Potential Corsair Link / Intel SMBus Issue

[JKeifer]

Hi Folks. I am not sure how to contact product development directly, so I decided to post a situation that I have come across when using Corsair Link with an Intel DX79SR mother board. I am not sure if this applies just to Intel-branded boards or others as well.

 

The problem I am seeing started occurring with the installation of Corsair Link including the current beta as well as the previous version. Intermittently, the hardware monitoring elements including, CPU, VR and memory temperatures would immediately jump to 124 degrees C causing several of the fans in my computer to race to maximum speed. Intel's IDU (desktop utilities) as well as CPUID, HWMON, etc., would also register the off-scale temperatures. A reboot of the computer was the only way to restore normal operation. At times, the mentioned temperature readings would also go to 0 or 1 degrees C and, once again, a reboot was the only way to restore normal operation. Ultimately, an uninstallation of Corsair Link was the only way to restore normal operation.

 

Below is an explanation of what may be the cause of this as described by the Intel developer that I was working with to identify the problem. His response is in reply to my findings after uninstalling Corsair Link:

 

"Thanks, that's good to know; it helps verify my sighting.

 

Some time ago, I was told by one of the ISVs that they had all gotten together at one of the European conferences and had defined the names for the Mutexes that they would all use when exercising specific hardware interfaces, so that their applications could be installed and run simultaneously. At that time, I implemented support for their SMBus Mutex, since this was what I was having interoperability problems with. Now that I knew I had a different interoperability issue, I contacted the President of FinalWire (the company that makes the AIDA64 application) over the weekend to find out the name for the Mutex that I need to support for LPC (ISA) bus transactions (this is the interface that we use to communicate with the eSIO).

 

Tamas actually gave me a copy of the entire list of Mutex names that they were using. Was I surprised to find out that the name for one of the Mutexes they were using was defined by me - and I didn't even know that this list existed before then! Just goes to show that even folks immersed in the industry cannot keep up with everything that is happening in the industry...

 

I am in the process of adding support to our stack for the LPC Mutex. Once this is ready, I will be re-releasing Intel® Desktop Utilities with it included...

 

To be honest, I had never heard of, let alone used, Corsair's Link software. Once I release the updated package, you should reinstall the package and see if the problem returns. If it does, then you can contact Corsair and tell them that they need to add support for these pseudo-industry standard Mutexes to their code..."

 

I am not implying that the root cause is the Corsair Link software as it could very well be Intel's issue and they may resolve it through a bios update or something.

 

If one of the Corsair gurus could pass this along to the appropriate development group, it may be of help later down the road.

 

Thanks for listening!