Fancontroller roundup

Introduction

Fan controllers are a common sight in our news section. These devices are usually inserted into a 5,25 or 3,5 inch bay and are capable of regulating the fans in your computer case. With so many fan controllers available its hard to figure what each model is capable of and which are the most user-friendly. Time for a comparison of the more popular models.

Heat production has become a major issue with PC components, gone are the days when CPU's were passively cooled by heat sinks smaller than some of the chipset coolers in use today. Modern computers have a multitude of components which produce heat, such as the processor(s), chipset, video card(s) and hard disks. Using small fans on either the CPU, video card or chipset just doesn't cut it anymore and hence extra fans are used to create airflow in an attempt to blow cold air in - and hot air out - of the case, in with the good out with the bad. The downside of all these extra fans is fairly clear to most people: fans make noise, more fans equals more noise and sometimes up to a point where it becomes annoying. Playing a graphically intensive game which stresses your CPU and Video card on a hot summers day will require all the cooling you can get whilst using Word or some other office application on a frosty winter morning will require little to no extra cooling whatsoever.

Nowadays most motherboards are "intelligent" enough to automatically change the fan speed of the CPU fan as required at that moment in time by measuring the CPU temperature. Video cards have also gotten into the act and most modern video cards are fitted with smart fans, which change speed as required. Even these innovations don't always give the desired result, most additional fans, such as case fans, will run at full speed with no option to change their speed setting. Fan controllers offer a ready solution to this conundrum allowing even the biggest control freak complete control over their fan settings: maximum cooling when required and silence when your not tasking your system. Most fan controllers nowadays come equipped with temperature sensors, which warn you when your components are close to overheating.

Fan controllers are available in a myriad of styles, shapes and functionality. There are fan controllers which allow you to change the fan settings manually and little else. There also devices which are not only fan controllers but have connectors for USB, Audio, SATA and Fire wire or even a multi-media display incorporated into them. In this test we'll give you a quick rundown of some of the more popular models available. Whilst we will be mainly looking at ease of use we will also be looking at adjustable range of each fan connection. PC fans work at 12v, by adjusting the amount of volts supplied to the fan we can change the speed at which it turns, i.e. a lower voltage means a slower speed. Case fans require a minimum amount of volts to function, depending on the type of fan this can vary between 2 to 5 volt. Under ideal circumstances it should be possible to adjust the voltage between 2 to 12 volt, but in practice we noticed that the adjustable range is actually far smaller, which equates into a minimum rpm which is still quite high.