Quick CPU Fan Question

altich88

altich88

altich88

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Joined
28 Oct 2008
Posts
233
Hi guys,
I bought an OEM i5 with a zalman aftermarket cooler and have a quick question about it. I first installed the fan with the supplied fanmate inline, so that I could keep the cpu fan running quiet. Would I be right in assuming that therefore if the cpu gets hotter when it's working harder that it is my responsibility to increase the cooler fan speed manually and the computer no longer has any sort of automatic control over this?

I then took out the fanmate and now I think the cpu fan is running on full all of the time. Does this mean the only way to have automatic fan speed control is with a stock CPU heatsink, which has a 4 pin connection maybe? My zalman only has threee and wondered if teh 4th was used for temperature control with the stock fan? Many thanks.

Al
 
altich88 said:
Hi guys,
I bought an OEM i5 with a zalman aftermarket cooler and have a quick question about it. I first installed the fan with the supplied fanmate inline, so that I could keep the cpu fan running quiet. Would I be right in assuming that therefore if the cpu gets hotter when it's working harder that it is my responsibility to increase the cooler fan speed manually and the computer no longer has any sort of automatic control over this?

I then took out the fanmate and now I think the cpu fan is running on full all of the time. Does this mean the only way to have automatic fan speed control is with a stock CPU heatsink, which has a 4 pin connection maybe? My zalman only has threee and wondered if teh 4th was used for temperature control with the stock fan? Many thanks.

Al
Click to expand...

I currently have a Zalman cpn9700 (or something like that!) and my BIOS controls the speed. Check your bios options under "hardware health" or something similar, see if there's an option for cpu fan speed.

The fourth pin is used for pwm (pulse width modulation) control of the fan speed, but the mobo should be able to control the speed anyway, as I'm not using pwm and can hear the zalman revving up when I put load on the cpu.
 
Nah, I didn't bother. The fanmate is basically a rheostat, which controls the fan speed by adding extra resistance, so that would work against the bios doing it (bios would try running it at full speed all the time).
 
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