You can download the user manual for afterburner here: event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm
More than likely it was opening to the system tray.Both precision and afterburner are written buy the same person,they are fairly easy to set up.Once set up it will control the fan automatically to your settings and display your temps on screen while in the game.
If you don't have any program installed for graphics fan speed,I suspect your video card over your cpu as the problem.If you want to check it anyway post a pick of your cpu fan and we'll see if we can tell you how to take it off.
If you want to see if the video card is the problem,you can download "Nvidia Inspector" which requires no installation,just run the program,take fan off of auto and turn up manually and try a game and see what happens;
downloads.guru3d.com/NVIDIA-Inspector-1.94-download-2612.html