Linux 6.5 Bringing Sensor Monitoring To Many More Desktop Motherboards

Among the many interesting changes that landed the past two weeks for the Linux 6.5 merge window, the hardware monitoring "HWMON" subsystem updates as a whole standout for bringing numerous desktop motherboards and other devices to now enjoy working sensor monitoring support under Linux.

Linux 6.4 brought sensor reading for many more desktop motherboards (especially ASUS) while the HWMON updates for Linux 6.5 have continued this recent, pleasant trend.

First up, the new HP WMI sensors driver was merged for supporting sensor readings on various HP business-class systems. The HP Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) interface is found on their various desktops and laptops for a while now and allows for exposing fan speeds, temperatures, current, and other data.

Linux 6.5 also adds NCT6799D sensor support for in turn enabling sensor reading on a number of newer ASRock and ASUS desktop motherboards, among others. This NCT6799D controller support is added to the existing nct6775 hwmon driver.

The ASUS EC Sensors driver meanwhile added support for the ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X670E Hero as a nice, high-end AMD Ryzen 7000 series motherboard. I have one of the X670E Hero motherboards and they are great and now even better under Linux thanks to the asus-ec-sensors driver support.

The nct6683 driver meanwhile has added another chip ID for the NCT6687D used by some MSI motherboards. This is known to get sensor reporting to work for the MSI Z690-A PRO DDR5 motherboard.

On the portable/handheld device front, the OXP-Sensors driver has added support for the Ayaneo 2, OXP Mini, and AOKZOE A1 PRO devices.

The Aquacomputer HWMON driver has been seeing routine work almost every kernel cycle to bring more product support to this open-source driver for peripherals offered by this German PC enthusiast retailer. With Linux 6.5 the Aquacomputer Leakshield is now supported. The Aquacomputer Leakshield helps report liquid cooling leaks and this driver now reports the liquid cooling temperature, liquid current / min / max target pressures, reservoir volume, and other flow metrics.

The HWMON updates also include support for newer Corsair 2002~2023 power supplies that support exposing various power metrics via USB. PWM values can also now be read via the corsair-psu driver. The IT8732F IC chip for laptops is another new addition to the HWMON updates for Linux 6.5.

The full list of HWMON patches that were merged for the Linux 6.5 feature work can be found via the mailing list.