Control Fan Speeds With SpeedFan [Tutorial]
Uploaded by JAGTutorials on 18.01.2012
Transcript:
What is SpeedFan? SpeedFan is freeware. SpeedFan monitors voltages, fan speeds, and temperatures.
SpeedFan can dynamically adjust fan speeds based on changing computer temperatures. SpeedFan
runs on Windows 9x, ME, NT, 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, and 7. SpeedFan also has 64-bit support.
Let’s download and install SpeedFan. Open a web browser like “Internet Explorer”.
In the address bar, enter “almico.com/speedfan.php”, and press enter. Click on the “Download”
tab. Under the “Download” section, click the “SpeedFan 4.45” link. On the “Download
Information Bar”, click the “Run” button. This will download the file, and then automatically
start the installer. On the “SpeedFan Setup: License Agreement” window, read the license
agreement, and then click the “I Agree” button. On the “Components” screen, leave
all options selected, and click the “Next” button. On the “Install directory” screen,
click the “Install” button. Once the installation finishes, click the “Close” button. You
can start SpeedFan in one of two ways. Option one. Double-click the “SpeedFan” icon
on the desktop. Option two. Click the Windows “Start” button, “All Programs”, “SpeedFan”,
and then select the “SpeedFan” option. On the “Hint” window, click to select
“do not show again”, and click the “Close” button. By default SpeedFan uses Celsius and
not Fahrenheit like we use in the United States. Let’s change this to Fahrenheit before we
start looking at setting up SpeedFan. On the “Readings” tab, click the “Configure”
button. On the “Configure” window that opens, click the “Options” tab. Click
the radio button to select “Fahrenheit”, and then click the “OK” button. We can
now see that all temperatures are in Fahrenheit. Let’s review the ‘Reading” tab. In the
top of the screen, you will have the output window that will show a log of the items scanned
and found. Below this you will see bar graphs representing each core in the CPU. There are
three graphs showing because I have three cores in the AMD Phenom 2 x3 720 processor
running in this computer. To the right, you have a two buttons. The “Minimize” button
will minimize SpeedFan to the system tray, but will remain running. By clicking this
button we can see that the icon for SpeedFan in the taskbar will disappear when we click
on “Minimize”. You can open SpeedFan back up by clicking the SpeedFan icon in the system
tray. By default Windows only shows a small portion of the items running in the system
tray. If you don’t see the SpeedFan icon, then click the “Show Hidden Icons” button.
Then double-click on the SpeedFan icon, which will be showing the temperature for Temp1.
If you want this to show in the system tray at all times, you can click on the “Customize..”
button. Scroll down and select the “SpeedFan” option. Change the drop down to select “Show
icon and notifications”. Then click the “OK” button. We can now see SpeedFan in
the system tray. To open Speedfan back up, double-click on the Speedfan icon in the system
tray. Below the “Minimize” button we have the “Configure” button, that has all of
the settings for the application. We will go over this more later. In the middle of
the screen, we have all of the fan speeds in the left pane, and the temperatures in
the right pane. Below the speed and temperature information we have the controllable fans
in the system listed. This will typically be the fan connections on the motherboard.
My motherboard supports 6 fans, but i am only running 3. By default the speed for all fans
is set to 100%. At the bottom of the screen, we have information on the voltages of various
components. The “Clock” tab is used to overclock you processor. There are much better
programs for overclocking so I would recommend avoiding this option with SpeedFan. The “Exotics”
tab is rather interesting. If you don’t see anything showing, click the “Show the
magic” button. You will get a nice view of all the different settings being monitored.
The “S.M.A.R.T.” tab, allows you to view the SMART information of your disk drives.
Selecting any drive will show information like the error rate spin up time seek error,
and so on. The “Charts” tab will allow you to graph “temperatures”, “fan speeds”,
and “voltages”. Clicking any of the options will start to graph them with their own unique
color. This is really useful to fine tune the fan speed control to the exact temperature
patterns of your system. Now that we have reviewed the available information in SpeedFan,
let’s get into using it to control the speed of our fans. Back on the “Readings” tab,
you can adjust the speed of your fans just by reducing the settings manually here. If
you use a static setting for the fans here, you will want to set this to graph the temperatures
on the “Charts” tab, then run a game or other application that will stress your system.
After running it for at least 15 minutes, take a look at your readings. If any of the
temperatures get higher than you would like, then adjust the fan speed higher. In addition
to being able to manually set a static speed, you can also set the fans to increase and
decrease in speed based on varying temperature readings. Let’s click on the “Configure”
button. The “Configure” window will open. You can select which “Temperatures”, “Fans”,and
“Voltages” to monitor with the first three tabs. The “Options” tab has settings you
might want to adjust to your liking. If you have trouble with anything you might want
to come to the “Log” tab, click to select this “Enabled” option, and then see if
you get additional information on your problem. The only thing we are going to go into detail
about is the “Fan Control” tab. Click to select “Advanced fan control”. Here
we setup thresholds for temperature and fan speed. Typically you will want to create a
separate rule for each fan in your system. This system has 3 fans as we saw before. We
will create a rule for each of the three fans. For this system “Temp2” is the ambient
temperature inside the computer case. Click the “Add” button. I’ll create three
controllers. Enter a name for the rule. We’ll call them “Fan4”, “Fan5”, and “Fan6”.
After creating the 3 controllers. We’ll select “Fan4”. We now get additional settings
for each controller. Click to select “Controlled speed”. Click the drop down to show the
available fans, and select the first fan to control. We’ll select the fan for “Speed04”.
Now we need to tell this controller for fan 4 what speed it needs to run at for each temperature
setting. Under “Temperatures”, click the “Add” button. The “Select temperature”
window will open. Select the temperature to use to control the fan. “Temp2” is the
temperature of my computer chassis. We’ll select “Temp2”, and click the “OK”
button. We’ll go and setup the other two fan controllers the same way. If you click
on the entry under temperatures, you will see a graph with the temperature and the corresponding
fan speeds. You can adjust these by clicking on the graph. Once complete we’ll click the
“OK” button. Before the automatic control settings take control, you need to click to
select “Automatic fan speed”. We can see that as soon as we click this button the fan
speeds change from 100%. Ok, so at this point we should have SpeedFan installed and configured
correctly. As it is now, we would have to start SpeedFan each time we restart Windows.
Here we will create a shortcut for SpeedFan and place it in the Windows Startup directory. Click the Windows “Start”
button, “All Programs”, and the right-click on the “Startup” folder and select “Open
All Users”. A Windows explorer window will open. Any shortcuts placed in this folder
will run after the Windows desktop loads. Right-click and select “New”, then “Shortcut”.
On the “Create Shortcut” window that opens, click the “Browse...” button. Unless you
changed the install location, browse to c:\program files\speedfan\ and then select “Speedfan.exe”.
Then click the “OK” button. Click the “Next” button. Change the name to just
“SpeedFan”, and click the “Finish” button. There is now a new shortcut in the
Startup folder for SpeedFan. Now every time a user logs into the system it will start
SpeedFan automatically. The only other thing we need to change is to set SpeedFan to start
Minimized so we don’t have to click the “Minimize” button every time. Click the
“Configure” button. On the “Option” menu, click to select “Start Minimized”,
and click the “OK” button. We can now see that if we close out SpeedFan and then click
this shortcut again, it will start and then automatically minimize to the system tray.
You should have a good understanding of SpeedFan and it’s basic features. You should also
have your system setup to be properly cooled, while being quieter than before.
SpeedFan can dynamically adjust fan speeds based on changing computer temperatures. SpeedFan
runs on Windows 9x, ME, NT, 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, and 7. SpeedFan also has 64-bit support.
Let’s download and install SpeedFan. Open a web browser like “Internet Explorer”.
In the address bar, enter “almico.com/speedfan.php”, and press enter. Click on the “Download”
tab. Under the “Download” section, click the “SpeedFan 4.45” link. On the “Download
Information Bar”, click the “Run” button. This will download the file, and then automatically
start the installer. On the “SpeedFan Setup: License Agreement” window, read the license
agreement, and then click the “I Agree” button. On the “Components” screen, leave
all options selected, and click the “Next” button. On the “Install directory” screen,
click the “Install” button. Once the installation finishes, click the “Close” button. You
can start SpeedFan in one of two ways. Option one. Double-click the “SpeedFan” icon
on the desktop. Option two. Click the Windows “Start” button, “All Programs”, “SpeedFan”,
and then select the “SpeedFan” option. On the “Hint” window, click to select
“do not show again”, and click the “Close” button. By default SpeedFan uses Celsius and
not Fahrenheit like we use in the United States. Let’s change this to Fahrenheit before we
start looking at setting up SpeedFan. On the “Readings” tab, click the “Configure”
button. On the “Configure” window that opens, click the “Options” tab. Click
the radio button to select “Fahrenheit”, and then click the “OK” button. We can
now see that all temperatures are in Fahrenheit. Let’s review the ‘Reading” tab. In the
top of the screen, you will have the output window that will show a log of the items scanned
and found. Below this you will see bar graphs representing each core in the CPU. There are
three graphs showing because I have three cores in the AMD Phenom 2 x3 720 processor
running in this computer. To the right, you have a two buttons. The “Minimize” button
will minimize SpeedFan to the system tray, but will remain running. By clicking this
button we can see that the icon for SpeedFan in the taskbar will disappear when we click
on “Minimize”. You can open SpeedFan back up by clicking the SpeedFan icon in the system
tray. By default Windows only shows a small portion of the items running in the system
tray. If you don’t see the SpeedFan icon, then click the “Show Hidden Icons” button.
Then double-click on the SpeedFan icon, which will be showing the temperature for Temp1.
If you want this to show in the system tray at all times, you can click on the “Customize..”
button. Scroll down and select the “SpeedFan” option. Change the drop down to select “Show
icon and notifications”. Then click the “OK” button. We can now see SpeedFan in
the system tray. To open Speedfan back up, double-click on the Speedfan icon in the system
tray. Below the “Minimize” button we have the “Configure” button, that has all of
the settings for the application. We will go over this more later. In the middle of
the screen, we have all of the fan speeds in the left pane, and the temperatures in
the right pane. Below the speed and temperature information we have the controllable fans
in the system listed. This will typically be the fan connections on the motherboard.
My motherboard supports 6 fans, but i am only running 3. By default the speed for all fans
is set to 100%. At the bottom of the screen, we have information on the voltages of various
components. The “Clock” tab is used to overclock you processor. There are much better
programs for overclocking so I would recommend avoiding this option with SpeedFan. The “Exotics”
tab is rather interesting. If you don’t see anything showing, click the “Show the
magic” button. You will get a nice view of all the different settings being monitored.
The “S.M.A.R.T.” tab, allows you to view the SMART information of your disk drives.
Selecting any drive will show information like the error rate spin up time seek error,
and so on. The “Charts” tab will allow you to graph “temperatures”, “fan speeds”,
and “voltages”. Clicking any of the options will start to graph them with their own unique
color. This is really useful to fine tune the fan speed control to the exact temperature
patterns of your system. Now that we have reviewed the available information in SpeedFan,
let’s get into using it to control the speed of our fans. Back on the “Readings” tab,
you can adjust the speed of your fans just by reducing the settings manually here. If
you use a static setting for the fans here, you will want to set this to graph the temperatures
on the “Charts” tab, then run a game or other application that will stress your system.
After running it for at least 15 minutes, take a look at your readings. If any of the
temperatures get higher than you would like, then adjust the fan speed higher. In addition
to being able to manually set a static speed, you can also set the fans to increase and
decrease in speed based on varying temperature readings. Let’s click on the “Configure”
button. The “Configure” window will open. You can select which “Temperatures”, “Fans”,and
“Voltages” to monitor with the first three tabs. The “Options” tab has settings you
might want to adjust to your liking. If you have trouble with anything you might want
to come to the “Log” tab, click to select this “Enabled” option, and then see if
you get additional information on your problem. The only thing we are going to go into detail
about is the “Fan Control” tab. Click to select “Advanced fan control”. Here
we setup thresholds for temperature and fan speed. Typically you will want to create a
separate rule for each fan in your system. This system has 3 fans as we saw before. We
will create a rule for each of the three fans. For this system “Temp2” is the ambient
temperature inside the computer case. Click the “Add” button. I’ll create three
controllers. Enter a name for the rule. We’ll call them “Fan4”, “Fan5”, and “Fan6”.
After creating the 3 controllers. We’ll select “Fan4”. We now get additional settings
for each controller. Click to select “Controlled speed”. Click the drop down to show the
available fans, and select the first fan to control. We’ll select the fan for “Speed04”.
Now we need to tell this controller for fan 4 what speed it needs to run at for each temperature
setting. Under “Temperatures”, click the “Add” button. The “Select temperature”
window will open. Select the temperature to use to control the fan. “Temp2” is the
temperature of my computer chassis. We’ll select “Temp2”, and click the “OK”
button. We’ll go and setup the other two fan controllers the same way. If you click
on the entry under temperatures, you will see a graph with the temperature and the corresponding
fan speeds. You can adjust these by clicking on the graph. Once complete we’ll click the
“OK” button. Before the automatic control settings take control, you need to click to
select “Automatic fan speed”. We can see that as soon as we click this button the fan
speeds change from 100%. Ok, so at this point we should have SpeedFan installed and configured
correctly. As it is now, we would have to start SpeedFan each time we restart Windows.
Here we will create a shortcut for SpeedFan and place it in the Windows Startup directory. Click the Windows “Start”
button, “All Programs”, and the right-click on the “Startup” folder and select “Open
All Users”. A Windows explorer window will open. Any shortcuts placed in this folder
will run after the Windows desktop loads. Right-click and select “New”, then “Shortcut”.
On the “Create Shortcut” window that opens, click the “Browse...” button. Unless you
changed the install location, browse to c:\program files\speedfan\ and then select “Speedfan.exe”.
Then click the “OK” button. Click the “Next” button. Change the name to just
“SpeedFan”, and click the “Finish” button. There is now a new shortcut in the
Startup folder for SpeedFan. Now every time a user logs into the system it will start
SpeedFan automatically. The only other thing we need to change is to set SpeedFan to start
Minimized so we don’t have to click the “Minimize” button every time. Click the
“Configure” button. On the “Option” menu, click to select “Start Minimized”,
and click the “OK” button. We can now see that if we close out SpeedFan and then click
this shortcut again, it will start and then automatically minimize to the system tray.
You should have a good understanding of SpeedFan and it’s basic features. You should also
have your system setup to be properly cooled, while being quieter than before.