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How to control the fan speed on MSI?

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  • 4 min read

MSI makes powerful, well-made gaming laptops that are quite hard to beat for the price. However, with great power comes the great responsibility for cooling the system housing said component.

While MSI laptops house pretty decent thermal solutions, the fans keeping your system can be a bit loud at times. If you’re looking to get manual control over your laptop’s fans, you’re in the right place.

Pretty much all MSI laptops come with a utility called Dragon Center, which acts as a central control centre that lets you monitor your laptop and configure various components. However, depending on your laptop’s make and model, the Dragon Center may or may not have manual control over your fans.

In this article, we will use another MSI utility called Silent Option to take manual control of our machine’s fans. It’s a straightforward, lightweight tool that lets you control the laptop’s fans and even set up fan speed profiles based on CPU or GPU temperature. 

Also read: How to setup MSI Afterburner?


Manually controlling MSI fans using Silent Option

Before we get started, you’re going to have to download the Silent Option utility. There are two versions of this tool, based on what model and what processor you’re running, so be sure you’re downloading the right version. 

Step 1: Head over to the SIlent Option download page and pick the version your device supports. For reference, our relatively new GL65 Leopard supports V1.0.1603.3101.

How to control the fan speed on MSI? | Candid.Technology

Once you’ve installed the tool, launch it, and you’ll be greeted with the following screen. From here, you can monitor your fan speeds and make changes.

How to control the fan speed on MSI? | Candid.Technology

Step 2; Click on the Basic button, and you’ll see a slider. You can drag this slider around to adjust fan speeds.

How to control the fan speed on MSI? | Candid.Technology

If you want more control, you can head over to the Advanced tab, which lets you set fan speeds according to the GPU or CPU temperatures. 

How to control the fan speed on MSI? | Candid.Technology

Note that you would be able to control the fan speed from the Dragon Center itself by editing your current system profile on some MSI devices. However, the tool functions differently on different laptops.

Our GL65 Leopard doesn’t have any such option under system profiles. There’s a Cooler Boost toggle, but it only cranks up the fans to their max speed.

Most laptops also have a dedicated fan control switch on them which can come in handy should you need to crank up the fans suddenly during a gaming session or otherwise. 

How to control the fan speed on MSI? | Candid.Technology
The dedicated fan button (left) on the MSI GL65 Leopard.

Do keep in mind though that two (or more) fans running at 6000RPM can get quite loud. 

Also read: How to use MSI Afterburner to overclock GPU?

Yadullah Abidi

Yadullah Abidi

Yadullah is a Computer Science graduate who writes/edits/shoots/codes all things cybersecurity, gaming, and tech hardware. When he's not, he streams himself racing virtual cars. He's been writing and reporting on tech and cybersecurity with websites like Candid.Technology and MakeUseOf since 2018. You can contact him here: yadullahabidi@pm.me.

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