Question about temps and the ThermalTake Smart fan II

I have the SLK-800 heatsink with a Thermaltake Smart Fan II. Today I decided to hookup the thermal sensor on the bottom of my chip and connect it to my fan. My idle temps are around 46* when before when I just had it cranked at all times they were like 34*. You think it's OK to leave it on even though the temps get up that high? It would be great if it was cuz it's sure A LOT quieter. Also, I ran Sisoft burn in for the CPU and looped it 10 times. I never heard the fan really get any louder? Does it have to hit EXACTLY 55* before it changes speeds?

From Thermaltakes site:

FAN Speed Control Setting:
1300 rpm at 20°C~
4800 rpm at 55°C

Thanks for any input!

Jet Black Antec SOHO SX1030 File Server Case - 330W Antec PSU
AMD Athlon XP 1800+ @ 1.53GHZ Chip w/ AlphaHO Fan & Heatsink
ASUS A7A266 Mobo 1011 Bios
512MB Hi Perf LEVEL 2 2100 222 Mushkin DDR 2100 Memory
IBM Deskstar 40GB ATA100 Hard Drive
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live 5.1 Sound Card
Geforce 4 ti4200 64MB Video Card w/ TV out
3Com 10/100 Nic
Creative Labs 52 X CDRom
Plextor 12x10x32 CDRW

I used the thermal sensor that came with the SF2 and just placed it under the heatsink (I'll get round to placing it properly one day...maybe). When I check MBM5 I can see the speed of the fan increasing slowly as the processor outputs more heat under load. It generally keeps my processor at a constant temperature and stops my ears from bleeding

What temp does it keep it at? Also, did you plug your SmartFan II into your motherboard? I think the SmartFan might draw too much power to use your motherboard as the power source. If you didn't use your motherboard then how are you monitoring the RPMs? I could use my mobo and get stats but the fan draws a lot of juice (up to 8.4 W at full speed).

I have mine plugged into my Asus p4pe pentium 4 board. i looked at the fan specs and the allowable in the motherboard manual and the smart fan comes under those specs. so gtg for me anyway.

edited for clarification sorry

p4pe????

Intel P4PE Northbridge based motherboard,

Why dont you go for the fan that you can manualy change the speed settings. I think it is the Thermaltake as well this would be a better option for what you want. It gives you the option of 3 speeds by a switch on the side.


Think it is the V7 and goes upto 6000rpm.

?????
The thermaltake smatfanII (the fan that he has) has both a thermal sensor AND is manually adjustable. infinatly, not just 3 steps.
Also, the v7 (volcano7) is not even a fan, its a heatsink, and the fan on the volcano isn't even adjustable -it only has the thermal-sensor
Its the volcano 7+ that has the 3step manual-adjust feature.
Where did you get your info?? lol

that is correct.
fan speeds:
H: 6000 rpm
M:4800 rpm
L:3000 rpm

My smart fan 2 keeps my processor at about 29 degrees C but it is darn cold in my room My smart fan is running off of a molex connector with the rmp monitoring cable plugged into the mobo. You should have gotten all the necessary leads to accomplish this with the fan.

I now run my SmartFan II wide open as it is NOT too noisey after having used an 8,000 rpm screamer for almost a year. I experimented with it and temps hold up pretty good with the fan set at around 3,700 rpm's and the noise is imperceptable at that speed. I reviewed the thermal sensor setup and didn't think the temperature settings made any sense. Let's the cpu get way too hot before speeding up. Won't cause any problems if you're not overclocking........... but if that's the case, why are you here?