Adjusting the rotation speed of the processor cooler. Review: How to Connect an Exhaust Fan and Reduce Speed

SpeedFan 4.52 is a good set of functions for monitoring and managing some PC performance. In particular, this software product allows you to monitor the temperature indicators of the processor, power supply, system unit, hard drive, etc., provided that there are appropriate tracking sensors on the computer components. However, the main function of the SpeedFan program is to regulate the rotation speed of coolers depending on the corresponding temperatures, which allows you to reduce power consumption and background noise during low use of computer resources. In this case, adjustment is possible both automatically and manually. Another feature of SpeedFan is the ability to automatically regulate the frequencies (clocks) of the internal processor bus and the PCI bus (but this should be considered as a bonus).

Key features of the SpeedFan program:

– Fan speed control.
– Implemented support for SMART technology.
– The user is given the opportunity, at his own discretion, to specify the temperature and voltage limits. In this case, you can set options for the program's action when these limits are reached: launching an external program, displaying a message, sound warning, sending a message by e-mail.
– Changing the system bus frequencies on motherboards equipped with frequency generators supported by the program.
– Statistics of the parameters taken and recording them in the log.
– Plotting graphs of changes in temperatures, voltages and fan speeds.
– Supports working with HDDs on EIDE, SATA and SCSI interfaces.
– Conducts a web analysis of the status of hard drives using data from S.M.A.R.T. using the online database.

Russification of the SpeedFan program:

1. Install the SpeedFan program and run it.
2. In the main window (Readings), click on the Configure button, select the Options tab, enter the Language selection list and select Russian.
3. Now SpeedFan will be in Russian!

Each PC user should be able to correctly configure the cooling system in order to avoid overheating of the device and premature failure of components due to high temperatures in the future. Or to . You can control the operation of the cooler using special programs or BIOS settings, which is what we will talk about in this article.

BIOS Settings

Many of the famous laptop manufacturers such as Asus, Acer, HP, Lenovo, Samsung have made it possible to control the laptop cooler from the input/output system or “BIOS”. This method is good because it does not require installing third-party programs, all that is required is:

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the settings may have slight differences depending on your Bios version. Don't be alarmed, the overall scheme is identical.

SpeedFan program

A well-known utility, it can be used to control a laptop fan, regulate speed at certain temperatures, and monitor the status of the hard drive. A few more big pluses are that it’s free, a simple and clear interface and support for the Russian language, so feel free to use it.

So, let's look in more detail at how to configure the cooler on a laptop using SpeedFan:

Also in the “Speeds” tab you can set additional parameters for changing the speed of rotation of the blades. There are only two options here; by changing them, you can easily change the lower and upper speed limits.

Riva Tuner program

Another small but very convenient application designed to control and monitor the operation of the fan. It is also completely free and suitable for any version of Windows.

It is quite easy to change with its help; for this you need:

After this, the laptop fan should start running constantly and at the specified speed.

MSI Afterburner

A professional free utility designed primarily for overlocking (overclocking) cards from MSI, suitable for both AMD and Intel. It provides us with quite a lot of possibilities, from monitoring the state of the board and adjusting the voltage on the GPU to controlling the cooler.

I would like to note that all the settings are on the first screen, which in my opinion is very convenient. In order to change the speed of the cooling system, you need to move the slider to the right in the “Fan Speed” section.

For automatic adjustment, a separate “Auto” button is provided; after pressing it, the speed of revolutions will change depending on the load on the laptop’s video card.

AMD OverDrive Program

I can’t ignore the fairly well-known utility from AMD, which offers us a number of features, including controlling fan speed, thereby increasing the performance of the entire laptop.

It is only necessary:

Now you know how a fan should work, how to configure it correctly, control it, and you can do it yourself.

Another method is discussed in this video

The processor makes a lot of noise - a problem for most people who use system units (commonly known as a processor out of ignorance). To be more precise, then the fans are noisy, which cool the system from overheating.

There are a variety of reasons why a fan may make noise. Most often, they need to be thoroughly cleaned of dust (including the cooling radiator) and lubricated. But there is one more thing that caused noise at my workplace - the rotation speed of the cooler.

Coolers are divided into two types: with software speed control and without. Fortunately, I have a Sumerian cooler that supported rotation control using software.

Everything could be configured perfectly in the BIOS, which itself regulated the rotation of the cooler. But there was one thing. The principle of adjusting the cooler with the BIOS is that you set the minimum rotation speed that the BIOS adheres to. And as the temperature increases, the rotation speed of the cooler increases in order to lower it.

And since I work in the range of 45-50 degrees, the system thinks that it is overheating and always spins the fan, which means this is not a solution. What was needed was manual control of the cooler rotation speed without any resistors, etc. A couple of searches on the Internet and found program for monitoring cooler rotation speedSpeedFan.

Fortunately, the program turned out to be free and compatible with Windows XP and Windows 7 (x32-64). I also ran it on Ubuntu Linux via Vine, but the program refused to work.

Setting up SpeedFan. Increase and decrease cooler speed

To get started, go to the download page and download the latest version of the program. Now that the program is installed, it can load in about a minute (sometimes much faster). The first launch of the program reads information about the hardware and coolers that are installed. Here's how it's configured for me:

all hints are disabled
the program starts with Windows
launching the program in the tray
when “closing the program” it is minimized to tray

The program has a lot of settings and since the interface is in Russian, it’s easy to customize it for yourself. Initially, the program is installed in English; to install the Russian language, click on the configuration button:

In the window that opens, find the “Options” tab and in it select the language you need and click Ok:

Now the program works in Russian. Hints are turned off at the moment they are shown. They hinder more than they help. Therefore, the next time you see a hint, check the box next to “Do not show again.”

In order to the program was loaded withWindows, open Start and select the Startup folder. You need to copy the shortcut to SpeedFan into this folder. This is the simplest option.

If you want the program to load invisibly (in the tray), then go back to the settings tab and check the box next to “run minimized”.

In the same tab, check the “minimize when closing” checkbox and when you click on the cross in Windows, the program will not close, but will be minimized to tray. I think this is very convenient, since opening and closing the program every time is inconvenient.

The coolers themselves are determined in the main program window. These windows with percentages are the rotation speed regulators. I have three coolers in my system, so three are displayed. By changing the power percentage, the speed will decrease or increase. Accordingly, 0% fans stop, 100% fans spin at full power.

It's no secret that high-performance microprocessor devices heat up during operation: the heavier the load, the hotter it gets. For many elements of a modern computer, installing a conventional radiator on a “chip” is no longer enough - active heat removal is required. The easiest way to implement this is with the help of a fan (cooler): no one is surprised by system units with a total number of coolers of 8-10 pieces. Sometimes the motherboard does not have enough connectors for connecting additional fans, and the connection is made through a power splitter or rheobass.

A single cooler makes little noise and consumes little electricity. But if there are a dozen of them in the case, the noise becomes uncomfortable, and electricity consumption increases to quite noticeable values.

Most often, the need to change the fan speed is associated precisely with the excessive noise of the system unit. If the cooling efficiency of the system unit is high enough and overheating of any computer elements does not occur even under the highest loads, you can try reducing the rotation speed of some fans.

One way to reduce this is to use a rheobass - a multi-channel fan speed controller.

But this method is not the only one. Most modern motherboards are capable of adjusting the rotation speed of connected fans. In many cases, you won't even need to install any software - the necessary function is built into the BIOS.

To enter the BIOS, you must press a certain key (or key combination) when you boot the computer, most often Delete. If nothing happens when you press Delete when the computer boots, you should look at the bottom lines of the boot screen - there, when booting starts, a hint is usually displayed as to which keys should be pressed to enter the BIOS.
In the BIOS you should find a page with fan operation settings (Fan Speed, Fan Control, Fan Profile, etc.). CPU Fan settings relate to the processor cooler, Chassis Fan - to the case cooler (or coolers). The processor cooler settings should only be changed if you know exactly what you are doing and are confident in the correctness of your actions - overheating the processor can lead to its failure. The case cooler settings are not so critical, but you shouldn’t change them thoughtlessly either; It would be a good idea to write down all the old values before changing.

To adjust the rotation speed, first make sure that this function is enabled: the Q-Fan Control (or Fan Speed Control) parameter must be set to Enabled. At the same time, fan fine-tuning options become available - some BIOS have many of them, others have fewer. Most often, the easiest way to reduce noise (or, conversely, improve cooling) is to change the profile (Q-Fan Profile). To reduce noise, set it to Silent, to increase cooling - to Performance or Turbo.

After saving the settings and restarting the system, you should make sure that the configured cooler is spinning and that the system does not overheat; otherwise, you should return the old BIOS settings.

If the necessary settings are not found in the BIOS, do not be upset - most often, fans connected to the motherboard can be controlled using specialized software. The most popular of these programs (and absolutely free) is speed fan. When you start the program, the first tab will display all the found fans, their rotation speeds and the temperatures of the computer components - you should focus on them when setting up coolers. The configuration recommendations are the same - you should be careful when operating the CPU Fan (processor cooler) and GPU Fan (video card cooler) settings. When changing speeds (from 0 to 100%), the effect of these changes on temperature should be monitored. In the program, you can also set critical temperatures for all elements and, by specifying which cooler is responsible for which temperature, start the automatic fan speed control mode.

If neither speed fan nor other similar programs “see” the fans, or if the fans are not connected to the motherboard at all, then you will need a rheobass to adjust their rotation speed.

Before considering the characteristics of reobass, we should mention another very common reason for increased fan noise - the coolers become clogged with dust and/or the lubricant thickens in them. If it seems to you that the computer used to make less noise, you may not need any programs or devices to reduce noise - it will be enough to clean the cooler from dust and (if necessary) update the lubricant.

Characteristics of fan speed controllers.

Reobass type.

Main task power strip– provide power to additional fans for which there are no connectors on the motherboard. The splitter may not have the function of controlling the fan speed at all. If such a function exists, it will be implemented in software.

Speed controller(reobass) – has greater functionality compared to a splitter. In addition to connecting additional fans, reobass provides some additional features, which may include:
- control and display of the rotation speed of each connected fan;
- temperature control from your own temperature sensor (or several temperature sensors);
- automatic or manual adjustment of fan speeds;
- control and display of power consumed by connected fans

Control type rotation speed can be manual or automatic.

At manual control the rotation speed is set manually by the operator - using buttons, a control knob or on the touch screen. Despite the simplicity of this control method, it will be convenient only in cases where it is not necessary to change the fan speed while the computer is running. This method is still suitable for adjusting the rotation speed of case fans, but not so much for controlling the rotation speed of the processor cooler.

Auto a type of control that automatically changes the cooler rotation speed depending on the temperature sensor readings is much more convenient to use and provides better operating conditions for the equipment. To control coolers of elements that greatly change the temperature depending on the load, you should use rheobass with an automatic control type.
The number of connected fans determines the maximum number of fans that can be connected to the rheobass. It should be kept in mind that as the number of connected fans increases, the power consumed by the device also increases; The computer power supply must have sufficient power reserve.

Availability display with the ability to display temperature values and fan speeds on it, in some cases it may be useful. The display can warn of impending overheating or fan failure and prevent crashes or data loss. For servers (often without their own monitor), such a display will be especially useful.

Temperature control carried out using the motherboard's thermal sensors or the rheobass' own thermal sensors. In the latter case, you should also find out the number of temperature measurement channels (in other words, the number of temperature sensors). For many reobass, temperature control is carried out using one temperature sensor. If processor/video card coolers are supposed to be connected to such a reobass, this can lead to problems (if you install a sensor near the processor, it may “not notice” overheating of the video card and vice versa). Reobass with several thermal sensors are more expensive, but in cases similar to the above, it is not worth saving on this.

Fan connectors can be 2-pin 3-pin and 4-pin.
2-pin and 3-pin connectors involve controlling the fan rotation speed by changing its supply voltage. This is the simplest method, so the rheobass and fans that implement it are inexpensive. The disadvantages of this method are the low accuracy of setting the rotation speed and a decrease in torque with a decrease in voltage. Fans with a 3-pin connector generally cannot spin slower than a certain threshold value - the torque becomes so small that it is not enough to turn the impeller. Such fans are suitable for case fans and hard drive fans, but it has long been customary to install fans connected with a 4-pin connector on processors.
4-pin connectors allow fan speed control using pulse-width modulation (PWM). In this case, the fan is supplied with full power - 12 volts - but not constantly, but in pulses, changing the duration of which, you can very accurately set the fan speed. In addition, with this method there is no restriction on the minimum rotation speed - a fan controlled in this way can rotate even at a speed of 1 rpm. The only drawback of this method is that it is more difficult to implement and therefore more expensive.

The rheobass power connector can be 3-pin (in this case, the speed controller is connected to one of the free 3-pin connectors on the motherboard), 4-pin Molex (power is taken from one of the connectors of the power supply) and SATA (power is taken from the SATA connector of the motherboard ).

Question from a user

Good afternoon.

After playing one computer game for 40-50 minutes (note: the name has been cut out), the processor temperature rises to 70-80 degrees (Celsius). I changed the thermal paste, cleaned it from dust - the result was the same.

So I’m thinking, is it possible to increase the rotation speed of the cooler on the processor to the maximum (otherwise, in my opinion, it rotates poorly)? Temperature without processor load - 40°C. By the way, is this possible due to the heat? Otherwise, it’s about 33-36°C outside our window...

Arthur, Saransk

Good day!

Of course, the temperature of the components and the load on the cooling system greatly depend on the temperature of the room in which the computer is located (therefore, overheating is most often encountered in the hot summer months). The fact that your temperature reaches 80 degrees is not normal (although some laptop manufacturers allow such heating).

Of course, you can try setting the cooler rotation settings to maximum (if this is not already the case), but I would still recommend taking a set of measures (you can learn about them from the article on measuring and monitoring the temperature of the processor, video card, HDD -).

By the way, the other side of the coin also often arises: coolers spin at maximum and create a lot of noise (while the user does not load the computer with anything at all, and they could spin much slower and quieter).

Below I will look at how you can adjust their rotation speed and what to pay attention to. So...

Increasing/decreasing the rotation speed of coolers

In general, on a modern computer (laptop), the rotation speed of the coolers is set by the motherboard, based on data from temperature sensors (i.e., the higher it is, the faster the coolers begin to rotate) and loading data. Parameters from which the mat is based. The board can usually be set in the BIOS.

How is cooler rotation speed measured?

It is measured in revolutions per minute. This indicator is designated as rpm(by the way, it measures all mechanical devices, for example, hard drives).

As for the cooler, the optimal rotation speed is usually about 1000-3000 rpm. But this is a very average value, and it is impossible to say exactly which one should be set. This parameter greatly depends on the type of cooler you have, what it is used for, the room temperature, the type of radiator, etc.

Ways to regulate the rotation speed:

SpeedFan

A free multifunctional utility that allows you to control the temperature of computer components, as well as monitor the operation of coolers. By the way, this program “sees” almost all coolers installed in the system (in most cases).

In addition, you can dynamically change the rotation speed of PC fans, depending on the temperature of the components. The program saves all changed values, operation statistics, etc., into a separate log file. Based on them, you can see graphs of temperature changes and fan speeds.

SpeedFan works in all popular Windows 7, 8, 10 (32|64 bits), supports Russian language (to select it, click the "Configure" button, then the "Options" tab, see the screenshot below).

Main window and appearance of the SpeedFan program

After installing and launching the SpeedFan utility, the Readings tab should appear in front of you (this is the main window of the program - see the screenshot below). In my screenshot, I conditionally divided the window into several areas to comment and show what is responsible for what.

Block 1 - the "CPU Usage" field indicates the load on the processor and its cores. Nearby are also the “Minimize” and “Configure” buttons, designed to minimize the program and configure it (respectively). There is also a checkbox in this field “Automatic fan speed” - its purpose is to automatically regulate the temperature (I’ll talk about this below);
Block 2 - here is a list of detected cooler rotation speed sensors. Please note that they all have different names (SysFan, CPU Fan, etc.) and opposite each has its own meaning rpm (i.e. rotation speed per minute). Some sensors show rpm at zeros - these are “junk” values (you can ignore them *). By the way, the names contain abbreviations that some may not understand (I’ll decipher them just in case): CPU0 Fan - fan on the processor (i.e. a sensor from a cooler plugged into the CPU_Fan connector on the motherboard); Aux Fun, PWR Fun, etc. - the rpm of the fans connected to these connectors on the motherboard is similarly shown. board;
Block 3 - the temperature of the components is shown here: GPU - video card, CPU - processor, HDD - hard drive. By the way, there are also “garbage” values here that you shouldn’t pay attention to (Temp 1, 2, etc.). By the way, it’s convenient to take the temperature using AIDA64 (and other special utilities), about them here:
Block 4 - but this block allows you to reduce/increase the rotation speed of coolers (set as a percentage. By changing the percentages in the columns Speed01, Speed02- you need to look at which cooler has changed speed (i.e. what is responsible for what).

Important! The list of some indicators in SpeedFan will not always coincide with the cooler it is signed with. The thing is that some computer assemblers connect (for one reason or another), for example, a processor cooler not into the CPU Fan socket. Therefore, I recommend gradually changing the values in the program and looking at changes in the rotation speed and temperature of the components (even better, open the roof of the system side and visually watch how the fan rotation speed changes).

Setting the fan speed in SpeedFan

Option 1

As an example, it will try to adjust the rotation speed of the processor fan. To do this, you need to pay attention to the column "CPU 0 Fan" - this is where the rpm indicator should be displayed;
Next, change the values in the columns “Pwm1”, “Pwm2”, etc., one by one. When the value has been changed, wait a while and see if the show has changed rpm, And temperature (see screenshot below);
When you find the right one Pwm- adjust the cooler rotation speed to the optimal number of revolutions (about the processor temperature I , I also recommend for review) .

Option 2

If you want the smart operating mode to be enabled (i.e., so that the program dynamically changes the rotation speed, depending on the processor temperature ), then you need to do the following (see screenshot below):

open program configuration (note: "Configure" button) , then open the "Speeds" tab;
then select the line that is responsible for the cooler you need (you must first find it experimentally, as recommended in option 1, see just above in the article) ;
now in the “Minimum” and “Maximum” columns, set the desired percentage values and check the “Auto-change” box;
In the main program window, check the box next to "Auto fan speed". Actually, this is how the rotation speed of coolers is regulated.

Addition! It is also advisable to go to the “Temperatures” tab and find the processor temperature sensor. In its settings, set the desired temperature that the program will maintain and the alarm temperature. If the processor heats up to this alarming temperature, then SpeedFan will start spinning up the cooler at full power (up to 100%)!

For those who do not have SpeedFan

Setting up automatic adjustment of cooler rotation in the BIOS

The SpeedFan utility does not always work correctly. The fact is that the BIOS has special functions responsible for automatically adjusting the rotation speed of coolers. They can be called differently in each BIOS version, for example, Q-Fan, Fan Monitor, Fan Optomize, CPU Fan Control etc. And I’ll immediately note that they do not always work correctly, at least SpeedFan allows you to very accurately and subtly adjust the operation of the coolers, so that they perform the task and do not interfere with the user ☺.

To disable these modes (the photo below shows Q-Fan and CPU Smart Fan Control), you need to enter the BIOS and set these functions to Disable. By the way, after this the coolers will operate at maximum power and may become very noisy (this will happen until you adjust their operation in SpeedFan).

Hotkeys to enter the BIOS menu, Boot Menu, restore from a hidden partition -

That's all for today, good luck to everyone and optimal fan operation...