General Application Tutorials , Hardware Tutorials

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Using Speedfan to monitor temperatures and voltages

By: MadMonkey | Posted 09.14. 2009

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Speefan

Speedfan is a useful tool for monitoring temperatures and voltages.

However many users don’t realise this this tool is exceptionally handy for monitoring and logging these readings in the background, since temperatures are likely to be greater and voltages may drop when a PC is busy, for example, when gaming.

When gaming, it’s extreemly hard to monitor temperatures and voltages. By the time you press [Alt]+[Tab], these readings will have already started to stabalise.

Enabling logging in Speedfan is not completely obvious, it took me a little time to understand it myself. It’s very easy once you have done it once.

Open up Speedfan, and click on the Configure button, followed by the Log tab.

To enable logging, select Enabled, followed by Add Header to the file.

Now we must select what items to add to the log, otherwise the log file will be empty.

Under the Fans and Temperatures tab is where we’ll be working. Select and item, for example “CPU”, and then click on the Logged checkbox at the bottom of the window.

speedfan

When your finished, click OK.

Now that Speedfan is configured for logging, it will continue to log whenever Speedfan is open and running. The log file itself will be saved in the speedfan folder (normally c:\program files\speedfan), and will start with “SFLog” followed by the date in YYYY MM DD format, followed by “.csv”. So for example, today is the 14th of September 2009, the log file will be “SFLog20090914.csv”.

You will most likely have a specific reason for enabling logging, suspected overheating for example. Other users may be experiencing problems with games crashing, stop errors, graphical glitches and PC restarts. Whatever the reason, look for the highest value towards the end of the log file. It may not necessarily be the very last entry in the log. In certain circumstances, for example, in the case of a TDR issue
(http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/display/wddm_timeout.mspx), Windows will give 5 seconds for threads to leave the GPU before a stop error occurs, or it manages to recover from a time out, and resume operation.

On the downside, Speedfan can sometimes be a little generic about components. Unlike the above example, components may appear as “Temp1″, “Temp2″ for example. Sometimes, temperatures and voltages may be misreported by Speedfan, so if you see that your 12v rail is showing 4v, don’t panic!

There are other temperature monitoring tools as well, but many not quite as handy if your looking at logging these readings at the time of a crash. These tools include, nTune (for NVidia cards), SIW (very handy for a lot of other hardware and software information) and CPU-Z.

Can I install Windows 7 on my PC?

By: The H
Posted 11.8. 2009

You’ve heard the hype, you’ve seen the TV ads and the press reports and you’re sitting there thinking oh yea, Microsoft are at it again. Vista was a disaster, there I said it. It was released too soon without software support and was therefore doomed from the start.
When Vista was released we were all enjoying [...]