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

[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?

 

[BrianB]

Lol, I didn't want the extra cables so I cable tied my temp probes so they don't get out of the drive bay. I have my fans running on full atm, and 1000rpm when not needing them.

Just got 3 Corsair AF 140's in post, could try write something up about them if people were interested. Initial impression is that they are the same quality as the 120's. Just a bit quieter. My current case is really crippling the airflow on the 1 I have installed, making it much noisier too.

 

[doyll]

Sorry it turned out so different from expected.

Sounded like a great bit of kit in initial review.
Then the Recon gremlins start playing and it all goes down hill.
May I suggest an edit to initial post/review about all these issues so readers who don't read entire thread know about the issues.
Sure would be nice if things did what they claim on the tin.

On another thought, could you make a circuit using a temp probe to control fan speed? Your bits perform exactly as discribed.

 

[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.

 

[doyll]

RPM drops for a minute then up with load... when load drop rpm drops120rpm too low and oscillates couple minutes before stable.. drops120rpm for couple minutes before going back up with load ??? Weird says I

 

[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.

 

[BrianB]

It's not bad if you don't expect more than £30 out of it!

I use mine manually now because for some reason the web isn't working, perhaps the USB isn't plugged in properly..

If I want silence I just set to auto because my temp probes are in the drive bay and read 25 so fans go right down, then i put manual with all on full for gaming. Would prefer to swap it for one with dials now but tbh it does look sweet in front of my new fractal arc midi..

 

[doyll]

really is crazy. It's a Bitfenix Recon un-control.

 

[Monkeyspaz5000]

It's not bad if you don't expect more than £30 out of it!

I use mine manually now because for some reason the web isn't working, perhaps the USB isn't plugged in properly..

Same!!! Fair enough, I can't use it as I should for some reason, but I'm still happy to pay what I did to use it how I am.

I simply use it as a manual fan controller. Does the job and looks great.

 

[doyll]

Just seems it should do what it says on the tin...

 

[Monkeyspaz5000]

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

 

[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.

 

[Abereda]

nice review (allot of detail, I like that ) I was planning to order one of these for my first Build but I have to admit im now torn between ethier getting it, or just hooking everything up to the built in controller on the Corsair 600T Case

The reason I planned to get one of these was simply for the ability to glance over & see the temps (the internet/software control of it doesnt intrest me slightly to tell the truth) I wonder if theres something else you would reccomend for someone in my position?

Thx4theReview

 

[stevetuk]

+1 to Abereda's question as well.
I'll probably only be using a controller manually at least at first, not sure how reliable it ever is self-adhering temp probes inside (...can they really be accurate?). 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?

 

[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.

 

[Monkeyspaz5000]

I tried connecting 2 corsair sp fans to one channel last night and it wouldn't play nice at all.

The speed would change all over the place and the fans would also sometime stall.

 

[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.

 

[Resident]

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.

What I think would be good is if mainboard manufacturers and fan controller manufacturers worked together.

Create ports on the mainboard that we could plug extra sensors in for the fan-controller and then a port for the controller to connect to so that it minimises cabling, with software on the PC so you could tell the controller which fan cools what. For instance if you've a fan in front of your HDD bay, you could tell the controller to read from the HDD temp input rather than using a separate sensor.

Am I making sense ?

 

[cs2000]

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.

 

[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.