Reeven Four Eyes Touch Fan Controller

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
If you need a new fan controller you might want to give this review of the Reeven Four Eyes Touch at Modders Inc. a quick look.

With the optical drive phased out in most modern PCs, the 5.25" external drive bay is feeling a bit of an "empty nest" syndrome. This space however, can be put to good use by adopting a fan controller that serves to provide thermal management much better than any built-in chassis fan controller could.
 
Doesn't look bad. 4 channels seems a little limiting though.

I have often been rather disappointed with the state of fan controllers.

In my desktop I am currently using a (now apparently discontinued) Sunbeam PL-RS-6 Rheosmart 6 (relatively) dumb fan controller.

It doesn't have any temperature probes, but it can switch each channel between PWM control (read from motherboard smart fan CPU header) and manual mode (set by dial)

I like this. I am a huge fan of using motherboard smart fan control settings. No software needed, fan speeds are automatically controlled based on temps. The best part is that it conversation the 4 pin PWM signal such that it can control the speed of 3 pin fans using voltage!

I like the idea of the fancy thermal probe based auto-controllers, but the problem is, with every single one I've tried, its tough to find good locations for the probes, and the fan profiles are usually kind of dumb, so they are way too loud at idle and not fast enough at load.

I coerced the NZXT Sentry 2 I last used to spin up fast enough by lowering the target temps below what I really needed them to be, but then the fans were too loud at idle. Toake it worse, when the system got hot, an alarm started beeping, which was really fucking annoying.

I filled the sound emitter with hotglue, which muffled it, but not enough. Finally I just ripped the sound emitter off the board using a pair of pliers.

Used it for a while, but tossed it in the trash when I got tired of the idle fan noise being too loud.

Solutions like Corsairs Link are nice, but the fact that they need to have the software running for custom fan profiles
IMHO limits their usefulness, as I dual boot to Linux (I only use Windows for games, that's all its good for :p ) and there is no Link software for Linux.

An ideal system would be standalone, not require any software, but be able to read bios temp readings aomehow. (Via USB with cross platform driver?) With self contained custom fan profiles, and able to switch between manual fan setting, pre-programmed fan profiles, custom fan profiles and motherboard PWM duty cycle, on a per channel basis, right from the front panel.

Maybe this is asking too much though :p

For now I am happy enough with my Sunbeam Rheosmart 6, but after 4 years of use some of the rheostat dials have become a little loose, and sometimes need to be jiggled to get them to work. I'd replace it with the same model, but it unfortunately looks to be discontinued :(

Is anyone aware of any other 6 channel fan controllers, which allow you to swithc between manual and PWM control for each 3pin channel?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top