Fancontroller roundup

Aerocool Coolpanel

Aerocool's Coolpanel is a fan controller that fits into a 5 ¼ inch bay in the front of the PC. The device is available in either black or silver en is therefore suitable for most cases on the market. The Coolpanel has two fan connectors and two thermal probes. The speed of the two fans can be adjusted by turning the speed controls on the right hand side of the unit. A nice feature is the blue lighting of these controls making it a synch to find them in the dark room or at a LAN party. An LCD display is also present which displays temperature and fan speed. The unit also warns you if the temperatures get too high. The maximum temperature allowed and minimum fan speed have to be set manually and if these ranges are exceeded or not met an audible alarm will go off and the screen will start flashing red. This allows for expedient user intervention to circumvent any disasters.

Besides from being "just" a fan controller the Coolpanel also sports an 8-in-1 card reader and connections for USB, Firewire, audio, video and SATA. Having the connections on the front of your PC is a definite bonus and eliminates the problem of having to connect everything on the back of your PC. However the way in which Aerocool have implemented this system is far from perfect. Instead of connecting the various ports directly to the motherboard, the Coolpanel comes with several cables which you have to route to the rear of your case and plug into existing USB ports resulting in a loss of 3 USB ports. In essence the Coolpanel does nothing more then reroute the rear connections to the front of the case, there is no gain in the amount of connections.