COntrolling PWM fans

[SJNeate]

So, I bought a i30 artic freezer CPU cooler, which has a fan built into it. I want to try and set the speed of the fan. Is there an option in BIOS to set it manually? If so, what would it be under? I'm used to old BIOS as this is my first UEFI one.

Motherboard is z87 HD3 if that helps.

Thanks

[peterb]

Depends on the BIOS - could be under CPU or power or system. Just go through the menus until you find it, or read the MOBO manual (Always a good thing to look through the menus anyway so you are familiar with them when you need to fine tune, or so you can refer to the manual for things that are new to you.) You can't do any harm, you can always reset to the default if you make a mistake setting things up.

[Lil-Diabo]

I've had some great results with speedfan, my Asrock motherboard doesn't control the PWM very well, but now I configured speedfan added it to startup and made sure it starts off minimised, the fans start off at full speed, but once in windows and speedfan loads it's all temp controlled.

[SJNeate]

So, apparently gigabyte has some software called easytune. Downloaded and lets me control only the fans connected to the 3 pin slots and the CPU cooler. It's not bad, but the temps are the same whether I'm running the fans at default or 100%

[peterb]

Are you controlling for noise or temperature? If the temperatures are the same at 100%or default, it may be that the default setting is 100%

Controlling (ie reducing) fan speed will reduce the airflow, and therefore noise, but will increase the temperature. Most software controllers operate like thermostats, the fan speed increases as the CPU temperature increases to maintain the CPU at or below the limit you set. If you set a high limit, the fan will run slowly (or not at all) until the limit is approached or reached. Depending on the software, you can control the threshold and/or the 'slope' or rate at which the fan speeds up. The theory is that at that temperature, the fan is running at near full speed to prevent it being exceeded. At lower temperatures the fan still runs but at a lower speed to keep the CPU cool.

I generally only use the motherboard/bios fan control systems, and set the upper temperature to be quite high so that for most of the time the fab is off or only running slowly and only speeds up when I am, doing processor intensive tasks. However the adjustment will require some trial and error, and will depend on machine useage, efficiency of system cooling, the noise and maximum temperatures you will accept.