i didn't see a sticky on speedfan and the first 3 pages didn't mention speedfan.

do ppl want to have physical manual control over thier fans rather than a software based option?.

is doing a basic 5v or 7v fix enough for some?

my computer has variable uses on idle the fans are off, web browing and stuff the fans spin at 30%, and then full on gaming they turn on and the temps shoot up from 39 to 59c.

speedfan only takes up 4m of resources and i guess my gripe is, it doesn't start minimized(if some1 can shoot a quick fix for that, it'd be cool)

is it the complexity to get speed fan started?

i thought about a zalman mc1, at 30bucks it wasn't expensive, and i admit i do like the cool factor in dialing up or down my fans. but what if i forget to dial them up when i game, then what? or i just forget to dial them down when nothings happening?

admittedly speed fan isn't compatible w/ all motherboards i've even faced this. out the of 4 computers i have now, 1 motherboard isn't supported, an old 754 sempron motherboard, rather than buy a zalman mc1 or 2 fancontrollers, fanmate style or 7v them i just decided to fine a cheap 754motherboard thats supported by speed fan for 20bucks.

i guess if you get a "wierd" motherboard it won't work other than that i see no flaws in this software, plus it's free.

I use hardware control because it's OS-independent and instantly available from power-up, no login or anything required. It won't crash, it won't get bugged, it won't have or cause software interference. It will continue doing its job even in standby or when rebooting. In short, hardware control is more compatible and reliable.

If I forget to crank up for gaming, big deal. BSoD and reboot. Nothing's gonna break in a modern PC. If I forget to tone down, my own fault for living with the noise.

Resource use being next to nothing, that's not an issue. The issue is how software control is inferior to hardware in just about every way. As you said, the investment really isn't that much. Usually the only shortcoming is the lack of (proper) automation, which I'm hoping a coming model or a T-Balancer will be able to deliver.

Although I have all my fans (except the PSU's) hooked up to a fan controller, I still use speedfan as a temperature monitor.

Somehow it doesn't get good readings from my video card (I use rivatuner for that, also to underclock) but it does read out all other components.

The "downside" of only having a hardware fan controller (as opposed to software controlled fans) is that you have to manually change the settings when needed. In my setup however, there is no need to do so, so they stay at the lowest RPM all the time.

SpeedFan is a wonderful program. If your motherboard supports enough software-controllable headers, it's really the best approach. That said, I do augment it with NMT-3 hardware controllers, to provide smoother and more automatic speed reductions.

The failure mode of SpeedFan is safe: if it fails, the fans run too fast, not too slow. At boot-up, the fans run full speed, which is louder than necessary, but not really a problem. After all, if the noise bothers you, you're likely to investigate and fix the problem...

Configure - Options - Start Minimized - OK

You'll still see it pop up on the screen for a second or so but it will automatically minimize when it is done loading.

I prefer Speedfan over manual voltage because the flexibility to hit the exact RPMs I want at the bottom end and having variable speed fans.

I tend to use both Speedfan and 5v or 7v cabling in the same system as I usually have more fans than the MB will allow speedfan to control.

From a purely noise viewpoint, it's much easier on the ears to have the voltage to the fans rise gradually when using an auto-control. From my experience, Speedfan is deficient in this respect. Speedfan waits too long to increase the voltage (as the temperature reaches the set point). Then right as the temperature starts to get too hot, Speedfan quickly rises the voltage. This quick rise in voltage/rpms......is very audible to me, much more so than a gradual voltage/rpm rise.

On the other hand.....a NoiseMagic NTM-3 controller, starts to raise the voltage as soon as 28C is exceeded......in amounts of .1C, all the way to 12V. By the time the fan has maxed out, you are not particularly aware of the rising noise level. I like this sort of fan speed control. It is not as annoying as a Speedfan system.

Configure - Options - Start Minimized - OK

thx!

I've seen that complaint before but I can only assume it comes from people that don't know how to properly configure speedfan or people that got unlucky and got a motherboard that isn't speedfan friendly.

On the DFI nF4-DAGF motherboard speedfan will control through the full range from 0 to 100 percent. The fan I was most concerned with would stop at 15% and start at 20%. If you want it to move slowly to be less noticeable you need to go:

Configure - Options - Delta Value For Fan Speeds = x% - OK

I tried 5% and it was to fast. I tried 3% and it was reasonable, 2% was better, I finally set it at 1%.

I live in a heavily conditioned environment, small apartment with central heat and air. My ambient temp doesn't vary much at all.

On a Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe I only get control in a restricted range. I don't have the PC on so I don't remember the exact percentage but it is something like this:

0 to 35% give random RPMs in the top third of the fans full speed
35 to 40% give random rpms near the middle of the fans speed
41% to 100% give graduated control with some where in the 40 to 50% range having the lowest RPM of any possible choice from 0 to 100.

If you have the full range of response, a medium to high speed fan, and a steady ambient 1% delta is fine.

If you have a less controlled environment or insufficient airflow for your equipment even at 100% voltage a 2% or 3% delta might be needed.

The other big tweak to that is before you are sure about the settings and you are playing with 2 or 3% you should pay strong attention to how these settings affect the behavior:

Configure - Temperatures - X and Configure - Fans/Speeds - X (not sure on the second one there as I'm unfortunately on a PC that doesn't allow speedfan to control a fan.

The concepts here are:

Setting a min and max speed for each fan
Setting a mid and max temp for each temp monitored
Setting a relationship from each temp to none, one, or more than one fans.

On a full range motherboard your min speed might be 0% or it might be 1 to 5% above the stall speed. On the DAGF I tried 0% for a while but finally decided that setting the minimum to anything in the 17 to 20% range was fine, so I picked a min percent that gave me a round RPM number just for the fun of seeing the RPM I wanted.

On the Asus I set the min % to the actual lowest RPM I could achieve with speedfan changing the percentage 1% at a time and watching for the lowest RPM number.

Setting the high percentage is usually going to be a personal preference but if you bought cheap fans (which tend to have higher RPMs at 12v) you would choose a lower max percentage. If you have Nexus fans you might actually use 100% as your max.

In addition you should think of each fan as having 4 states with speedfan.

Min RPM
Variable RPM
Max chosen RPM
100% RPM

The separators for those states are the two temps your choose and the max RPM you choose.

The "desired" temp is the threshold between Min RPM and Variable RPM

The "warning" temp is the threshold between Variable/max chosen RPM and 100% RPM

myself I buy cheap fans so the warning temp is an emergency option I never ever want to use. But for those people who buy fans such that the full 12v operation is still bearable the "warning" temp gives you much more flexibility on how complex the fan speed curve will be.

Depending on your usage pattern, choice of fans, settings, etc you might actually get in a situation where speed fan will move a fan up slowly without ever hitting the 3rd state (your chosen max RPMs).

Generally only the CPU fan needs a wide range of speeds.

Intake fans or fans specifically to cool a hard drive should be on all the time and shouldn't need much range in RPMs.

Exhaust fans can usually be fixed RPMs as the PSU fan is thermally controlled and in most cases is part of the exhaust flow.

If you only have 2 fan headers and you are measuring 5 temps with speedfan you will usually tell speedfan to tie fan RPMs to a single temp. The CPU fan header really doesn't need to be related to anything other than the CPU temp.

On a really good speedfan/motherboard combo you end up with 8 temp sensors with only a single core CPU and one hard drive and you can control 3 or more fans. The number of combinations of settings you can get going in speedfan is arbitrarily large.

It's not fire and forget and it isn't perfect but you can sure as heck get speedfan to do some wonderfully complicated fan control.

Speenfan is a very unique program......frankly I don't know how the author can do it properly, keeping it up-to-date, and free. The problems this program faces......there are no hardware standards concerning on-board sensors, and fan control. So when you buy a particular MB, there's no guarantee Speedfan will work with it. Actually there are many reasons I buy a certain board......compatability with Speedfan is maybe the last reason on the list.

Every tine I've tried to use Speedfan to regulate fan speed, it either did not work at all, or worked poorly. That's why I rely on a separate hardware-based fan controller.....such as an NTM-3. There are no surprises, and I can buy any mother-board, knowing I can get an auto-fan control working well.......unlike other solutions (Speedfan).

If you buy only certain boards with a track-record of working with Speedfan, you'll probably be ok. For the rest of us, a hardware controller like an NTM-3 is more certain of success.

Thanks for that! I didn't know about this option, which is pretty well hidden in the UI. The default is 10% which is way too high for quiet systems.

I've complained about SpeedFan's abrupt speed changes in the past, as well as its lack of hysteresis. I've just now set the delta to 1% on my system, and will see if that works well.

The default was so high because prior to P4 throttling you could fry a CPU by leaving the fan off or running too slowly.

The programmer for speedfan has to cover his rear so some idiot doesn't fry a CPU and then try to blame him no matter how many warnings he puts in the installer or the help files.

Nowdays with P4, K8, Core, Core 2, etcetera all having one or more thermal triggers you don't have to be quite as careful about it.

I'd say a 5% default would still cover his rear nicely and 3% would be a good default for joe average. I left it at 2% on my dad's PC just for the safety factor.

It'd be even nicer if the settings had a Delta up and Delta down. I'd set Delta down for 3% and up for 2% or maybe 2% down and 3% up depending on my desire for protecting the equipment vs keeping it silent.

Oh, and on the nicer motherboards you can set a fan speed in the BIOS and then have speedfan override the BIOS when it loads.

You could for example have the CPU fan set at 50% during the boot process and have Speedfan throttle it back down once the OS is loaded.

It gives you the best of both worlds between hardware fan control and software fan control without buying a stand alone hardware fan controller.

It's probably worth noting that the fans I'm controlling are 70mm or 80mm (stock CPU heatsink fans). If you are using 92mm or 120mm fans on speedfan you'd be wanting a lower percentage for the fan delta.

FWIW, I've switched motherboards since this thread was last active and on my new system I have this set at 3%. I had it set at 1% for a few weeks then decided 2% was better. I could probably leave it at 2% in the winter but I have my 100% fan speed triggers set tight enough to cover any benchmarking and gaming I do and at 2% it allows the heat to ramp up enough that I notice the quick jump from 60-80% to 100% and back more than the changes between 20% and 80%.

If I ever get a better heatsink I'll definitely turn it back down.

I use Speedfan for CPU and System/Case fans and one of CPEmma's thermistor controllers for fans that cool hard disks.
In my latest build - Antec P182 case (Nexus 120mm fans), GA-EP35-DS3P mobo and E2160 with a Ninja + Rev B, Speedfan controls the two rear case fans (no fan on the Ninja) as the CPU fan and the System fan which is the middle input fan while the bottom chamber fan is thermistor controlled.
Speedfan works well with 3 pin fans in 4 pin sockets.
CPEmma's controller speeds up the fan as needed.

I like the auto cpu under/overclock ability.

if a mobo companies could pay a small endorsement fee to SF and support it via hardware standards then thy could put a speedfan supported logo on the box , that would be awesome!

u know what is sad? most of my fans are connected to the power supply and i cant check them out.. only the ones that are connected to the mobo

I use SpeedFan for monitoring temperatures and speeds, but don't use it to control speeds simply because I don't ever want my fans to change speeds. For the same reason, I don't like hardware controllers that leave knobs outside the case.

I want my fans to run at one constant speed no matter what the computer is doing. This way, the system will never draw attention to itself by changing - it's easier to tune out a constant noise than a slightly quieter one which changes. Because of this, I'm willing to spend more time tuning my system to make sure that it's thermally safe at all load levels. If the BIOS will let me set a constant speed, I'll go with that. Otherwise, I'll use resistors, 5v/7v tricks, or Zalman FanMates.

However I go about it, the end result is that my computer will always sound the same. I don't have to worry about bumping a switch or accidentally turning a knob and ending up with the cooling doing something unexpected. If I change operating systems or reinstall, I don't have to do any fiddling in software to keep my computer quiet.

I set everything up once, and leave enough headroom for a hot day. After that, my computer will always stay cool, never sound different, and won't require any interaction from me to make sure the cooling is adequate for the current task.

Sometimes I install speedfan on a PC that it can't control fan speeds on just to look at the HD Smart data.

Oh and if none of the above settings get you working on Speedfan controlling a specific fan try

Configure - Advanced - Choose a chip from the dropdown menu - read below:

Often the chip that controls a fan based on bios settings will have a name like IT8712F-J at $228 on ISA if you switch to that in the drop down you should see a ton of settings in the bottom section. The ones you are looking for are:

PWM 1 mode
PWM 2 mode
and so on

You want to click on one of these to highlight it then change the drop down menu at the very bottom to say Software controlled leave the "remember it" box empty if you are just trying it. If it works the way you want come back and check that box to make the setting stay. If it isn't checked the setting will revert back to what it was before you changed it the next time the software starts.

If you configure the Startup shortcut so that Speedfan loads minimized as well, you don't even get that quick "flash" of the SF window.

(In XP) Start > All Programs > Startup > Right-click SpeedFan > Properties > Set "Run" option to "Minimized" > OK

I honestly don't know when but at some point in the past I started playing a newer game and moved this setting to 4%. It's been that way so long I have no idea when it was changed.

If I could have a separate percentage for up and down I'd probably do 3% up and 5% down. Even at 2% the up isn't too slow. It never overheats but when I shut down a game and all the music/sound effects stop it takes forever at 2% to slow down the CPU fan even though the heat is dissipated in a few seconds after the game is closed.

I have the stock AMD cpu fan set to a min of 29% and a max of 85%. 29% makes the CPU fan idle at about 690RPM and 85% is about 2800RPM though if I hear it at that RPM much I start checking for a failed case fan or a virus or some such. Honestly I haven't had the case open in over a year so it must never get loud enough to notice.

In my opinion a silent is a system that is inaudible within a certain distance or a system thats not distracting.

I found out that a {call a component which has a fan} fan that's ramping up is distracting. I like a noise which is always the same so i use a hardware controller. Software is something i dont trust. When software fails it starts doing weird things. Hardware just stops/smokes so you notice when its not functioning properly.

That are the main reasons i switched to hardware control of fans (im using a Scythe Kaze Master Ace btw).

Holy necro-post! Also, thank you for finding it and bringing it back to the front. I've recently been playing with Speedfan and the post(s) by dhanson are extremely useful!

Gave up on it after move to Win7!

I'm still using it on XP but I expect they'll fix the Win7 issues eventually.

What Win7 issues? Been using the two in tandem for 1.5 years now.

Speedfan i hear u say ? Never worked here

On the contrary i have good experience with CPUID HW Monitor.
I rarely use it though i prefer hardware

I'm actually still using an older version of speedfan because I can't get the new one to install on this PC. Maybe it's my antivirus, maybe its some other combination of software. I just noticed in the speedfan bug tracker that there were Win 7 users that couldn't get it installed.

I guarantee you when I get my next boot drive I'll try to install speedfan shortly after installing the OS. So long as I can get any version of speedfan to control even a single fan I'll still use it.

It would been interesting to know with which hardware.


HW Monitor can actually control fans? May you explain how?

Better, i show you:

If you click on manual > 60% the fan will run at 60%..simple. It only work for 4-pins (pwm) fans indeed

+1