Hi,
it's quite easy to set up a "scheduled task" in Windows Vista/7 that loads Speedfan at logon, without a UAC prompt by ticking the option for "Run with highest privileges" option.

Regards, Seb

It can even be made to run from start-up, the only problem being that it won't show up in the task bar. In my w8 test pc I first configured it to my liking by running it from the desktop, then scheduled it to run silently (the spin-down of the CPU fan shortly after start-up demonstrates that it is running indeed).

As to "pretty", tastes are personal, and I vastly prefer Speedfan's interface over the ASUS programs and the like.

A really powerful app, but I had some problems with an Asus P67 WS Revolution and the 4.46 version of Speedfan (the latest non beta right now):

- The CPU temperature was wrong (say it reported -10ºC while ambiente temperature was 25ºC), so I had to use core temperatures, which were right (I see the same problem in the article, with that crazy CPU temp).
- Sometimes it set the fans to top speed, for no clear reason, and never ever changed the speed after that: temperature spikes were by no means the cause. That was rare, but sooo annoying.

In the end, I decided that it was not worth the effort/risk (what if it stopped the fans, instead of setting them to top speed?), and decided to use the much worse Asus Fan XPert (the old version, not the shining new version), which is really limited, but works.

Too bad it didn't work for me, because SpeedFan is amazingly versatile.

Probably

Why can't or don't they offer controllers that can be controlled from software?
Lots of motherboard still don't offer decent fan control or a decent number of fan headers. Are any even able to completely stop certain fans?


Are you sure? Why would it need to spin up the platters?

The number of controllable fan headers varies widely by vendor and model. Some offer only one controllable header: CPU. Others have 7 or 8.
My AsRock z68 board has three controllers and five headers that can be used by SpeedFan, which is fairly typical. At the top of the line, ASUS RoG Maximus boards have at least twice as many controllers and headers (and sensors to go with them). Of course they are pricey.
Every MB I've owned has been able to dial a fan down to zero with SpeedFan.
The most recent ASUS boards are probably the best compromise. They have several headers and each header can be controlled in either 3-pin or 4-pin mode. Someone there realized this is a good marketing feature.

As for SMART: Yes, it's true. The SMART commands to read out temperature, etc, are the same as any other commands (eg, seek, read), and require that the drive be "on". When software such as SpeedFan requests the drive's temperature, the OS turns the drive on, which spins it up and loads the heads. Stupid, you say? Well, when SMART was standardized, apparently nobody thought of making it an offline function, or if they did, they didn't prevail. Possibly there are some drives out there that will report their temperature without being "on", but to use that feature, it would have to be added to the Windows drivers.

With regard to fan speed configuration:

I find it best to set a fan speed range limited to the slowest value that provides adequate cooling under anticipated load (be it idle or folding), and the fastest value that I'm willing to listen to. Then in the controlling temperature configuration, setting a desired temperature just above what I consider normal, and a warning temperature considerably higher but still well below the throttling point. For example, my current CPU fan settings are 22-35% auto, and Core temperature values 75 desired (I fold 24/7) and 88 warning.

This means that once SpeedFan is running, my CPU fan is inaudibly slow, but if for some freak reason the CPU temperature hits 88C, the fan will shoot up to 100%, loud but safe.

Also, I found a 5% delta value to still be quite annoying. I run mine at 1%, although I wouldn't recommend a value that low to anyone who isn't using a really top-of-the-line heat sink.

My startup shortcut looks like this:

C:\Program Files\SpeedFan\speedfan.exe /NOSMBSCAN /NOSMARTSCAN /NOAMDK8SCAN /NOACPISCAN

More info - viewtopic.php?f=14&t=64355

I've got a recent Asus and it has only one chassis header

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_ ... P8H61M_LE/

What exactly do you mean by "on"?
AFAIK head parking and platter spindown is done by drive firmware itself and not controlled by the OS.

anyone know of anything like speedfan for linux? I have things for the harddrives, and cpu speeds, and a number of other things, but not the case fans, I get whatever i can set in the bios. It would be neat to be able to use CPU load/command activity to "predict" the load in a few seconds and auto ramp the fans a little and see if I could keep ahead of it a little.

There is pwmconfig and fancontrol whicha re part of lm_sensors. Here is a topic on the Arch Wiki:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fan_Speed_Control

I don't rely on this though as the onboard fan control on my Asus motherboard in silent mode is very smooth in going from 800rpm all the way up to 1200rpm dependant upon temperature. It only starts stepping up much in the mid fifties.

Does this only work with PWM fans? I turned on Speedfan for the first time, and all i get is the gpu fan. The other fans in my case are not detected.

No, but there's any number of reasons why a fan wouldn't show up. Do you see any fan speeds reported in the BIOS? If not then it may be that the motherboard does not work with your particular fans, for example many motherboards will not report (or incorrectly report) fans spinning very slowly. There are also some motherboards with sensors that don't work too well with Speedfan. It is being improved all of the time and sometimes you can upgrade and extra fans and temperatures show up.

I've been using Speedfan for something like 8 years and find it very useful but it does take some persistence to get it set up correctly on some systems. I don't use it that often as I use Arch Linux 99% of the time but if I have some hardware testing to do then Speedfan is the reason I boot into Windows.

I should have been more specific. The new ASUS Z77 1155 motherboards have good fan control.

Head parking is indeed done by firmware in the drive, either in response to a long time between commands (typically 20 seconds or more), or in response to a power-down.

Spin-up/spin-down (which involves applying or removing power from the drive) is controlled by the OS. I'm not aware of any drives that autonomously spin down.

When software such as SpeedFan or AIDA sends a SMART command to a disk to read its temperature, the OS powers up the drive if it is not already powered up. Whether the heads reload depends on the drive firmware.

ive used speedfan for years.
but i keep having an issue keeping the temperature notification showing in the taskbar notification area on win7. every few weeks or so it defaults back to "only show notifications" and becomes hidden in the taskbar drop-up menu. i have to go into to taskbar customization and reset it to "always show". anyone know a permanent fix for this?

Thanks for this write up. I had never bothered to play around with speedfan much in the past, other than a quick check of temps.

I was previously using a Corsair Link in an attempt to get acceptable fan control, which worked accept it is currently unable to turn a fan completely off. This annoyed me.

I'm much happier with SpeedFan, wish I had bothered to look into it more in the past.

ok, after giving up on it previously, I have decided to re-venture my way back into Speedfan. The reason for my previous problem was due to the undetectable fans.
I have resorted to google and it turns out that the latest beta version might sort out my problem (wish I paid more attention).
Got the latest beta version and now all my fans are detected .

Following the universal guide isn't without problems that I can't really blame the author. The main problem I had was detecting the correct "reading" to the correct sensor in Speedfan (e.g. "system" in Speedfan is found to be "motherboard" in the Asus software). There were also "static" temperature readings in Speedfan that will not change regardless of where I increase fan speed. For instance, "Temp1" is forever 28 Celsius, which is nowhere near the 33-35 readings on the Asus software. I have no idea what this is, so I did what I thought is a good idea, and ignore those what I cannot find (just 2 static readings).

When finishing up to the final page (I decided to stop at "refining" section, for a break after 2 hours), it does certainly feel like this is an all-in-one fan software.

Previously, I used MSI Afterburner to control the GPU fan and the ASUS software to control every other fan. I nearly decided to uninstall both softwares, when I remembered that I use these softwares for something else (i.e. I use Afterburner to undervolt the GPU and ASUS to enable power-saving features)

Maybe next time...

Used this guide to set up mine. Works perfect now! Thanks

Thank you so much for this guide. For years I could never really get it figured out and always ended up uninstalling it. I think I might keep it installed this time

First of all I'd like to thank Mr. Lee for the article.

I will be assembling a computer very soon and I have never used Speedfan program before. I would like to ask a few questions before I first attempt to run/configure the program:

1) I am going to use Core2Duo E7300 processor. I read this article/forum post.
It looks like with some Intel processors the program needs to be calibrated before it can report accurate temperatures. Is this true? Do I need to calibrate?

2) What about AMD processors (in general)? Is there a difference when using an AMD cpu in the sense that it "reports" temperatures in a different way that doesn't need calibrating?

3) Are there any widely accepted/recommended values for the E7300 processor?
I am now talking just about the CPU PWM fan - could you please give me some advice how to properly set the different temperature values? For example I know the TCase max is 74 degrees,
but (as I have no experience in setting up/using the program) I don't know which 'Desired' & 'Warning' values should I choose in order to be "safe" and at the same time have the fan run as silent as possible?

4) From the article, quote

I don't know what it means. Could you please tell me what does this setting do? How would the fan behave if the checkbox wasn't ticked?

Then you in advance for your help.