Bitfenix Recon 'Control Yourself' end user review (Picture and Video heavy)

[Tealc]

Bitfenix were kind enough to send me a Bitfenix Recon controller and two Bitfenix Spectre Pro fans for review after winning their little competition.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18422238

Since I received the parcel I have spent a few hours looking at the fan controller and the fans.

Firstly I mainly opened the box, examined the contents and tested it outside my case on a few fans I had available on my electronics bench.

Then I installed it in my system and got it up and running, talking to my computer and then accessing it's controls first via my PC and then via my Ipod Touch 4G, both via LAN and WAN.

So let's start with some pictures of what came in the parcel from caseking.

That's the controller at the top, 140mm black non-LED on the left and it's 120mm counterpart on the right, along with some sweeties.

I must say I like the way the fans are packaged but am unsure how a fan came claim to make me...

I know this isn't a review of the fans but I thought, seeing as I took the pictures, I'd put them up so you can see them. I really like the look of them.

They come with a Molex to fan adaptor, screws and rubber grommets.

THe grommets actually fit this time

Not sure if I'm right but Bitfenix have sacrificed some of the fan size for their dual frame construction.

But this construction allows you to do this..

..which is awesome to me for some strange reason. A blob of blu-tac and you could stick it anywhere.

Again Bitfenix go with one moulding for LED and non-LED fans.

The fans are both rated for the same speed.

1200 RPM at 12v but the current rating is different simply because it's harder for a 1400mm to turn than a 120mm.


The Recon fan controller itself comes in quite a small box, which reminds me a little of After Eights.

I noticed here that the box declares a 30W specification per channel yet their specs declares it as 10W. That's quite a disparity. Perhaps the box was made before they downgraded the power capability as I seem to recall hearing them say it was going to be 30W in an older video when Recon was a dual bay prototype.

Inside the box we have..

..a lot of stuff.

The Recon controller itself and it's assorted attached cables. A manual, some thermal probe stickers, screws for mounting, some spare fan extensions and two spare thermal probes.

The manual itself is just a two sided affair that mainly deals with the operation of the browser based control interface and a brief description on how to set it up.

The other side deals with what the wires dp and what the items are on the screen when it's powered up.

Unfurled from left we have Power hookup with pass through Molex 4 pin peripheral connector(12v and 5v and ground). Fan 1 - Fan 3 with 3/4 pin connectors on the other end (Pin 4 is missing but can take PWM fans). 5 Thermal probe connections (2 wires per probe) which are hot glued in place. Fan4 and Fan 5.

The USB cable comes from below and has two connectors. Bitfenix state you should install the middle one for some reason. I didn't spot this instruction though until I'd already fitted the end one and it didn't work, or I hadn't done something properly. It was difficult for me to fit the cable so I wasn't best pleased.

If the middle USB is important then it should say in the installtion instructions, Bitfenix.

The thermal probes are 10k Ohm NTC thermistor based semi-conductors. You can see the semi-conductor material between the two metallic prongs in the image below.

The PCB is interesting.

The recon fan controller uses a PNP B772 transistor which is a 3 Amp Audio frequency power amplifier, which seems to be used a lot on fan controllers. The cheap fan controller I just retired before fitting the Recon also used the B772, as does my PWM fan to DC fan converter.

According to the manual the fan controller uses frequency modulation to control the fans and this is borne out by the components in use to control fan voltage.

The little 1AN transistor here receives the PWM signal from the controller IC and inverts it through the B772.

This chip is an EEPROM , probably used to store your user settings and remember your fan speeds.

This big IC, I would assume, is the main controller chip which probably deals with pretty much everything including sending PWM to the fan control circuitry.

What I did notice as well was what looked like two LEDs leading down into the display area of the Recon fan controller. Looks like I can switch this to Orange if I choose to.

So before installing in my computer I decided to check it out down my shed where I normally fiddle with electronics and stuff.

Not sure why but I recorded a video of my findings.

Fan speed range is good with most fans, allowing my 1000 RPM to go down to 400 RPM. I believe it's about 40% PWM duty cycle minimum. You can stop any channel and have 0 RPM as desired.

Temperature recognition was very good when I held the thermistor and fan speed increased quite quickly.

Was initially a bit fiddly to get the speed to manually change but I discovered that it likes to keep the fan speed up for a little while before letting them come down.

If a fan stops then a warning beep will be heard until the fan starts up again. If the fan is stalled it will automatically resume at top speed for a while before returning to the set speed. The stalled channel has no effect on the remaining channels.

Power consumption drops as fan speeds drop. I know this sounds elementary but it's not always the case with fan control, sometimes excess energy is just dumped into heatsinks.

The default speed for Manual setting is zero.

The B772 transistors don't really warm up with any of my single fans. may have to break out a splitter of some description to see how it copes with >10W.

Fan speed adjustment is done in 100RPM jumps, which to my opinion is a bit high, I'd prefer smaller jumps.


Eventually I decided to fit the Recon into my PC.

First I had to connect these Antec thingies so they would fit.

Then installed into my P183 case.

I chose to hook up these two front fans, Bitfenix 1000RPM Spectres.

and the rear Akasa Apache PWM fan as seen here

I chose not to use the Spectre Pro fans as supplied by Bitfenix because the 120mm one has a slight grindy bearing noise issue which ultimately I wouldn't want in my PC. I did consider using the 140mm on my graphics card but without an actual GPU temperature to PWM control I'm not happy to have it in use.

I typically forgot to install the USB cable first so had to shut down and restart. I then realised that nothing was detected as new hardware. This was because the USB cable Bitfenix provide has two USB connectors on it. The end one has no electrical connection to the fan controller unless you were to bridge the connections on the middle connector. It does actually say on the Bitfenix website to fit the middle connector but not in the manual. It's really fiddly for me to fit USB header connectors due to my massive graphics cooler and soundcard so I wasn't too happy.

Once I'd done that I could finally get to this screen.

It didn't initially want to connect using Internet explorer so I had to use Firefox to browse to http://127.0.0.1:9980 and afterwards it worked off the shortcut Bitfenix software dropped on my desktop.

Next I had to figure out how to get it WANned up.

So I followed this basic guide http://www.overclock.net/a/how-to-i...nternet-access-without-disabling-the-firewall which did the trick.

I could now browse to my WAN IP using a handheld device and control my fans from there.

My handheld device is an iPod Touch 4G that uses Safari as it's default browser, which initially didn't work and just displayed maximal values and didn't update. It seems to be working now though.

You can choose from Auto/Manual and whether to have RPM, PWM duty cycle % or Volts displayed. Temperatures are shown in degrees C or F and reflect exactly what it says on the fan controller screen itself. Updates via mobile browser takes a few seconds or so to update on the Recon itself and refresh in the browser.

Auto and Manual settings are on a global basis and not per fan. I think it's OK but it could be handy to have some fans just chug along at constant speeds while other react. I suppose though this could be done by changing limits on the fans you want steady.

There are three presets P1, P2, P3 which you can set and these changes happen quite quickly.

I did make another video of me controlling via my iPod but it kept flashing up my WAN address so I decided to not post it.

And the Recon replaces this awesome controller.

So overall I'm very happy to leave this fan controller in my PC, although I may change the colour eventually.

EDIT:

There are a few points which concern me now that I've been using Recon for a few weeks.

1) The 10W (30W on box) specification is true enough but you will lose some top end speed if you have more than two or three fans per channel. A Lamptron type controller this is not. For most people this just won't be a problem and isn't for me. Many controllers have similar, or indeed worse, current handling.

2) Auto setting cannot be configured to respond to a temperature ceiling. The default fan curve that starts at 20 degrees is set in hardware. The warning temperature is just that, a beep and 100% speed setting. So you could set it really low and get a 30% speed to 100% in 1 degree. This is a similar setup to many other controllers.

3) The LEDs are not easily changed. They are potted in the end of the screen. (to be fair Bitfenix can't really be expected to offer different colour options) For 99% of users this will not be a problem.

4) The Recon will choose a slightly different fan speed on every boot or resume. Recon seems to change the speed of the fan up and down for a few moments after each boot and occasionally during a session. On mine Fan 3 took quite a long time to settle, Fan 4 is much better, Fan 1 & 2 are percect though so go figure.

I would prefer much tighter control over the speed increments instead of 100RPM.

I'm thinking that direct PWM duty cycle control would be better here rather than trying to change it by 100 at a time. People don't run 5000 RPM fans so much these days so 100 RPM is a lot, especially for me with my fans.

Thanks to Bitfenix for allowing normal folk like myself to try out and review their products. I hope I've covered everything.

If I come across anything I will edit or add another post.

 

[Tealc]

Just had a fiddle with the auto settings.

EDIT: The information regarding the changing of the Auto fan curve was apparently incorrect. Recon has a warning limit temperature only that doesn;t seem to affect the duty cycle/temperature response curve at all.

/snip










A gratuitous night shot. This will looks sweet in orange next to my switch panel and with my CPU cooler fan glowing orange in the background and two 16x orange LED fans at the bottom.

Update:

Threw some fans onto a single channel to analyse the effect on load on the channel and whether Recon can handle as much as 10W (0.8A). Well it can....mostly.

Using a very similar circuit to the one I'm using to convert PWM to DC output the results are totally as I expected. The Recon will drive 0.8A of fans, but you'll see a couple of volts drop on the output.

I would say you'd be totally fine running 3x 1000-2000 RPM off each channel before the speed drops too much, and even then it might not even be a problem. Fans aren't perfect DC loads as they have inductance too so joining them like this can cause drops that wouldn't occur when using a single fan. My highest rated fan is 2500 RPM and 0.25 Amperes and it runs it just fine.

 

[Tealc]

Thanks guys. Maybe a bit long and a bit too thorough perhaps though. Not really sure how one can review a fan controller without talking about everything. Maybe I should have spent a few minutes pointing at features, not bothered even to install it and given it a Kickass rating

Yeah I was rather disappointed by the 120mm fan bearing noise but I doubt if it's a design flaw but rather just my bad luck in getting a less than perfect fan. If I had purchased it the fan would har been RMAed. The 140mm fan is veeery smooooooth with very low mechanical noise and I may use it on my graphics card with one of my PWM to DC converters as my Thermalright TY-140 has always ticked a bit.

As for the mobile device it requires no software other than a browser, your WAN address and the port, the default being 9980. So something like

http://12.11.10.9:9980

and it'll load right up once your firewall and router allow the traffic. The tutorial link I provided in my review above deals with all these steps.

Was sitting on my sofa last night and my rear fan was making noise so I just loaded up Safari and dialed it down. Lazy but strangely gratifying and totally awesome.

The auto setting works on a curve beginning at 20 degrees with lowest speed and gradually increases up to 100% at a temperature you set, or accept the default. I've updated Post#2 with some information on that.

I'm really confused by the USB cable. I could understand if they had the two lengths for smaller and larger cases but the lack of a jumper to connect the wires on the middle plug seems an omission to me. Maybe Bitfenix have a reason for this and a possible interface wth another USB device later on or something as once you hook it up using the middle plug you have half an active USB header connector to connect to something else. The Recon therefore doesn't take up a whole USB connector but shares it out. I suppose that has to be commended. I assumed we'd have an option of an actual USB A connector, maybe even an adaptor from Harwin connector to USB A. I may fit a USB A onto the header connector at a later stage, maybe when I switch the LED colour, as I just don't like having a stripey cable dangling down inside my case very much. I'd prefer a USB cable sneaking out the back and into a port at the rear of my machine.

 

[Tealc]

I have the probes out of the direct air stream where possible but near the zone where the fan is acting. So one is on top of my rear fan. One is in the middle of my bottom chamber an the final one is just threaded in between my graphics card power wiring.

 

[Tealc]

Added some more information to Post #2. Specifically some multiple fan load tests vs voltage drop.

Maybe I go too far with things. :/

 

[Tealc]

Hiya.

One thing I didn't try was throwing multiple fans,say 3 or 4 at 0.5A total at a channel with it dialled down to below 12v.

The High performance SP120s draw 0.14A from a 12v source and the quiet ones more like 0.04A from 12v. If you had 3x SP120 high performance at 0.42A on a single channel and selected around 50% duty cycle I'd imagine they'd be running pretty slow due to the voltage sag, 1000 RPM may actually be more like 800 RPM but I'd expect with 1500 RPM dialled in it would spin them up. Those Corsair, judging my their low current, must be very smooth. Do want.

If you must have more fans per channel you should adjust the fan curve to compensate. Bring the control temperature down so it speeds up quicker.

I'm unsure yet if the RPM reading displayed has any basis in reality. It may work as a percentage best guess based on the duty cycle. I hooked up my Apache fan today to Recon and my motherboard RPM sensor and the figures were quite different at times. I may look further into this with several fans.

Bitfenix Recon is not a Lamptron competitor. It does not have a massive buck converter circuit featuring a few Amperes of current. It's designed for one or two fans per channel. It's a relatively simple controller with a nice interface and internet connectivity.

 

[Tealc]

To be honest. Less fans.

I'm no expert on fan controllers mate. I just enjoy a bit of electronics and fiddling with electronic items, learning about how they work along the way.

Maybe a Lamptron?

Maybe one, two or more of my 4 pin PWM to 3 pin converter circuits linked to in my signature. They'll handle 0.42A (usually good up to about 0.5A) and run off your CPU fan header's PWM signal, with Molex for power and could, potentially control every single 3 pin fan in your system, totally seamlessly. If your CPU warms by a degree, the fans speed up by a few revs.

 

[Tealc]

Oooooh tell me more

Well it's all in here but the thread does deal a lot with the development of the end design, has lots of videos demonstrating it at work and also has pictures. Maybe I should update the first post to deal with the end design.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18421145

What I do is take the PWM, run it through a few resistors and transistors, a switch and things and a nice smooth DC voltage comes out for the fans. It has 3 settings for different loads and can go between 12v at max and 3v at minimum, although 5-6v is more normal.

Looks a bit like this when it's finished.

Just checked the corsair fans and they are 0.25amp and i have just tried using just 2 on one channel and it does the same thing.

It' still rather odd that it would stall. Fans are usually good to run as low as 3v if they are already running. Surely it can't be that low? What does Recon say for the voltage when it's stalling?

 

[Tealc]

When you do it'll have the option of Volts/Percent/RPM in the web interface. However it could just be these are best guesses by the controller IC and not based on actual values.

 

[Tealc]

It's close to 30mm. Allow a few mm more for the wiring.

 

[Tealc]

To clarify... from the red line in the picture moving up.. what's the distance before any connectors start etc?

thanks!!

From the line you are only looking at literally a few mm before you hit the transistors and their heatsinks. A little more, maybe 5 or 6mm from top down to the connectors.

The side brackets are integral to the body of the controller.

It looks like it's one piece of metal bent around for the mounting sides and also on top and bottom for extra rigidity. It's actually really quite solid. No flexing or bending here.

 

[Tealc]

Tealc, got a strange issue with my Recon.

For some reason it does not like my Noctua 120mm fan. If I try to run 120 on it's own channel the unit will register it as 200 RPM at 12V on all channels. I put it back on a Y-splitter with the other D14 fan and it's all back to normal. Bit annoying but it's not the unit it's the fan I suppose.

Maybe the 120 from the D14 isn't meant to be controlled by itself. Will try find info on it via google. ¬_¬

Just put my spare NF-P12 120mm Noctua fan on Fan 3 channel and it seems to be responding ok to my Recon. At first the speed was fluctuating between 770 and 930 RPM but now seems to have settled at 908 RPM. Recon itself shows 900 RPM, 60% and 7.2v at 30 degrees. It's a tad fast for my liking at idle though so I might drop the temperature probe down a little.

I think in your case the calibration routine that Recon carries out is failing on that fan for some reason. Maybe it's not getting a nice clean RPM signal so it can't work out the maximum speed. When it's paired with the other Noctua it could be that as it's on a splitter Recon can't see the RPM signal so doesn't notice the extra fan. Recon is more than capable of driving 2 Noctua fans.

 

[Tealc]

Just put PC to sleep and resumed and now it's all over the place again, 770 RPM to 930 RPM. Not sure at the moment if it's just Fan 3 channel that is erratic but to my thinking it's not really all that good to hear the fan revving up and down for 5-10 minutes every time you boot/resume.

This time it seems to have settled at 810 RPM despite the exact same temperature, voltage and duty cycle % showing in the web interface.

A strange one this Recon. Maybe could have done with a few more weeks of development time perhaps.

 

[Tealc]

Yes mate, Recon comes with the normal five fan leads which are a decent length and five temp probes but also has two additional extensions for the fans and two spare temp probes.


Went out for a while and resumed PC again. It's now decided to run the Noctua fan at 706-710 RPM even though there's a slightly higher temperature seen by the probe (33 deg C vs 31 deg C). That's a staggering 200 RPM difference in speed based on the same basic temperature and for my fan a 15% change in speed and that's just on 3 resumes. Can it get worse.

Sorry Bitfenix but as an engineer I'm getting less impressed by this fan controller. I had such high hopes from the advertising blurb and early videos. Maybe I'm expecting too much from a £30 fan controller.

I do wish they would have programmed an adjustable fan curve and tightened up the fan speed range to something more like 20 RPM, rather than this 100RPM which is a significant amount on a 1000 RPM fan. If the fan curve was a result of the warning temperature that would be so simple to achieve in software. A nice linear response between 20 deg C and the warning temperature with a few a few percent duty cycle per degree or something. Easy stuff.

I'd like to see fine tuning on the PWM duty cycle as well. The whole point in having a web service, I'd have thought, would be to give you finer control over what Recon does with the fans. I think Recon tries a bit hard to govern a fan speed when perhaps it would be better off governing duty cycle and just give you whatever fan speed that is.

My basic PWM converter can easily cope with a 1% increase in PWM and show a tiny adjustment in speed. It doesn't show any erratic behaviour and copes with whatever I throw at it, within reason. Why can't Recon do this?

 

[Tealc]

Hi Doyll mate. Yes I will do that. I was really impressed initially but upon reflection Bitfenix need to sort out these issues before they wreck their reputation.

I can make a temperature reactive circuit without too much difficulty I'd imagine. I haven't considered it before though but know there are lots of ways of taking a temperature and converting it into a voltage or a resistance for use in a circuit.

Another update on the varying speed issue as well.

I swapped my rear Noctua NF-P12 to the Fan 4 channel now and while it does settle down much faster it's a bit of a lottery as to what speed it will settle on.

Earlier it chose 600 RPM at <30 degrees, after a resume or two it had selected 700 RPM at 32 degrees C. Now this afternoon at 32 degrees again it's decided that 700 RPM is far too slow and wants to have my fan running at 900 RPM, which is too fast for idle in my opinion. It also declares the fan at 1500 RPM when my Gigabyte motherboard and Speedfan both say 1390 RPM at full speed, spec is 1300+/10%. So it's not reading the speed very well, although this could be because I'm feeding the tach signal back into my motherboard as well.

After another sleep resume cycle 800 RPM is the place to be apparently, with 772 actual RPM.

Graph shows the power cycles, full speed resume and then the bouncy speeds until it settles. At least it does settle though on this channel.

 

[Tealc]

Not very impressed with this....

It's up and down like a yoyo and is clearly audible as it spins up and down every few seconds. The temperature is still 32 degrees throughout the variance. You can see the CPU trace at the bottom which varies by just an RPM or two on my PWM converter.

After 25 minutes the speed finally settled down at 890 RPM or so.

I just wish it'd make up it's mind as to where the PWM, volts or speed should be at a given temperature rather than bounce around like this.

I think I'm going to have to put my rear fan on a PWM converter verson 2 as I can't be doing with this.

 

[Tealc]

It should, it could be possible that tealc simply has a poor example?

I could be doing something wrong - hence why I can't get the software side of things to work??

I'm still happy with it all the same

You have connected it with the middle USB, right?

You have allowed the service to access your network, right? I think I linked a guide for that in the opening post.

Here's another one..

I just put it in Manual mode and set Fan 4 to 1100RPM. It eventually goes up to that speed, which is fine. However the browser screen just drops the slider back down to 900, while the actual speed is 1078 RPM but the slider needed adjusting a few times to get it to say 1100 RPM on the screen.

I don't know if I'm being just too picky but if I drag the slider to 1100 RPM I'd like it to drive the fans to 1100 RPM by adjusting it's sample rate until it comes to that speed plus or minus a few percent.

Anyway I will leave it on manual for a while at 900 and see how it gets on.

 

[Tealc]

Not sure how reliable it ever is self-adhering temp probes inside (...can they really be accurate?)

A thermistor is a reasonably accurate way to measure temperature and that's what Recon uses to detect temperature and what probably most controllers use as well. There are more accurate ways to do it but they get more expensive.

The Lamptron Touch FC has six channels and 30W per channel, is it worth shelling out an extra £20 on that or going with the cheaper Recon?

The Lamptron has a far more robust circuit for fan control hence it can drive 30W per channel but the screen is very very plain. It also doesn't have user configurable fan curves, just a warning temperature which causes 100% fan speed.

I prefer the pretty screen of the Recon.

 

[Tealc]

Looks like my Recon has settled down now with the rear mounted fan. Maybe I confused it by changing fans or something. It's settled on 800 for idle and 1000-1100 for gaming. I was going to put the fan on a PWM converter but don't think I need to now.

Maybe I was a little hasty in my earlier judgement.

It's not perfect but looking at the competition it's not so bad after all. Somebody should truly innovate and bring some of these features into a consumer product.

 

[Tealc]

Hmm, are those temperature probes waterproof? As in, would it be feasable (or a good idea) to stick them in watercooling fluid so the controller alters the rad fan speeds dependant on cooler temp? Or would is actually be better to put the probe on the exhause rad.

The thermistor is encased in plastic but the wires are only soldered and heatshrunk onto it. I've no idea if the plastic is fully waterproof. In the picture below I would look to waterpoof it from where it leaves the screen. You could also have it so only the end is dipping in the fluid.