SpeedFan is a freeware program that monitors fan speeds, temperatures and voltages in computers with hardware monitor chips. SpeedFan can even access S.M.A.R.T. info for those hard disks that support this feature and show hard disk temperatures too, if supported. SpeedFan can even change the FSB on some hardware (but this should be considered a bonus feature). At the lowest level, SpeedFan is an hardware monitor software, but its main feature is that it can control fan speeds (depending on the capabilities of your sensor chip and your hardware) according to the temperatures inside your pc, thus reducing noise and power consumption. Several sensors, like Winbond's and the AS99127F support fan speed changing, as well as others from MAXIM, MYSON, ANALOG DEVICES, NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTORS and ITE, but the manufacturer must have connected the relevant pins to some additional, yet trivial, circuitry. This means that if you have, say, a W83782D on a BP6 then you're ok, but not every motherboard with such an hardware monitor chip will be able to change fan speeds. From one of the very first hardware monitor chips that could be found in standard PCs, the National Semiconductors LM75 (and all of its clones), such chips have been greatly improved, both in their precision and in their capabilities. Current chips can monitor fan speeds, voltages and vary fan speeds bu using PWMs (Pulse Width Modulation). Some chips can even be programmed to vary fan speeds without any additional software intervention. If your BIOS was programmed to setup such chips this way you can still try to use SpeedFan's Advanced Configuration to revert to manual fan speed operations. W83627HF, W83697HF, ADT7463, EMC6D102, IT8712F, LM85C and MAX6650 are very good candidates. Some SuperIO chips too are able to change fan speeds. SpeedFan can automatically detect them and use their features. The most used are PC87366 and all of SMSC LPC SuperIO chips. SpeedFan can find almost any hardware monitor chip connected to the SMBus (a subset of the I2C BUS) and to the ISA BUS. SpeedFan works fine with Win9x, WinME, WinNT, Win2k, Win2K3 and WinXP. SpeedFan can be minimized to the tray and is compatible with Motherboard Monitor 5. Changes added manual multipliers (from 1 to 20) and divisors (from 1 to 20) for all fans (use CONFIG / ADVANCED) added manual reverse for PWM logic in CONFIG / ADVANCED added full support for NE1618 SEND REPORT no longer accesses some NE1619 registers added preliminary russian translation (thanks to Pavel Gourkov) SiS741 SMBus is no longer identified as SiS5595 added manual offsets for all temperatures (use CONFIG / ADVANCED) added preliminary support LPC47M292 started using controls with a newer look added preliminary Spanish and Galician translations Get it here.
