How To Change Fan Speed With Speedfan

SpeedFan is a keen utility for enthusiasts who've built their ain PC. Besides being able to bear witness the temperatures inside your system (from diverse sensors in the CPU, motherboard and HDDs) and other vitals such equally voltages and fan speeds, it can as well automate the cooling cycles of your machine. Every bit its namesake implies, SpeedFan is able to automatically control your reckoner'due south fan speeds based on the temperatures reported by various hardware sensors. This tin can let you to discover the right balance between a cool organization and a noisy 1. Withal, it does require some configuration, as I'll attempt to evidence you in the following article.

It'south all in the details

All the material I'm most to present here is available in the assist file for SpeedFan, all the same, since most people utilise the Internet for everything, myself included, I thought I'd summarize the most of import points. SpeedFan has a lot of functionality and it's like shooting fish in a barrel to get lost in all of that when all you want is something simple like automatic fan command. (Some motherboards already support this, but SpeedFan brings this functionality to about whatever motherboard that'southward reasonably new)

First and foremost, the fans that y'all want to control must be plugged into ane of your motherboard'south 3-pin fan headers; they cannot be plugged into 4-pivot molex connectors that come straight from your ability supply. This is considering SpeedFan controls fan speeds' by varying the output (using PWM) of the three-pin fan headers on your motherboard. If you want to control the speed of your four-pin fans, you'll accept to use some sort of fanbus or external fan controller.

Getting started

On the primary SpeedFan window, you may have noticed a checkbox for "Automatic fan speed". However, checking it is not enough to properly ready information technology up, though it would be nice if things were this easy! For now, you can check it, but null volition happen – yous shouldn't notice whatever change in your fans' speeds.

Main SpeedFan window

Click on "Configure" to bring upwardly the options window. SpeedFan is a fairly powerful programme, but that means configuration is required to brand information technology exercise what you want. The assumption that SpeedFan uses is that various temperatures can be influenced by the various fan speeds in your system. Yous need to define these relationships. For instance, in my system "Temp1" is the CPU temperature. (I oasis't bothered to rename the labels) In the screenshot below, I accept linked it with "Speed01" and "Speed02", which stand for to my CPU'due south fan and a example exhaust fan.

SpeedFan temperatures

This tells SpeedFan that it should vary these fan speeds based on the temperature they're associated with. You as well need to configure threshold temperatures; there are two, "Desired" and "Warning". The desired temperature tells SpeedFan what it should aim for. Once the desired temperature is reached, SpeedFan will begin to driblet fan speeds down to some minimum yous specify; if the temperature is above desired fan speeds will increase by an amount related to how much the temperature is above the desired. In one case the temperature reaches the alarm value, fan speeds volition be ready to maximum. (100%)

We now need to configure each of these fans. Get to the "Speeds" tab (not the "Fans" tab) of the configuration and you'll see a window like this:

SpeedFan speeds

Remember that Speed01 and Speed02 are linked with the Temp1. Here is where we define the minimum and maximum fan speed values. When the temperature is at or beneath desired, the lowest the Speed01 will go is 30%, while the maximum I've specified is 100%. This range is for temperatures upwards to the warning value. When the temperature is at or above alarm, the fan speeds linked to it volition exist gear up to 100% regardless of what you've define the maximum to exist. This is a sort of fail safety to prevent overheating – better safe and noisy than silent and deplorable. Also important to annotation is that you must bank check "Automatically variated" for each fan you want to automatically command. (This is carve up from the master automated fan speed checkbox on the chief SpeedFan window nosotros saw before)

You may need to experiment to discover out what are the best values for minimum and maximum fan speeds. Also, some fans fail to report their rotational speed (RPM) when spinning slower, so yous may become a reading of "0 RPM" within SpeedFan. Yous'll need to actually bank check whether this is the example.

One last thing you may want to configure is how fast SpeedFan will brainstorm to suit fan speeds when it has to answer to a temperature modify. This is accomplished by setting the "Delta value" on the Options tab of configuration:

Delta value for fan speeds

This sets the step-size (in per centum) for fan speed changes. With a larger value, SpeedFan will accommodate fan speeds more rapidly since it will be increasing or decreasing past that corporeality each time. Experiment to notice what works best. I've institute that with too large a step/delta size, temperatures and fan speeds volition oscillate – basically the fans will speed up also fast, causing the temperatures to drib, which in plough cause the fans to slow downwardly too much, which then causes temperature to rise again, completing the bicycle. If you've taken a class in command theory you'll realize that this is perhaps the classic example problem in control theory. (By adjusting the delta value I believe you're adjusting the proportional value of the controller – though I am not sure if SpeedFan implements a full PID controller)

Lastly, you may want to cheque "Set up fans to 100% on exit" just in case you accidentally shut downward SpeedFan – this is another protective feature.

Finishing upwardly

Click "OK" on the configuration folio to salve your changes, which should bring y'all back to the master window. And then, make sure "Automated Fan Speed" is checked here, and your arrangement should now exist fix for automatic fan command! I accept been using SpeedFan for a few years and wasn't enlightened of this functionality until recently. Just goes to testify that you tin always acquire new things!