Curent Software for Motherboard Fan Control & Temperature monitoring

[Ben333]

Way back when, it was Motherboard Monitor. Then later on for setting individual fan speeds in windows we had SpeedFan. Later came Core Temp for better C2D CPU temp readings...

Last one I used is HWMonitor from CPUID. I still use that, and I like it. HWMon however does not let the user change MB fan speeds.

Is there a modern program for doing this? I tried speedfan and had no luck. No surprise, it is an old program.

Also, I could have done a little more research on this myself, but I wanted to just know what the people who never got out of the loop use and save myself from installing lots of programs just to find one. Plus, I think others will find this post helpful once it is answered.

Ben

 

[EarthDog]

I control my hardware from the BIOS...even fans. For temp monitoring I use Coretemp. That said, outside of initial fiddling, I've stopped diddling with all that stuff and having OSDs with it... etc. Felt like l was living in the minutia and not enjoying the machine constantly monitoring it. lol

If you want, you can use the motherboard software. Most are pretty good. MSI Command Center for your mobo is solid for both control and monitoring.

 

[Ben333]

Yeah, I was using Asus fan expert or whatever it is... It sucked. And it installs as a background service, so when you DO set a fan curve in the BIOS it will totally throw your BIOS curve out the window as soon as you log-in to Windows.

I take it you're telling me that MSI command center will likely work for me, even on my Asus board? I'll give it a try!

I use MSI AfterBurner to manage my video card OC & fan speeds, and that is an excellent software tool.

BTW, the reason I'm even bothering with this is because now with the AC out of the window I have realized that my PC was LOUD. That is how I like it in the summer, the cooler the better. So fans get 100% unless that means they can be heard over the AC.

Now my system is so quiet that I can only slightly hear either the AIO pump or my 4 TB spinning disk. However, while gaming my video card gets HOT. Core stays in the 60s, usually low 60s... I know this is fine, but still, I like running my parts a bit cooler. So just want a software option to crank up my case fans by 20% while gaming, and then return to the BIOS curve when I'm done.

EDIT: I checked it out (screenshots, etc) and I'm just a bit leery of more service-like software that I don't really need. Looks like this app does a lot more than what I'd be getting it for. Really I am trying to find a modern speedfan. Something simple.

 

[EarthDog]

Oops... MSI is your GPU... my fault. So yeah, asus AI Suite 3 which has Fan Expert.

If you don't like it, then I would use the BIOS and call it a day. Just use Coretemp or Realtemp to monitor that.

 

[Ben333]

So, I did end up finding something.

It is a little project called "FanControl" and it lives here:
Link

The first link is an original project which could be downloaded here https://openhardwaremonitor.org/, but just like SpeedFan, the project is not updated anymore.

However, thanks to the code base being open sourced, there are a couple of active branches, LibreHardwareMonitor being the best one I found, supporting my MSI Z390 Edge AC board and being updated regularly.

OpenHardwareMonitor is divided into two parts, an API to interact with your hardware ( CPU, RAM, Fans... ) and a UI. The existing UI is a HWMonitor clone that allows to set a manual fan speed to any fan, but no temperature/speed fan curve here.

( sigh )



So I decided to make my own lightweight application with the OpenHardwareMonitorLib API, and here is what I got so far...

Current features:

OTA update
Multi-config support with quick-switch from tray icon
Dark/light mode + colors
Graph fan curves
Linear fan curves
Flat fan curves
Mixed fan curves
Sync fan curves
Custom name for each fan / curve / control
Material UI ( thanks to http://materialdesigninxaml.net/ )
Smooth fan speed transitions
Custom temperature source
Automatic or manual matching between your controls and fan speeds
Activation% (dead zone) for each fan
Saves your current configuration and reload it on startup
Board support is updated whenever the API gets an update!



Please note that this is a small personal project. It works great for my needs but I didn't test it on a hundred different motherboards. Take it as it is. If it works on your current setup, well you got your fan control situation sorted at least until you change your motherboard!

This looks VERY promising!! So far it found all my fans. I just need to tell my BIOS not to do the curve, because right now they're greyed out. I think this will work great. Best of all is it is "portable" aka no installer. Open source. No bloat.

This is NOT my screenshot, but since I've yet to 100% get mine set up I figured I'd give those interested something to look at. For me, this is a very useful tool It being free & open source is even better!

 

[freeagent]

That looks pretty good! My last 2 Asus boards didn't have very good fan control that I can recall, but my AssRock actually has really good fan control in the bios, but their software kind of sucks. I'm going to try this out the next time I stuff every hole in my case with a fan.

Thanks