CPU fan is haunted.

Pulseammo · 2 Nov 2010 at 01:29

Wondering if anyone can shed some light on this one...

I've recently installed my new Athlon 630, sadly my previous cooler didn't have the correct mountings so I had to use the stock cooler.

The stock cooler seems pretty good, CPU idles around 35 and hits 55 at load. Just one problem though, when things start to heat up the fan spins up to 5000RPM :eek:

. It sounds like a tumble dryer in my room. Whats worse is I think it would achieve the 55 degrees load temp with a lot less RPM.

The question starts here
Can anyone tell me how to limit the CPU fan to a given maximum (obviously I'll tune it to temperatures). I would just use speedfan however it is set at 100% - but 100% is relative to what my motherboard is deciding to do.

I've tried disabling CnQ, Smart Whatsit and C1E but the fan still adjusts its self based on temperature. What have I missed?

Failing a solution I guess I'll try to pick up something cheap like a Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2.

steve258 · 2 Nov 2010 at 01:51

What motherboard do you have? Most should come with some sort of "smart fan" feature in the bios. It's usually under the hardware monitoring section. Switch it to silent should do the trick.

Pulseammo · 2 Nov 2010 at 02:02

Asus M4A785TD-V Evo is the motherboard.

The smart fan which I've tried on both disabled and enabled still causes the issue. I've had a small idea though, the settings for smart fan read something like "Starting Fan Voltage", "Starting Fan Voltage at Temperature" "100% Fan Speed at Temperature". I suppose I could make the 100% temperature something like 70 celcius so that it doesn't get up the scale so quickly. I think the 100% voltage is something like 7v :/.

I'll give it a try tomorrow, more solutions are welcome though

. And thanks for the reply steve.

Pulseammo · 2 Nov 2010 at 20:46

Well I tinkered with the smartfan settings and I think I've gotten it to a reasonable level for now. Despite having reduced the fan speed the CPU still only reaches around 55 degrees. May yet invest in another cooler.

One thing I've noticed that is odd though - running prime and bringing my CPU to 55 degrees puts the fan speed around 3200 RPM (iirc). However when I then also load up kombustor on my 460GTX causes the CPU fan to eventually increase to around 4000rpm even though the cpu temperature remains stable at 55 degrees. Any idea why that would be? Afterburner reports the GTX being at around 50 degrees with a fan speed of 42% for kombustor.

steve258 · 3 Nov 2010 at 13:31

Maybe it's just fighting to keep the CPU at 55C. If you're running your cpu at stock then there's usually some room for undervolting, which should bring the temp and noise down further. Failing that then it's new HSF time or a botch job to replace the CPU fan

twist3d0n3 · 3 Nov 2010 at 15:30

you could always stick a resistor on the black or red line, that'll reduce it.

use ohm's law to work out what resistor you'd need and sorted

alternatively, buy a new cooler

Pulseammo · 3 Nov 2010 at 21:14

twist3d0n3 said:
you could always stick a resistor on the black or red line, that'll reduce it.

use ohm's law to work out what resistor you'd need and sorted

alternatively, buy a new cooler

The current sound levels are actually now pretty good after setting up smart fan correctly.

I have one of those little inline fanmates somewhere actually... but yes, I think I'll just get a new cooler. Perhaps a Coolermaster TX3 since it is nice and cheap and not too high. (Case is a Globalwin 802 - just recently modded the front to accept a 120mm fan but HSF wise I don't think it could handle anything over 130mm tall.)