Linux 6.1 HWMON Nukes The Short-Lived ASUS Driver, Other Monitoring Improvements

Among the early pull requests sent in for the now-open Linux 6.1 merge window was the hardware monitoring "HWMON" subsystem updates.

Notable with the Linux 6.1 HWMON pull is dropping the short-lived ASUS WMI EC Sensors driver. This driver was introduced less than one year ago for reading temperature, fan speed, CPU current, and other sensors on various newer AMD/Intel ASUS motherboards. But introduced shortly after that asus_wmi_ec_sensors driver was the asus_ec_sensors driver that foregoes using the WMI interface to instead interact with the embedded controller (EC) directly. This ASUS EC Sensors driver not using the WMI interface proved to be faster, more flexible, and all-around better than the WMI-based driver. ASUS also abandoned that WMI interface moving forward with their latest products.

The ASUS EC Sensors driver is supporting more ASUS motherboards and with more sensors, so for Linux 6.1 that former WMI driver is being removed from mainline. Currently supported ASUS motherboards by the EC Sensors driver include the PRIME X470-PRO, PRIME X570-PRO, Pro WS X570-ACE, ProArt X570-CREATOR WIFI, ROG CROSSHAIR VIII DARK HERO, ROG CROSSHAIR VIII HERO (WI-FI), ROG CROSSHAIR VIII FORMULA, ROG CROSSHAIR VIII HERO, ROG CROSSHAIR VIII IMPACT, ROG MAXIMUS XI HERO, ROG MAXIMUS XI HERO (WI-FI), ROG STRIX B550-E GAMING, ROG STRIX B550-I GAMING, ROG STRIX X570-E GAMING, ROG STRIX X570-E GAMING WIFI II, ROG STRIX X570-F GAMING, ROG STRIX X570-I GAMING, ROG STRIX Z690-A GAMING WIFI D4, and ROG ZENITH II EXTREME while new motherboards are routinely added thanks to the open-source community.

New hardware support in this HWMON pull is the Aquacomputer High Flow Next water cooling pump now being supported by the Aquacomputer driver.

There are also new HWMON drivers for the MAX31760 fan speed controller, TEXAS TPS546D24, and EMC2301/2/3/5 RPM-based PWM fan speed controller.

The Corsair PSU sensor driver for the high-end power supplies sporting a USB monitoring interface now supports the latest revision of the Corsair HX1000i.

The nzxt-smart2 monitoring driver has also added another new USB device ID for the NZXT Smart Device V2.

The full list of HWMON changes for Linux 6.1 via this feature pull.