quick fan controler question

Soldato
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i have been looking at the Akasa AK FC-03 Fan Controller Pro, any1 have one of these?

my question is what colours does the screen go :p i want my pc to match


and do u think it is good or are there better fan controlers?
thx
joker
xx
 
i only have 1 drive bay left after 2 dvd and my x-fi front panel


i was also wondering is tehre anything u can get that fits in the floppy drives, except a floppy :p

thx
 
Akasa AK FC-06BK Fan Controller Junior - Black (FG-021-AK) Is one option, just a small basic fan controller that fits in a 3.5" floppy drive and only £8.81 here on OcUK.

Also the Coolermaster Musketeer System Dynamics Detector - Silver (OA-000-CM) is a cool 'retro' looking option for your 5.5" bay, depends if your case is silver though

EDIT: I'm getting the feeling ya want something that looks cool for your floppy space so...

Enermax UC-A3FATR2 Multifunctional Panel Silver (BB-003-EN)
Multifunction Panel UC-A3FATR2. Aluminum design, suitable for 3.5" bay.

- 2 fan RPM & temp display
- Overheat & low RPM fan alarm
- 2 adjustable fan speed knobs
- 3 Pin fan conncetor 2
- Fan RPM Knob 2
- Dimensions (D*W*H) D90 x W101.5 x H25
Price: £9.95 (£11.69 Including VAT at 17.5%)

Once again depends on your case colour
 
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Joe42 said:
I was thinking about getting a t-balancer. What are they like?
The software looked a bit naff from what i've seen.

Bit basic on the software yes, but they add more functionality than a normal controller. Make fans spin super slow, or stop, fan speed changes different fans as the temperature goes up on one componant, but different fans speed up if its hot somewhere else.

Quite good. :)

Although if all you want is to silence your PC and make it look better then a standard one is the better choice, but the T-balancer is much more verstatile in its operation.
 
Joe42 said:
Does the T-balancer do anything that speedfan can't do?
Obviously it can use fans and external temperature sensors that speedfan can't.

The T-Balancer is a PWM fan controller. It does not vary the voltages so your fans always run at 12V. Speedfan has to have a motherboard where the BIOS allows the voltage across the 3-pin connector to be varied between 5V and 12V.

The way fans work means they have to have at least 5V to kick them over and keep them going. So the best Speedfan can ever do is reduce the fan speed to about half the normal speed.

A Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) controller actually varies the time that the 12V is applied to the fan. The DC 12V is applied in pulses - the more pulses per second, the faster the fan runs, the fewer pulses per second, the slower it runs.

Normally these pulses are applied so fast that they are almost continuous. In this way the fan runs flat out.

The T-Balancer can apply the pulses as slowly as 1 per minute so you can theoretically run a fan at 1rpm! Not all fans can do this, but high quality ones do. By supplying no pulses, the T-Balancer can stop a fan.

So the T-Balancer can vary the fan speed much more widely than Speedfan.

The other major difference is in the software that controls the T-Balancer. Speedfan has 1 temperature sensor linked to 1 fan. You cannot pick there the sensors are located, and you need to have the relevant fan plugged in to the relevant header which is not always sensible due to cable lengths.

The T-Balancer allows any temperature sensor, or combination of sensors, to be linked any number of fans assuming you have an adequate number of ports available.

So if my SLi setup starts to get hot, I can turn up just the Side intake fan and the rear fan on my Eclipse. If the HDDs start to get a bit toasty, I can turn up the front fan and the rear fan. In this way the cooling is targetted to where it is needed and noise is kept to a minimum.

You can also change the rate at which the fan speed changes.

Say that my Eclipse has a normal PSU exhaust temperature of 40C. The PSU exhaust is a good indicator of case air temperature as it gets all of it's cooling air from there. If my PSU exhaust temperatutre rises to 45C I bring up the side and front inlet fans to 50%. If it goes to 47C I bring them up to 80% and if it reaches 50C I bring them up to 100% and switch the rear fan down to 20% to force air through the PSU. These sort of complicated stratagies are not possible with Speedfan.

The T-Balancer is pretty much the most complex and adjustable fan (and water pump) controller on the market today. And it starts at £35 - which is not a lot more than you would pay for a 5.25" bay cover with 4 rheostats in it.
 
Thanks for the detailed reply.
I'm almost certain that speedfan does use pwm. It can vary the fan speed to any speed including completely off and has a number of pwm options in the advanced options. It depends on the control chip on the board, some probably don't do pwm but mine does.

Speedfan could be as good as the t-balancer if it was as flexiable, but its limited to the fan controller and temperature sensors on the board. Its also not designed as a fan controlling solution, for example it can't save any of the target temperatures and the gain of the fan controller is too high so its constantly revving the fans up and down rather than making small adjustments.

I think i will get a T-balancer, however it can't use the internal temperature sensors that speedfan can, such as the temperature sensor inside the cpu, so i'll have to spend some time sticking temperature sensors to everything.
 
WJA; you obviously have all the fans connected directly to the T-Balancer, but what connections do you have going to the motherboard?
 
Presumably he has the rmp signals going to the board.

Is there any way to get the T-balancer to use internal sensors such as the cpu sensor?
It must be possible to do this as its connected to the pc and speedfan can use them.

I've also found that there seems to have been a few software updates since i last looked, and it looks a lot better.
 
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