The motherboard's BIOS controls the fans inside your Windows PC. It can also be regulated by OEM or vendor software installed on a laptop or a pre-built machine. However, tinkering around in your PC's BIOS is tedious or even impossible, and OEM-provided software might be difficult to customize.

Thankfully, an open source, third party option is available. FanControl is perhaps the best solution for customizing the fans inside your Windows PC.

What Is Fan Control and Why Would I Want It?

Fan Control is an open source, third party application developed by a PC enthusiast (Rem0o). He created FanControl in 2019 to replace SpeedFan, which was for many years the best Windows solution for customizing fans without relying on BIOS settings or OEM software.

However, SpeedFan's final update was released in late 2015, so SpeedFan rarely ever works on PCs made after that date. FanControl is a spiritual successor to SpeedFan with new features.

Optimizing fan speeds isn't only for power users. Controlled fan speeds can mean a quieter PC, better cooling, and a better-performing computer for you.

Related: Weird Noises Inside Your Computer Explained

Warning: Messing Around With Fans Is a Big Deal

Your motherboard or OEM-built PC has default settings for your fans, and there's a good reason for it: they work. Keep in mind that it is dangerous to set the speed of your fans to extremely low levels. It is also possible to wear out your fans if you set them to a really high speed.

If your CPU or GPU hits a temperature of more than 95 Celsius after customizing your fans, you've set the speed too low, and you will likely experience unexpected crashes. It's unlikely that you could damage your processor in this way, thanks to built-in safeguards, but you should still be cautious.

Finally, your experience with Fan Control may vary since it might not support all systems. Unfortunately, if your PC isn't supported, there is little you can do.

How to Download and Install

Go to the GitHub page, scroll down to the "Installation" section, and click the part that says "Download to the latest archive." This gives you a zip file.

Make a new folder, name it "Fan Control," and move the zip file contents into this new folder. Then, to run the app, all you need to do is start FanControl.exe.

Fan Control UI Overview

First, we're going to look at the UI. Fan Control not only looks more modern than SpeedFan but is also organized more cleanly and more friendly to the user. When you first open Fan Control, it should look something like this:

Fan Control Overview

Your layout will depend on how many fans you have on your PC. If you see nothing under Controls or Speeds, then Fan Control doesn't recognize and support the hardware you use. Unfortunately, there's no workaround for this. If your system is unsupported, the developer says, "any issue regarding hardware compatibility should be submitted to LibreHardwareMonitor's repository."

The cards under the Control section are your fans, and the cards under Speeds tell you the current speed of those fans in RPM. The control cards are the key to controlling your fans.

In the top left corner, there's a collapsible menu. Open it and you should see these settings:

Fan Control Left Hand Menu

We recommend checking the Start with Windows option. You will probably also want to check the Start minimized option since Fan Control is a "set it and forget it" kind of app. You can also switch between light and dark mode here. Ignore everything else here for now.

On the right there is another dropdown menu:

Fan Control Right Hand Menu

The most important utility of this menu is saving and load configurations. You can save your current settings and load them later, which means you don't need to worry about fixing potential mistakes you might make. You can also manually update Fan Control and close the application from here.

Finally, in the bottom right corner, you can see a big plus button. Clicking on that will pull up a bunch of smaller buttons:

Fan Control Curve Types

The three buttons in the left column add sensors, which we can ignore mostly because they're not very useful. But the six buttons in the right column are various types of fan curves, which are very important for using Fan Control.

Setting Up Manual Speeds and Curves

There are two options for adjusting fan speed in Fan Control. The first method is to set a constant speed. To do this, click the button in the top right corner of a fan control card and check the option Manual control.

Fan Control Manual Menu

Next, you'll need to flick the switch in the middle left of the card. Then you can set the fan speed according to the slider.

Fan Control Manual Speed

But this is a very simple and thus limited way of adjusting the fan speed. Obviously, you don't want to set this too low and cause your computer to get hotter than you'd like, but you also don't want to set this way too high since loud fans are usually annoying. So, a better method is to make a Curve card.

Here we can see what those curve cards actually look like:

Fan Control Curve Cards

Before you do anything, you need to select a temperature source.

For CPU fans, use one of your CPUrelated sensors (pick the one with the highest temperature to be safe). Do the same for GPU fans. For case fans, you can use the hottest motherboard, CPU, or GPU sensor as it doesn't matter too much.

I've already configured these cards to my personal preference. First, let's focus on the Target and Linear cards since they're very similar to each other. Both cards require you to set a minimum and a maximum temperature. Basically, you're telling the app, "I want my temperature to never exceed X, but it's okay if it never goes below Y."

Next, you need to set a minimum speed and a maximum speed. When the minimum or maximum temperature is reached for both of these cards, their corresponding speed will trigger. For example, in my curves, the fans will always spin at 100% speed if the temperature is 95 C. They will return to 0% if the temperature is 65 C or less.

Read more: How to Prevent Computer Overheating and Keep Your PC Cool

The difference between Target and Linear is what happens between the minimum and maximum temperatures. The Target curve will only change the fan speed if the temperature reaches either the minimum or the maximum.

The Graph Curve

The Graph curve is probably the best of the three. The Graph curve is simple but has enough customization potential to work for just about anyone. It basically just asks you what fan speed you want at what temperature.

To customize your graph, drag the points to where you want them (they only go up or down, not left or right). To add more points, click on the line.

Here's how I configured my Graph curve:

Fan Control Graph Curve

I've added quite a few points, but the typical user won't need this many. We highly recommend that you set the fan speed to 100% at 95 C or earlier. Past 95 C, your CPU will start to thermally throttle (i.e., when the CPU slows down to cool) or even shut down to prevent permanent damage.

The last thing you'll need to do is to set your Control cards to use your new curve, as shown here:

Fan Control Cards With Curves

If you followed everything correctly, then you should have some custom fan curves for your PC.

Fan Control Is Great for Users Who Need Customizable Fans

Whether you're an enthusiast or the average user, Fan Control is easy to use and has a great deal of depth. The best thing about it is that it's free and open source which means there likely will never be a "final update" like SpeedFan.