gaming setting overrides this plugin to set the fans to their maximum speed.
If not, the plugin may not work. See the section above.
I have this disabled. While this should only change what happens before PredatorSense launches, try disabling it if you are running into issues. It is located under Advanced -> PC Health Status.
Open an issue and I'll try to help you solve your problem. Or enlist your local C# expert to look at my noob quality code. Or install Visual Studio, fork this repository and mess around till your problem is fixed, then submit your fix as a PR!
The project contains three programs:
- FanControl.Acer-PO3-640, a C# .NET 8.0 project that builds the main plugin DLL, containing the Fan Control plugin interace implementations and the fan speed calculation logic. Contained within the AcerPlugin directory.
- ECLibrary, a C++17 project that builds the ECLibrary.dll file, containing the third-party module to interface with the EC's memory across various files, the vulnerable WinRing0x64 driver, and my own DLL exports to make interop work in dllmain.cpp.
- TestApp, a C# .NET 8.0 program that tests the ECLibrary.dll file and can write to any EC register. Place the ECLibrary.dll and WinRing0x64.sys files in the folder
Plugins\Acer-PO3-640\relative to the built program.
I'm a noob to C# and C++. Don't judge the code quality too hard! Since I was able to build these programs in Visual Studio without too much effort, I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out. If you make any cool additions/modifications, submit a PR!
I believe that this plugin could be adapted to support any Acer Predator desktop, or any other machine which controls the fans through the motherboard's Embedded Controller (EC), including the many laptops supported by NoteBook FanControl.
My version may support other Acer Predator Orion 3000 desktops out-of-the-box, but you must confirm this first by following the steps in the file linked below.