If you are looking for a tool that can change your computer’s fan speeds, that can read your hard disk temperature and S.M.A.R.T. status, that can read temperatures, voltages and fan speeds and much more, then you’re reading the correct article.
SpeedFan works fine with Windows 9x, ME, NT, 2000, 2003 and Windows XP. And this is absolutely for free 🙂

SpeedFan monitors temperatures, through available hardware monitor chips which expose their temperature sensors connected to different places inside your computer, and, according to your setup, does its best to keep those temperatures at your desired value. You can even change a fan speed according to the temperature of your hard disk.

SpeedFan can:

handle almost any number of South Bridges

handle almost any number of hardware monitor chips

handle almost any number of temperature readings

handle almost any number of voltage readings

handle almost any number of fan speed readings

handle almost any number of PWMs

First of all, you have to identify which temperature sensor is which. SpeedFan strictly adheres to available datasheets for each sensor chip. Please remember that hardware monitors are chips that do have some pins (small connectors) which should be connected to some additional hardware (temperature probes, thermistors or thermocouples) in order to be able to read temperatures. Only a few hardware monitor chips do label their connectors with “CPU”, “System” and the likes. Most of them use labels like “Temp1″, “Local” or “Remote”. The hardware manufacturers connect available pins to different temperature sensors basically according to the physical placement of components on the motherboard. This means that the same chip, an ITE IT8712F, for example, might be connected to a sensor diode measuring CPU temperature on Temp2 and, on a different hardware, it might be connected on Temp1. If you have a “Local” sensor and a “Remote” labeled one, this usually means that “Local” is the temperature of the monitor chip itself and “Remote” is the temperature read from a “remote” probe.
When you have properly identified which temperature sensor is which, try to lower the speed of each fan and look at reported speed and temperatures. If you do not allow SpeedFan to change any fan speed and set all the speeds too low, then SpeedFan won’t be able to avoid overheating.

[ Download SpeedFan 4.27 ]