I'm having a problem with my cpu fan speed and it's frustrating the heck out of me. I have a Scythe Mugen Rev B. heatsink with the included Scythe Fan fitted on a Core i3 550. When I first put the system together my CPU Fan RPM speed would idle below 500rpm (Using Asus Fan Xpert). After a month, the lowest RPM I could achieve was just under 700rpm at idle. During this time my CPU temps had actually lowered to the the Artic Silver compound maturing. Now the lowest RPM I can achieve is 1200+, yet my cpu temp idles around 22 degrees, my mobo temp around 24 degrees. I have Fan Xpert set so that it doesn't go above the lowest rpm setting until the cpu temp it's 34 degrees. Each time I calibrate Fan Xpert, it chooses a higher RPM as the lowest possible CPU Fan speed. I've tried using Speedfan but I was unable to get that to control the fan speed.

I started out with a nice and quiet system and now it's noisy. I have checked the fans connection and mounting on the mobo, all is as it should be. Please help a frustrated SPC Review member!

I'd concentrate on getting speedfan to work first, check for BIOS updates for the motherboard and if nothing else works I'd consider a fan swap.

OK, can you take some screenshots of speedfan and upload them? I'll give you a few screenshots to compare against in the next post.

screenshot of main speedfan page

next click configure and click the speeds tab


let me see your equivalent shots and then we will check the advanced tab and possibly change a setting.

Are Speedfan and Xpert running at the same time?

I am going to look forward to your online tutorial, I have never been able to figure out how to configure speedfan.

Thanks very much for your help dhanson!

I realised after my last BIOS update (on latest version) that I hadn't re-enabled the CPU fan control. So at least using Fan Xpert I can now get a lower RPM. However I still cannot get Speedfan to work. I've attached the screenshots as requested. I do think my fan might have a fault, it is making a noise that it didn't do when I first installed it a few months ago. You have to be close to it to hear it unless the RPM is high. I don't think the speedfan issue is related to the noise problem though, Speedfan didn't work even when the fan was functioning normally.

My motherboard is an Asus P7H55D-M EVO. When trying Speedfan I've made sure all processes related to Fan Xpert were stopped.

No I disabled Xpert when trying Speedfan.

OK, we know from that screenshot that you have a Winbond controller.

If you go to the Advanced tab in speedfan configuration there is a drop down menu. In my case the drop down menu has 5 choices but with any luck you only have one choice that says Winbond in it. Choose that and give us a screen shot of that window.

Oh, and if you want you can rename the speeds on the speeds tab. Click on the name wait a second then click again (don't doubleclick, make it two separate clicks). Then change the name as you like. You can see that on my board I have two controls for the same fan header and I've named them for how they correspond to the BIOS setting for CPU fan control.

The check boxes on that screen hide or show the percentage on the main screen of speedfan so later when you get things working you can hide any unused speed controls. I sure didn't need 8 controls cluttering my screen when my motherboard only allows one fan to be controlled by speedfan.

I have two options in the dropdown menu under the advanced tab. Winbond and Intel, I've included both although I'm sure the Intel one isn't relevant. Fan Xpert wont take the fan below 1200+rpm again. Strange how it works one time and not the other, must be a dodgy fan. Although from what I've read Fan Xpert isn't all that reliable for some people.

Winbond



Intel

OK, here is were the trial and error begins.

I'm guessing it's PWM2 mode we want to change but it could be PWM1 or PWM 3. If you click on one of the PWM mode lines it will highlight (become selected) and you'll see new content in the drop down menu at the bottom of the screen. The choices on mine are

ON/OFF
Software controlled
SmartGuardian

ON/OFF is useless (nothing but 100% and 0% fan speed if it works for you at all)

Software Controlled lets speedfan work

SmartGuardian means the BIOS/motherboard fan controller has full control and speedfan does nothing.

You'll likely have a different choice or choices. At the least you won't have SmartGuardian (I'm guessing Thermal Cruise is your equivalent to my SmartGuardian).

You'll also notice a box at the right of the drop down menu that says "remember it". Until you are sure you want to make the change you don't want that checked so the process is something like

1 open speedfan to the advanced tab on the windbond dropdown
2 click on one of the PWM modes and change it to so that it reads something it doesn't already (hopefully software controlled)
3 click OK
4 on the main speedfan page turn off automatic fan speed
5 play with the speed control and see if the RPMs change on your CPU fan. Test this thorougly some motherboards work in odd ranges. You may find 0%, 10%, 50%, 100% all do what you expect or you may find the fan stops at some random percentage like 17% and runs full speed at some other random percentage like 28%. Test the big round numbers first to see if you can get it to change at all and if so then play around with single percentage points and see how much range you truly have.
6 If the result of 5 is that you can't change the fan at all try going back to step 2 and change it back, then change another one and go back to step 5 to test again.
7 If the result of 5 is that you can change the fan speeds go back to step 2 and click the remember it check box on the PWM you want to behave that way
8 Once you have speedfan working at all then you get to go set your desired temps and speeds to work with what you can actually control and how you want your PC to behave.

This part can be slightly frustrating but with luck you'll get it on the first or second try on those PWM modes.

And the success or failure on getting speedfan to work could dramatically change your opinion on the need to buy a new fan or what kind of fan to buy if you do want to swap fans.

Oh, and don't give up, if this doesn't work we have more to try, this is just the most likely fix.

Also on the subject of "low temps" don't assume because speedfan says your CPU temp is 20c or -7c that it is a low temp. It's just reporting a number the motherboard is passing to the software. It may be that this number needs to be adjusted to be on par with reality. For all you know that 20c CPU could burn your finger if you touched it (ie it might be much hotter than reported).

Assuming you get speedfan to control your CPU fan you'll have some more work to do to figure out how hot or not your CPU really is.

Ok we're getting somewhere! There were 4 settings for each PWM mode under the advanced tab. Unfortunately none of them gave me control over the fan. But I decided to google what the difference was between the 4 settings (Manual PWM Control, Thermal Cruise, Fan Speed Cruise, Smart Fan III). I ended up at the speedfan homepage. Looks like the latest official release v4.42 doesn't support the chip I have (Winbond W83667HG-B) but the beta version does...

Beta 4 allows fan control (verified) with W83667HG and W83667HG-B, restores full access to ATI southbridges, improves PWM control with IT8720F, adds full support for W83627DHG-P and is much faster at start. A lot of other fixes and improvements. - Full Beta Info.

In the 4.43b there are more options under each PWM mode. The only one I found to work is setting 'PWM 2 mode' to 'Manual'



Minimum and Maximum values are approx: 0% = 400rpm, 100% = 980rpm.

Thanks so much for your help, I feel like I'm finally getting somewhere! You mentioned that the CPU temp reading may not be accurate, is there something I can do to determine the actual temps?

When googling, I also found this explaination for the difference between Manual, Thermal Cruise, Fan Speed Cruise & Smart Fan. As only Manual seems to work for me it's a bit irrelevant but it may be useful for someone else.

Glad to know you got something happening.

Good news is eventually speedfan 4.43, 4.44, etc will be available and if you can get it to do anything you'll probably be able to get it to do what you want. It just takes some patience and some effort.

As to the temp thing a little trial and error could give clues (lower fan speed see what changes on the temps), physically touching the heatsink could be a valid but somewhat risky method, IR temp gun is an option, other software might be a good crosscheck.

You have a relatively new CPU and motherboard so it'll take some time for the software community to catch up. Check around for release notes that say "added support for i3, i5, i7 CPUs" or similar.

It may be that speedfan is showing the correct temp on that 20c but those -7c don't make sense unless you are using dry ice or something to super cool your CPU.

And assuming you got it working enough to care viewtopic.php?t=42526 has a long running discussion of some of the settings I didn't cover in this thread.

I have some software that came with the Asus motherboard for monitoring temps, fans speeds etc. It generally reports the same temps as Speedfan, give or take a degree. Although if they're both getting their information from the same sensor then I guess that doesn't mean it's anymore reliable. I may look into an external temp measuring at some point. Thread is useful, thanks.

I'm happy with Speedfan now. My only slight concern is how slow it is to increase the CPU fan when the temperature shoots up. It's not too much of a problem with modern CPU's, just an annoyance more than anything.

Thanks very much for your help