Manage the fan speed on Windows PCs with Fan Control
Fan Control is an open source application for Microsoft Windows 10 and 11 devices to manage system fans. Most Windows PCs come with one or multiple fans, for instance processor fans, fans for the power supply unit, graphics adapter fans, and other fans.
These fans are used to cool down the system or specific components to avoid overheating or other issues related to components that reach heat thresholds.
Tip: you can check the temperatures, including the GPU temperature, in the Windows 10 and 11 Task Manager.
Fans are controlled automatically by default on most systems, but specialized software is available to manage fans manually. Some users may want to slow fans down to reduce the noise they emit, others may want fans to rotate faster to cool components more.
Fan Control is an open source program for Windows that gives system administrators control over fans. The program relies on public third-party libraries to detect compatible hardware. Once started, it will run a scan for fans on the system and runs checks for each that it discovers to detect speed thresholds.
Fans that it detects are displayed in the interface, and you may either let the program control the speed or switch to manual control mode to manage fans manually instead. Fan Control pulls information from temperature sensors that it supports, e.g. from processor or motherboard sensors.
Fans were identified correctly on some devices, while they were not detected at all on others. The program supports custom names for fans, which helps with the identification of fans on the system.
Users of the application may add automatic controls and curves to the interface to manage the fan speed and behavior in detail.
The Auto option gives you options to set idle and load temperatures, the desired fan speed for these, steps and response times.
Fan Control supports a number of extra features, including saving and loading profiles, different fan curves to control fans completely, and a theme editor.
Closing Words
How does it stack up against other fan control programs such as FanCtrl or SpeedFan? Fan Control is certainly not as easy to use as those, but it offers more management options than those applications. Whether that is needed is up to individual use cases. Some apps may not detect some or all fans of a system, while others may. It is always good to have some options when it comes to the functionality.
I have used fan control applications like SpeedFan for years to reduce the noise that certain fans make on Windows PCs. I found them invaluable for this purpose, and never ran into any overheating issues while using these applications.
Now you: do you control fans on your systems?
Been using this since you posted it, wonderful piece of software, easy to configure, no issues at all.
I’ve seen too many hardware-controlling apps that create instability overall. If you can come close to your needs with BIOS I’d go that route first.
I played with these things for a while and never saw much difference. With older computers a big improvement in cooling leading to lower fan speeds can be had from replacing dried out thermal paste with high conductivity stuff such as Thermalright TF8.
HWinfoview, along with all the other things it measures, can set custom fan profiles.
Happy Christmas Martin. Hopefully you have a great evening with the people you love.
Also the same good wishes are going out to all the outer writers on ghacks.net and the owners/shareholders.
I hope you all have a great Christmas.
This software has the exact same design as any average Android application.
This got me thinking that it could be made using some over-bloated web browser like ElectronJS.
Fortunately it’s .NET.
If it was a web browser there would be no point in using it to decrease fan speed since merely running this software would require that you use it to increase fan speed.
You could even actually infect people’s computers with a reasonable monero miner that would only be actively mining if atleast one ElectronJS web browser is running.
As long as the miner only runs when atleast one ElectronJS web browser is running malicious crypto miners are 100% stealth.
How would any casual computer user ever notice ‘reasonable’ crypto mining activity or abnormal GPU & CPU load if the ElectronJS apps they trust already behave like cryptomining bots?
Especially when the cryptominer does not mine on its own, but instead infects all .asar files.
Then it becomes impossible to distinguish malicious activity even with the Task Manager!
So, as long as this fan control app is not a web browser, especially not ElectronJS it’s a good app.
Of course my claims for ElectronJS are somewhat exaggerated, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they turn out to really be the truth.
What are u smoking bud! Damn!
I had a board with poor software so Got Argus Pro some time ago and have always used it since.
Thanks @Martin, Happy Christmas for you and also for Ghacks team! :]
https://github.com/hirschmann/nbfc
Notebook Fan Control is what I use
3rd party software is rarely needed for this purpose as the native software is included with your motherboard.
In some cases, like mine, the software that came with older hardware may no longer function correctly with current versions of windows but I can still customize the fan curves in the Bios setup.
My 4 120mm case fans all have speed reducing inline resistors on them as well. Running them faster does not cool the pc better it just makes more noise.
>3rd party software is rarely needed for this purpose as the native software is included with your motherboard.
I’ve never seen motherboard/BIOS fan control that takes GPU temps into account. That’s why software like this is needed. And also for easier management and some extra features, because the BIOS settings are very basic.
Yes, this software is very good.
I use a MIX curve that takes BOTH GPU/CPU into consideration for the case fans.