hey! I was recently checking my dell xps 410 with the DVD that came with it to see if all the drivers and hardware was working properly and for one of the test it tested fan speed. I noticed that the fans were going MUCH faster during the testing procedure . Basically the program did something with the fan controllers to put the fans on their maximum speed. They were obviously going much faster than during normal operation becausethw air circulation increased dramatically and they got much noisier. Basically what I'm getting at here is whether it is possible to manually control fan speed at your liking in any other way other than using motherboard monitor or fanspeed. These programs never works for pcs like dell because they are locked down way too tightly. Any ideas or suggestions? How did the diagnostics program do it?

guys anyone have ANY ideas?

The fan speed is controlled by a circuit called PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) and it seems that the software you are talking about have access to this circuit. I personally don't know about any program that can do this on a Dell machine, but you can look around.

Gabriel

k thanks a lot Gabriel, and if anyone else has any suggestions on how to accses this PWM circuit (cause apparently the program could accsess it) i am open to suggestions!

ok guys so are there really no other ways to accsess this thing that controls the speed of fans ?? if no just post a reply so i know for sure and abandon the idea

If you like messing and playing with thing's you could DIY a brushless speed controller independant of your PC, that way you could manually alter the speed of your CPU fan.
That said you need to have a bit of soldering experience and know how to a PIC would help as well.

oh yeh and is your user supposed to say, 'russian hacker' ?

Hi there,

Just posted this tutorial that may help solving this issue:

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/496

Cheers,
Gabriel