Newer ASUS Motherboards To See Improved Sensor Handling With Linux 5.18
The most significant hardware monitoring addition for Linux 5.18 is the new ASUS EC sensor driver. The asus-ec-sensors driver is intended to ultimately replace the asus-wmi-sensors driver merged in Linux 5.17. As previously covered on Phoronix, the ASUS EC Sensor driver is more flexible and faster. The ASUS EC Sensor driver interfaces with the embedded controller directly rather than going through the WMI interface. This direct EC interaction is what makes it much quicker for reading sensors than going through the Windows Management Instrumentation and being more versatile.
The ASUS EC Sensors driver is intended to support reading the CPU package temperatures for the CPU package, PCH/chipset, VRM, motherboard, and water in/out temperatures for connected water cooling loops. Plus there is support for reading the various fan speed headers, reading the water flow meter if using a connected water cooling pump, CPU current, CPU core voltage, and related sensors that Windows users tend to take for granted. For now both the ASUS EC Sensors and ASUS WMI Sensors drivers will continue to co-exist but the WMI driver is deemed deprecated.
This ASUS sensor driver work sadly isn't from the company itself but the open-source community with the new driver effort led by Eugene Shalygin.
At the moment the ASUS motherboards tested to be known and working with this new driver for Linux 5.18 include:
- PRIME X570-PRO
- Pro WS X570-ACE
- ROG CROSSHAIR VIII DARK HERO
- ROG CROSSHAIR VIII HERO (WI-FI)
- ROG CROSSHAIR VIII FORMULA
- ROG CROSSHAIR VIII HERO
- ROG CROSSHAIR VIII IMPACT
- ROG STRIX B550-E GAMING
- ROG STRIX B550-I GAMING
- ROG STRIX X570-E GAMING
- ROG STRIX X570-F GAMING
- ROG STRIX X570-I GAMING
This list should continue to grow as more Linux users try out this new driver on their various ASUS motherboards.
Aside from the new driver, the other HWMON pull request changes for Linux 5.18 include adding support for the Aquacomputer Farbwerk 360 RGB effect controller, adding the label attribute to the ABI, and various other device driver specific additions.
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