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Fan control with MSI Afterburner?

Red Hawk

Red Hawk

Diamond Member
I just started using MSI Afterburner and I'm curious about fan control. From the looks of it it seems like my graphics card's fan is set to 30% max speed no matter what. Is this a bad thing, and should I force it to go higher? Or should I just leave it alone?
 
If you get good temps with the fan at 30%, you could leave it at that. I like having my fan 5% higher than the temperature of the card. Usually doesn't go very high and is not loud and keeps my card cooled.
 
Red Hawk said:
I just started using MSI Afterburner and I'm curious about fan control. From the looks of it it seems like my graphics card's fan is set to 30% max speed no matter what. Is this a bad thing, and should I force it to go higher? Or should I just leave it alone?
Click to expand...

Lat week I bought an MSI R6670 and have been struggling with the fan speed issue ever since. I don't know if the problem is with the card or with the Afterburner software but between the two its basically crap as far as actually monitoring or adjusting the fan speed.

My card was billed as having "twin silent fans" in MSI's advertising but they are anything but. They sound as if they are running at 100% all the time. Afterburner shows the fan speed increasing and decreasing with temperature as it should but the sound was always the same.

At one point, I completely disconnected the fans to see if I could get away with just running it fanless. So the wire was disconnected and the fans were not running AT ALL! Yet Afterburner still showed them as running and still showed the speed increasing and decreasing with temperature. It may not be Afterburner but the card itself because using other software such as Catalyst Control center, the fan was also reported as running and the speeds going up and down with temperature. Now I have replaced the MSI fans with a 120 mm case fan running at about 600 RPM and connected to one of the motherboards connectors for case fans - but catalyst control center and Afterburner still think they are monitoring fan speed when they can't possibly be.

The moral of the story is that you really do not know what speed your fans are running at and your ears are a better monitoring method than Afterburner.

EDIT: One other piece of information. The wire connecting my card's fans to the card itself was a 4 pin connector. But when I actually removed the fans I discovered that that wire splits into two and the fan closest to the back of the case actually had three wires going to it. The second fan only had two wires. Wouldn't a fan with only two wires by definition be running at 100% all the time since there is no control signal possible????
 
Last edited:
Bill Brasky said:
I don't know how it works, but I've never seen a fan with speed control that only had two wires.
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Sure ya have, we plug two wire fans into our mobos fan headers all the time and we can control the fanspeed in the bios on most boards.

What i "think" happens is, the temperature is monitored, and there are slight voltage increases/decreases to control fanspeed based on temp.
So the fanspeed is estimated based on voltage.

So like in Ratman6161s case there, even though he unplugged the cards fans, he still gets reports for fanspeed is because the volts on the cards fan headers are still going up and down based on temps.

So im guessing...
3 wires = real fan speed rpm monitoring
2 wires = estimated fanspeed rpm monitoring based on voltage

I have no idea how actually it works either, so this is all just a guess.

So if someone actually knows for sure and says my post is BS, then it probably is....LOL
 
MTDEW said:
Sure ya have, we plug two wire fans into our mobos fan headers all the time and we can control the fanspeed in the bios on most boards.

What i "think" happens is, the temperature is monitored, and there are slight voltage increases/decreases to control fanspeed based on temp.
So the fanspeed is estimated based on voltage.

So like in Ratman6161s case there, even though he unplugged the cards fans, he still gets reports for fanspeed is because the volts on the cards fan headers are still going up and down based on temps.

So im guessing...
3 wires = real fan speed rpm monitoring
2 wires = estimated fanspeed rpm monitoring based on voltage

I have no idea how actually it works either, so this is all just a guess.

So if someone actually knows for sure and says my post is BS, then it probably is....LOL
Click to expand...

I don't believe there is any actual fan speed monitoring. Otherwise with both fans powered down it would read a speed of zero.
 
Nope, i'm full of it. :biggrin:

Just dug out an old two wire case fan from my parts box and plugged into a fan header on my mobo.
And it doesn't let me control fanspeed, it stays constant no matter what i set it at.

So Ratman6161s card still reporting fanspeed with no fan is still a mystery to me also.

With that said, i never really had any issues with video card fanspeeds and afterburner.
My cards always scale fanspeed and noise based on what is set in afterburner.
 
Ratman6161 said:
I don't believe there is any actual fan speed monitoring. Otherwise with both fans powered down it would read a speed of zero.
Click to expand...
I would think it was more the card than afterburner, otherwise many people would be reporting the same thing that actual fanspeed doesnt actually scale with afterburners settings.
For the majority of us, it actually does though.

Wonder if others with those twin silent fan cards have the same issue.
 
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