SpeedFan : Detect and Control PC Fan Speeds

Most of the modern motherboards come equipped with thermal sensors which can detect the temperature of different regions inside your computer cabinet. These thermal sensors can then be used to control the speed of fans installed to regulate the air flow in order to keep the temperature of your PC down to an optimum level. Although, your modern motherboard should be able to control the speed of installed fans, but you can also use freeware SpeedFan to detect and control the fan speeds.

SpeedFan is a freeware application for Windows which can show you fan speeds, core voltages and temperatures. Not to mention, that SpeedFan works only in computers with hardware monitor chips. SpeedFan can also access S.M.A.R.T. data for a hard disk and show hard disk temperatures. SpeedFan supports IDE, SATA and SCSI disks. SpeedFan can access digital temperature sensors and can change fan speeds accordingly, thus reducing noise. SpeedFan can find almost any hardware monitor chip connected to the 2-wire SMBus (System Management Bus). It supports all the versions of Windows starting from Windows 95 to Windows 7. It works with 64-bit editions of Windows too.

You can download it from the Almico website. It is available as a Windows installer package. After the installation when it runs for the first time, you have to give it permission in your firewall software so that it can send your computer’s data to its servers and download some information to display. In a short while, it would start to display the fan speeds, temperatures, voltages and other information of your computer’s various hardware.

If you want to let SpeedFan application automatically adjust the speed of various fans based on whether the related temperatures are high or low, then you have to select the checkbox labeled Automatic Fan Speed shown under the category Readings. Under the S.M.A.R.T tab, you can get information from the S.M.A.R.T feature of your hard disk. You can also generate real-time charts of temperature versus time under the Charts tab of SpeedFan.

SpeedFan offers you detailed CPU and hard disk temperature information and allows you to control fan speeds for the proper functioning of your computer hardware. Though some of the features of SpeedFan are basically for only CPU overclockers and advanced users, yet it can also prove to be very useful for beginners. You can download SpeedFan from http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php.