▷ Speedfan: what is it and how to configure profiles? ?

What is SpeedFan ?

Unlike other similar programs, this application offers us a wide variety of information and features to fiddle with. It is a common criticism that for people less involved in the world of technology it can be very rough and complex software . Perhaps because it offers many characteristics or perhaps because it drags a little the aesthetics and philosophy of other times.

We mention the latter because SpeedFan is a program that has been online for a long time and we can only see it with its support list. Currently, it works on Windows 9x, ME, NT, 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, Windows 7, 2008, Windows 8, Windows 10 and Windows Server 2012 (in 32 and 64 bit versions). We could say that it is the Skyrim of the monitoring programs.

If you want to download the program and customize it yourself, you can do it from this link. The file that you will download is a simple executable and the installation is quite agile.

What can we do with the application?

The first thing SpeedFan will do is start an analysis of your equipment to find out what components you have assembled. The steps will be something similar to what you will see below.

In this first screen you have most of the main data from your computer. We can see things like the temperature of different components, the revolutions per minute of the fans or the voltage consumed.

The most important part of this tab is the Configure button. We can activate the automatic mode so that the program itself decides, but you may want to create your own operating profile. We will investigate this topic further in the next point.

The Clock section or Clock is something that we advise you not to touch much. You should only edit this field if you know for sure what you want to achieve and also, first of all, we recommend creating a backup.

Correctly selecting the motherboard we can edit the behavior of the processor. As with fans, one functionality is to ask that if we go down or up from a certain workload the frequency changes to a certain value. However, it is certainly a delicate process, so you have to be very careful.

The next two tabs are a bit of a conglomerate of information that we can absorb from the program.

The second is as a more complete version of the main screen since we can see some extra data. Despite the fact that it is in beta, it is quite unlikely that it will be updated again, since the last update dates from 2015.

As a curiosity and related to this topic, on the first screen we can contact the creator and ask questions. We do not know if Alfredo Milani continues to answer questions, but it is an interesting detail.

Finally, in these last two tabs we will see the data about different components of the computer, some in real time. On the SMART screen we can perform an analysis on the current status of our HDDs or SSDs.

On the other hand, on the Charts screen we can select different components and see their temperature and evolution over time. In the image above you can see the graph (dark green) and the four processor cores in the four colors described.

How do we configure the fans?

Let's dive a little into the Configure option on the main screen. By pressing it we will access a large window with numerous tabs and each one will allow you to edit different functionalities. The screen will be similar to the one below:

However, here we are going to show you a quick guide to configure profiles for your computer fans. The tutorial was created by user Morfy and you can see his original work at this link.

In case you have any questions, at the end of the explanation we will attach a video of him explaining the configuration process in more detail.

Identify the fans

The first thing you should do is activate the manual mode of the fans. You will find it in Advanced and you will have to select a chip with a name similar to the one below.

Then you will have to set all fans to manual so that the profiles you create will work and not work on their own.

Afterwards, since the default fan names are a bit weird, disable them all manually except one. So you can identify which is which and you can rename them (you may see more fan names than you have mounted) .

Once all are detected and renamed, go to the Fan Control section and for each fan you have you will have to establish a profile. The steps to follow will be:

First, you just type in a name to create a new profile. Then you will have to choose the drivers they will work on. Finally, choose the fan they will work on.

Edit fan performance

Then, in the center of the screen you will be shown a graph that you can easily edit. Change the values as you like and you will have a new operating profile running.

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Something very common that people like a lot is to turn off the fans whenever we are below a certain temperature. This way we dramatically reduce the sound and it will only be done when temperatures and workload allow it.

The end result could be something like this:

Note that you can use the arrows on the sides to more accurately edit performance based on temperatures.

Final thoughts on SpeedFan

This program has many lights, but also many shadows. We are going to list some of them because it seems to us an important task.

On the one hand, it is a very complete program that analyzes the entirety of your team.

We can know a lot of data, but apart from the common ones, we also have information about hard drives, for example. We can also do other interesting things like monitoring temperatures or voltages in real time or creating profiles for fans. This may not sound very special, but the interesting thing is that everything is packed in one program.

In addition, it is noteworthy that it has so many functionalities across so many platforms. If you are a Windows user, you can run this program on almost any existing computer.

On the bad side, the interface is quite rustic and not overly intuitive, making it difficult to interact. We cannot change the size of the window, some typical "gestures" do not work… It really looks like a Windows 98 program adapted for Windows 10 .

In addition to this, it is important that SpeedFan is not especially noob-friendly , that is, for the first time user, it can be hell. There are a large number of tabs, many on-screen settings, and many buttons to investigate. This is why we believe it is a program that you need to spend a good couple of hours to know how it works. It has a user guide, so if you read it carefully, surely you have no problem.

It is a program that we recommend if you are interested in intensive customization of your equipment. It is a very compact and highly editable application. However, there are other alternatives that are possibly more attractive to you, in addition to being more famous.

On the other hand, if you are only interested in independent tasks such as creating profiles for the fans or monitoring the equipment, there are more efficient and intuitive programs. The most direct example could be msi Afterburner or the recent Nvidia FrameView .

And what do you think of the SpeedFan application? Would you give it a try or does it seem too rough? Share your ideas below.

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