Hey there guys.

Since somewhere summer 2006, I've been the proud owner of a Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4, and I've got two 80mm CoolerMaster Ultra Silent fans plugged into it, but they're not going at the speed I'd like them to. Now, I hear Speedfan is quite apt at this kind of thing, but the problem is, it doesn't support my motherboard.

Now, I've read the Recommended motherboards thread, and I saw that both my board's older brother and little cousin (GA-M59SLI-S5 and GA-M55S-S3) were in the recommended list, but not my own board.

I've checked the BIOS, and as far as I can see, there are no possibilties to change my fan speeds.

Does this mean that my board is entirely incapable of changing the speed of my fans? If not so, then is there any other program besides Speedfan that may support my board?

Thanks in advance

According to Gigabyte's page your board supports the BIOS level "Smart Fan" so you should be able to get at least control over the CPU fan (though you may need a 4-pin PWM fan).

As far as control the system fan headers goes thats up the manufacture if they choose to implement that or not. It's possible the hardware is present and it's just not implemented in the BIOS in which case a future version of SpeedFan could be able to help you out (or even a BIOS update). If on the other hand the hardware isn't present or configured properly for the fan headers then your a bit out of luck.

As far as I know SpeedFan is really the only game in town. It doesn't always work with the most recent boards but it's updated pretty regularly, I asume you are running the latest version?

I was running the most recent version like two weeks ago. I suppose I should've checked again before posting, but I didn't think they'd suddenly support a motherboard, about a year after it's release.

Anyway, I believe I have a 3-pin CPU fan, so that's probably not going to work.

Eitherway, I'll have a look at SpeedFan once again, and look at perhaps updating my BIOS. If I recall correctly, this board's BIOS has actually been made Open-Source, so that's something I need to look into anyway

Thanks

To control 3-pin fans on 4-pin connectors, your motherboard must have a switch in the BIOS setup. Otherwise, you might be interested in a fan controller (manual or automatic)

Hmm, well, I've updated the BIOS, and I had a look, and the CPU fan was controllable by both Voltage and PWM, but facilities for adjusting the system fans weren't present.

I think I'm probably going to take the fans and take off the little plugs, and then still connect the RPM wire to the motherboard, but put the plus and minus in a molex, to get them to run at 7v. Would that work so I can still see the RPMs on EVEREST?

Well, thanks so far

Definitely works, many fan controllers come bundled with a sort-of-Y cable which connects only the RPM signal to the motherboard header. Regarding the 7V trick, the general consensus is that you should not put too much load as you're feeding current back to the PSU.

Controllers are much more flexible, and if you don't need to control many indipendent channels, you can go for a cheap model (like the Fanmate); otherwise you can build your own: http://www.cpemma.co.uk/

I have a Gigabyte DS3, and I too cannot get Speedfan to work. My F10 bios only supports controlling the CPU fan. I assumed that Voltage is with a 3 pin fan and PWM is for a 4 pin fan.

Another note is startup voltage. I had an S-Flex 800rpm plugged into the mobo, and it never started up. It would always twitch, but never spin. I found this very odd. And even though the DS3 has four fan headers on the mobo, only three show up in Speedfan. Hmmmm. Maybe Gigabyte doesn't support fans very well.

The GA-M57SLI-S4 has a CPU fan header, power fan and system fan, which isn't a lot, but it does it for me.