18kfanGUI

[ZhengHe]

http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/index.html - a program for Dell Inspiron, Latitude, and Precision notebooks, which enables you to read and control the speed of your fans. It can also read the temperature on your CPU, GPU, Memory, Hard drive, and chipset. While 18kfanGUI most notably tries to control the temperature of your hardware by controlling fan speeds, it can also determine how your hardware acts at certain temperatures. Some hardware has the option of an automatic shutoff if the it's temperature gets too high.

This program can be useful if your Dell notebook consistently runs hot and you want to cool it down a bit. It also helps if you run resource intensive programs that heat up your system over a long period of time. I have found it useful in controlling the temperature while running Folding@Home since the process often heats up my laptop over a period of many hours. Increasing the fan speed can mitigate some of those effects.

[Kougar]

This program is excellent for Dell notebooks, I've been using it from the first day I got my laptop several years back! At least with mine, the DDR2 RAM is one of the hottest parts of the system, so being able to monitor the GPU and memory temps in addition to the motherboard, CPU, and HDD temps was a big plus for me.

The only real critique is I wish it had a granular fan control instead of only low/high settings, but other programs can control the fan speeds if really needed.

I would also suggest Notebook Hardware Control (http://www.pbus-167.com/) for anyone that wishes some very fine tuning for their laptop CPU voltages, in addition to other things such as controlling whether the HDD is set for best performance or silence. I use it to undervolt my CPU, and to lock it at the lowest speed/lowest voltage it can handle without losing stability when there are no outlets around. Please note, as of the last update Dell users will likely have to use the bugfix version, however!

[Instigator AG]

Thanks for the heads up! I just downloaded it and must say it is a nice program.

[ZhengHe]

I would also suggest Notebook Hardware Control (http://www.pbus-167.com/) for anyone that wishes some very fine tuning for their laptop CPU voltages, in addition to other things such as controlling whether the HDD is set for best performance or silence. I use it to undervolt my CPU, and to lock it at the lowest speed/lowest voltage it can handle without losing stability when there are no outlets around. Please note, as of the last update Dell users will likely have to use the bugfix version, however!

Thanks for the heads up Cougar. I was wondering what the issue was with NHC recently and that has got to be it. Glad you guys are enjoying this program.

So what sort of temperature decreases are you guys seeing? I've been sitting pretty at 95 for weeks. That is with folding and quite a few other things running.

[Zenphic]

There is also RMClock if you ever want Voltage control like in NHC. It offers a more clean and serious (Windows Classic-ish GUI) interface.

I only wish that there was some software to control my Toshiba A200 laptop's fan. Its fan is so annoying