I've just downloaded RivaTuner. (rather than nTune since nTune has a pisstakingly huge file size and I have a completely crap 56k internet connection)

I took a look at the readme file, and was immediately feeling lost and confused. It doesn't make much sense, and seems to be written for only experts to understand. It also tells people to look at the HELP before doing things. It doesn't tell you that you can only do that by right-clicking on various things. I only just realised that.

So... basically I was trying to improve my GPU's temperature. I have an 8800GTX. It has the standard fan and heatsink unit that ASUS provides with their GTX cards.

I get about 80-85 centigrade under load. 70 idle.

What I want to know is basically... I found the utility in RivaTuner to change my GPU fan speed. But I'm not sure how safe it is to use. I told it to detect my default fan settings, or whatever RivaTuner calls that. Now it gives me a slider which lets me change the fan speed. But rather than RPM it seems to be a percentage.

Is 100 percent the maximum SAFE speed for the fan to run at? Or if I set it to higher than normal, does it cause huge wear and tear and/or burn out the fan?

Is it some kind of stupid bug that makes the card never seem to run its fan faster even when it's over 80 degrees centigrade? I know the card can take much higher temperatures, but you'd think the speed would at least increase slightly.

Anyway, could someone tell me if it's perfectly safe to make my fan run faster? I noticed the temperature dropping like a stone when I put it on 100 percent speed for about 30 seconds, so it would be nice if it's ok to keep it running extra fast.

Also, has anyone overclocked using Rivatuner? I'm not sure my GPU needs overclocking, but I'd like to know how safe the utility is for that purpose too. My understanding is that it's meant to somehow test automatically how far you can go safely. Is that right?

RivaTuner doesn't seem to be up to date for the latest Nvidia drivers, so I get an error message about that. It does seem to run fine though, so I'm not sure what to make of the complaint. Could it cause a problem?

EDIT: Also, my new PC case has a fan speed controller on the front panel. I didn't have the right connector to make it control the GPU, which is why I'm using RivaTuner. But I can control the case fans and the CPU fan. But what speeds should I be using? Can a fan speed controller set the fans to run TOO fast? For example, my CPU fan is an 120mm fan. What kind of RPM should that be using? The speed controller seems to say it's normally at 1600RPM. Just ONE touch of the "increase speed" button causes it to increase to 2300RPM. Is that speed safe? it seems a bit high. ;;
It certainly improves the system temperatures though... What setting should I be using? Or how do I find out?

(Weird... it seems that after it went up to 2300 it then slowly decreased back to the original 1600RPM. Maybe there's meant to be something you press to lock it at the higher speed...)

Sorry for being a complete noob at this stuff. I never had a speed controller before. Can anyone help?

ARGH! It's suddenly on 2300RPM again. I don't understand this! The bloody thing didn't come with proper instructions!

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Is 100 percent the maximum SAFE speed for the fan to run at? Or if I set it to higher than normal, does it cause huge wear and tear and/or burn out the fan?

yeah. 100% basically means its max speed. you wont burn anything out. however, its up to you as it may make a lot more noise, depending on the cooler. personally, i dont care, and id set it to 100% anyway.

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RivaTuner doesn't seem to be up to date for the latest Nvidia drivers, so I get an error message about that. It does seem to run fine though, so I'm not sure what to make of the complaint. Could it cause a problem?

well youre only chaning fan speeds. i would be cautious about overclocking, but other than that it should be fine.

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EDIT: Also, my new PC case has a fan speed controller on the front panel. I didn't have the right connector to make it control the GPU, which is why I'm using RivaTuner. But I can control the case fans and the CPU fan. But what speeds should I be using? Can a fan speed controller set the fans to run TOO fast? For example, my CPU fan is an 120mm fan. What kind of RPM should that be using? The speed controller seems to say it's normally at 1600RPM. Just ONE touch of the "increase speed" button causes it to increase to 2300RPM. Is that speed safe? it seems a bit high. ;;
It certainly improves the system temperatures though... What setting should I be using? Or how do I find out?

again, youre fine. if you put it over its limit, it would most likely burn out in a very short time. and those speeds seem normal for a 120mm anyway.

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(Weird... it seems that after it went up to 2300 it then slowly decreased back to the original 1600RPM. Maybe there's meant to be something you press to lock it at the higher speed...)

that is something that bothers me as well. i think there must be something else controlling it. for example, i try putting my fan speeds to 100% on speedfan, and they go back to their automatic ones after about two or three seconds. nothing in the BIOS about it for me, but do you have any auto fan speed control in your BIOS? turning it off should give you full control.

Ah, thank goodness for that. I was a bit worried about using 2300rpm rather than 1600rpm. Seems like a big increase. But I just noticed that the sound it makes at 2300rpm is a lot like it sounded in my old case. I wonder if it used to run at 2300, and the fan controller slowed it down.

One thing I do wonder... Why does the speed controller only give me 1200rpm max for my case fans, but 2300rpm for the CPU fan? Surely it can't magically detect that they're different? I don't see how... That said, they're all 120mm fans, so I wonder what the difference IS.


I think I worked out what's going on with the speeds. When you set it, it seems to go up to the maximum rated speed, and then decrease until it's at the speed you wanted. Then it will stay there. Though it does vary slightly, and I'm not sure why that is. Seems to work ok overall, but the speed wobbles between the two nearest 100rpm figures. Say if you set it to 1700rpm, it might keep swapping between 1700 and 1800. I think it's just rounding up or down respectively due to small speed variations.

This makes me curious though. If a fan speed controller can't make the fan go over it's limit, then how WOULD you do that? Not that I want to. Noooo sir.

Speedfan never controlled my fans at all, which is interesting. In fact, speedfan only showed the speed for one of the fans. Maybe the others weren't linked to the motherboard.

I don't KNOW of any fan control in my BIOS. I'm not sure about that. I have been in there and looked, but I may have missed something. Might take another look next time I'm booting up.

Well, if the fan speeds are all fine running at maximum... this is very nice. The GPU core temperature is 58 degrees Centigrade right now.

The CPU temperature isn't so impressive. That's 44 for both cores, idle. Still, that's not bad. I just hoped it would be even cooler with the big fan. And the weather is pretty hot here right now. Room temperature is 27 Centigrade at the moment, though I'm not sure how much of a difference that makes.

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One thing I do wonder... Why does the speed controller only give me 1200rpm max for my case fans, but 2300rpm for the CPU fan? Surely it can't magically detect that they're different? I don't see how... That said, they're all 120mm fans, so I wonder what the difference IS.

depends. firstly, if the case fans are sleeve bearing, then they wont work well when upright, hence the reason i never recommend them. if theyre ball bearing, and youve had them for a long time, then the bearings could be wearing out.

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This makes me curious though. If a fan speed controller can't make the fan go over it's limit, then how WOULD you do that? Not that I want to. Noooo sir.

not sure. no ones ever asked me that. i dont think they would sell controllers that 'overdrive' them, if you will, because the limit is the limit, after which it would surely burn out. in fact, putting in more voltage on a motor than it can handle can sometimes result in slower speeds...when i was younger i played with electronics and tried that with a little motor...yeah, some childhood huh

Hmm. I recently had a very similar problem with my 8800GT fan. But, mine used to have a core temperature of 58C when the fans were on 25% (silent). I only have the fans set to run at 100% when the core temperature goes above 90C, which it only did when I was playing Crysis. I found RivaTuner very usefull for automatically controlling fan speeds based on temperature, but all the guides that I have followed used methods that didn't work for me, and after a bit of searching, I found that they didn't work for many other 8800 series users. If you want I can tell you the way that I used, it is relatively easy, but I won't be able to tell you until I get back to my computer tomorrow evening (it's 11:30 AM where I live). So, if you want me to tell you how to control the fan speed automatically based on core temperature, just tell me and I'll tell you how when I get back.

I actually found a guide of how to do that... Did seem a little complicated, but it seems you have to set up limits on the temperature recording graphs.

I could just do it myself. Turn up the fan speed before I start a graphics intensive game. I hear the automatic monitoring method takes up quite a lot of system resources. Did you find that was a problem?

Holy crap, 58C with only 25 percent fan speed? Did you have a custom cooling unit on your card or something? Could be the GTX is just hotter... Mine is about 70C idle with the fans at about 50 percent (or whatever the default is). And that's with the standard ASUS 8800GTX cooling unit. Which is a fan with a heatpipe leading to a great big huge heatsink. The whole thing's enclosed in plastic casing. I had it open yesterday and removed some fluff, so it should really be running as well as it ever could right now.

As for the case fans, I know bugger all about what bearings they use. The companies who send out the cases never tell you any useful information like that. In fact, I didn't even know the case was going to show up with a built in 120mm case fan and the fan controller unit. For the price, I'd only expected the case and the huge 400mm fan.

The fans are just 120mm basic fans. One of them came with the new case, so it certainly shouldn't be worn out. The other, I took off my old case. It was the original 120mm case outtake fan. I put that one on the spare vent holes at the front of my case.

I wonder if this is anything to do with it... The two case fans had to plug into two of those white connector socket/plug things. But both of them were on the same cable. I'm not an expert with the wiring, so I'm not sure if those are for data or for power...
Surely it wouldn't be sharing the power between the two fans and thus having the speed shared between the two also?

My card is the Gainward 512MB 8800GT. As for the system resources, I haven't found that it uses lots, but I haven't checked in task manager. I'm using a Core 2 Duo @ 2.13GHz, and 4GB of RAM.

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As for the case fans, I know bugger all about what bearings they use. The companies who send out the cases never tell you any useful information like that. In fact, I didn't even know the case was going to show up with a built in 120mm case fan and the fan controller unit. For the price, I'd only expected the case and the huge 400mm fan.

alright then, a simple way to test whether they are sleeve or ball bearing - remove the fan from its grille, but keep it plugged in. turn the computer on and open up speedfan. orient the fan horizontally and vertically. do you notice any significant change in the rpm while on auto speeds and 100% speeds?

I can't take the fans out without a massive amount of rearranging crap in the case. One of them's in behind my hard drives. The other is at the back of the case and it's not exactly simple to get to. After putting everything together I'd prefer not to be dismantling things again.

You'd think it would be easier to look the parts up. Does it help if I say that one of them is a black 120mm fan with the word Aerocool across it? Aerocool made the case. You'd think there would be information on their website about what fan comes with the case. But I couldn't find anything. Actually, there was sod all useful information about the fan speed controller either.

unless there is a model number on the sticker, then i dont think there is much youll find out.

Oh well, never mind then. So long as the fans are running, it's fine.

Hm. I seem to have lost the information I found about setting up the auto fan speed changing in RivaTuner.

Could you tell me how you did it?

theres a checkbox under, or near the cpu load meters. its on the first screen you see, you cant miss it.

Reading the first five posts made me believe that this is the NeoEssays thread.

Open RivaTuner

1. Go to settings, make sure send to tray on close and run a Windows startup are checked.
2. Under main tab, under driver settings, click customize and then click the picture of the graphics card, system settings.
3. Go to the fan tab, select direct control from the drop down box.
4. Move the slider to whatever percentage you want, then click the save button, and call it whatever you want.
5. Repeat for how many settings you want i.e. 60% for temperature over X degrees, 80% for temperature over X degrees. Click OK on this window.
6. Go to the launcher tab.
7. Click the green plus symbol, select regular item, and press OK.
8. Type a name, select the box associated fan profile, and then choose whichever one you want e.g. name - "fan speed 60%", then select 60% fan profile.
9. Repeat steps 7 and 8 for however many you want.
10. Go to the scheduler tab.
11. Click the plus button.
12. Type a name, and select launch item, then choose the launcher that you want to use.
13. Select run task on hardware monitoring range event.
14. Select core temperature from the drop down menu, and then enter the temperatures that you want to use that speed between e.g. 60% between 70C and 80C.
15. Put 0 in both data sampling period and task freezing period to allow seamless changes between your fan profiles.
16. Click OK.

If it asks you about enabling background hardware monitoring at any point, you have to make sure you enable it. Then all you need to do is play some games to make the card hot, and the fan should come on!

Hope I helped

Oh, so that's why...

I was trying to do it through "low level" control. Didn't like the thought of screwing with the drivers. Is it completely safe? Assuming I don't do something unbelievably dumb like telling it to use 25 percent fans at 90C.
Anyway, thanks for telling me how.

Oh, and I found another problem. I have certain games that I have to play on Vista 32bit instead of XP. Crysis for example. So I just booted up Vista, with the new Nvidia drivers installed. I tried to use RivaTuner, in Vista, from the folder I installed it on XP in. I get a message on the main screen saying that there are "no supported drivers detected for this display adaptor".

Does that just mean some idiot didn't make that version of RivaTuner compatible with the latest Vista drivers? Or is something else wrong?
Do I need a fresh seperate install of RivaTuner or something?

As a result of it not finding drivers, I can't use the driver level controls in Vista at all.

Also, there's something weird going on. When I opened up the hardware monitoring window, I found that in Vista, RivaTuner is reading my GPU core temperature to be 58C idle. That's with the default fan settings! In XP it's more like 70C under the same conditions.

Any idea why that is? Is it just reading it wrong because it doesn't understand my driver? Surely it can't possibly really BE that much cooler. There's no reason for it to be different that I know of.
Also, in Vista it's reading the "ambient" temperature to be over 50C when I know it's more like 30C. The hell?