SpeedFan 4.52 for Windows

SpeedFan 4.52 is a free system monitor for Windows from Almico that reads temperatures, voltages and fan speeds from your PC's sensors. You can download SpeedFan from the developer's site; the current version dates from 29 June 2016, so it is best seen as a classic tool rather than an actively developed one.

Overview

SpeedFan appeared in 2001, at a time when overclocking desktop PCs was a popular hobby and motherboard makers shipped few monitoring tools of their own. The program talks directly to the hardware monitoring chips on the motherboard and shows what they report: processor and board temperatures, fan speeds and supply voltages. On supported boards it can also adjust fan speed, which is where its name comes from, letting a quiet PC stay quiet while idle and spin up under load. Another part of the program deals with hard disks and reads their built-in health data, helping you notice a failing drive before it takes your files with it. Written in Object Pascal, SpeedFan is small and light, and it runs in the background with icons in the notification area. The catch is age: hardware released after the last update may not be recognised, readings on new motherboards can be missing or wrong, and fan control may simply not work. On an older PC it can still be very useful; on a brand-new one, try it and trust only the values that look plausible.

Key facts

How to install it

1. Open the official download page and get the installer.
2. Run setup with administrator rights; the program needs them to read the sensors.
3. Start SpeedFan and wait a few seconds while it detects the chips on your board.
4. Check the readings against your BIOS or UEFI screen before relying on them.

Requirements and compatibility

SpeedFan runs on Windows. Support depends on the monitoring chip of your motherboard rather than on the Windows version, so the only real test is to run it. The version history lists what each release added.

Safety

Reading sensors is harmless. Changing fan speeds is not: if you set fans too low, components can overheat. Leave automatic control to the BIOS unless you know what you are doing, and watch temperatures under load after any change. Get the program only from almico.com.

Price

SpeedFan is freeware; donations to the author are welcome.

Pros and cons

• Pro: tiny and light on resources.
• Pro: temperatures, voltages, fans and disk health in one place.
• Pro: free.
• Con: no updates for years, weak support for new hardware.
• Con: fan control is risky for beginners.

Alternatives

For hardware information on our site, see CPU-Z for processor and memory details, CrystalDiskInfo and Victoria HDD/SSD for disk health.