How Can I Monitor and Control Case Fan Speeds?

[xtobymc]

I recently purchased five new Arctic F12 PWM fans for my PC's case, but upon booting the PC and running games the fans appear to be spinning slower than I'd expect, and my GPU now hits 80c instead of its usual 70c. The exhaust fans also don't feel like they're blowing away much air/heat.

So far I've downloaded three pieces of software which should let me view fan speeds; SpeedFan, HWinfo and my motherboard's software utility. Firstly, I cannot use SpeedFan as it gives me blue screen of death every time I open it. Secondly, none of the other programs show my fans as being connected. It either shows one or two fans supposedly running at '4000rpm', and the motherboard utility gives me sliders to change fan speed but it has no effect.

Do my fans have to be connected directly into the motherboard for them to be visible in software, or is it fine to have them plugged in via a molex from my PSU? I have absolutely no idea about fan control, so apologies for the long post and noon question.

Thanks

 

[morgilroka]

To have controll over your fans you need to plug the fans directly into the motherboard. Using a molex will only allow one speed and it will not throttle with your cpu or temps. If you're plugged into Molex, that would explain why programs are not picking the fans up.

As a alternative to speedfan, you can try OpenHardwareMonitor.
http://openhardwaremonitor.org/

 

[xtobymc]

To have controll over your fans you need to plug the fans directly into the motherboard. Using a molex will only allow one speed and it will not throttle with your cpu or temps. If you're plugged into Molex, that would explain why programs are not picking the fans up.

As a alternative to speedfan, you can try OpenHardwareMonitor.
http://openhardwaremonitor.org/

Thanks, I thought this might be the problem. I used molex connectors to hide the wires at the back of the case, unfortunately I'll have to make it look ugly by using the motherboard fan connectors instead.