Andy said:
When I started using OpenSuse as an o.s., I noticed that my cpu cooler fan ran much faster at times.
Never happened under Windows, fan always ran at one speed.
I tried speedfan to regulate fan speed, but my motherboard is not supported.
Has anyone gotten their fan to have it's speed regulated ?
Thanks.
Speedfan has pretty good hardware detection.
If there really isn't a SuperI/O fan interface to use,
it must be a pretty sad motherboard
One trick the manufacturers pull, is they use a capable
SuperI/O. It has fan speed controls. But, to save a buck,
they remove the fan control transistor. So you can be
dialing the knob in SpeedFan, and nothing happens
to the CPU fan
I always get a chuckle about that one.
Newer systems, use a four pin CPU fan, and PWM control. This
requires no "expensive" transistor for control, so a PWM system
is more likely to work. And SpeedFan should find it.
It's the older systems, that have all manner of shortcomings.
The very best systems (maybe, HP), can have fan control on
all headers. Lots of other systems, vary on how many headers
have that "super expensive" transistor. The manufacturers
are really really cheap bastards. Which is why, we only get
CPU fan control on the older systems, a percentage of the time.
I may have a couple systems here, where you can't do anything
to the fans. It happens.
*******
The BIOS option to control the speed automatically, is nice.
When it works. Not all systems though, behave themselves
in Auto mode. A few have been known to not spin the fan at
all (at least until the CPU hits 60C). And that tends to
scare the crap out of people, when there's no noise in the
room. People assume their fan died, and they "poke it
with sticks", trying to get it to spin. If you turn off
the BIOS function, and use Speedfan, you're less likely
to run into that (dead quiet).
So if anything is going to work, Speedfan is the one.
Next, you try the BIOS if there are no other options.
And if you can't set the speed at all, at least
be assured your CPU will have good (but noisy) cooling.
Paul
