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Review Date: April
25, 2003
Reviewed By: Skyler
Unruh
Sponsored By: 2CoolTek
There are numerous fan controllers or fanbus's out on the market today
and there's quite a few temperature monitoring devices also, but there's
not many that offer both features in the same package. I know that
I have a problem with fan noise and that's why this product appealed to
me. I was worried about turning my fans down too much and the heat
would start to rise, so this seemed like the perfect solution to my
problem. A good example of a loud fan that moves some major
air would be the Vantec Tornado. It is an 80mm fan that moves 84.1 CFM
at 5800rpm, but the noise level is high... higher than you would
imagine. At 55.2dB
this thing sounds like a jet-plane inside a box, so you can understand
why I would want the ability to turn it down a little... at least so I
can get some sleep.
What is included. Click for larger view.
Included:
- Nexus Panel - 1
- Colorful Faceplates - 3
- Temperature Sensors - 3
- CPU Fan Cables - 2
- USB 2.0 Cables - 1
- 1394 Firewire Cables - 1
- Molex Power Cables - 1
- Allen Screws - 8
- Allen Wrench - 1
Specs:
- Dimensions: 148.5 x 41.5 x 62.0 mm
- Weight: 350 gm
- Rated Voltage: 5v+5% and 12v+12%
- Input Power: 5v = less than 0.5w and 12v = depends on type of fan
- Panel Temperature Range: 15C to 70C
- Sensor Temperature Range: 15C to 90C
Once I took the Vantec Nexus out of its packaging...
I noticed that it isn't just another cheap fan controller to adjust fan
speeds. It actually is made from aluminum and the only plastic parts on
it are the faceplates and the rheostat knob. It is designed quite well,
and having the choice of changing face plates makes it handy if you put
it in a different computer.
Benefits:
- Reduced fan noise level.
- Monitor fan speeds.
- Monitor CPU temp, Hard Disk temp, and ambient air temp.
- USB and Firewire at the front of any case is convenient.
Like I said before, the ability to change the front face plate is nice,
if you decide to paint the face plate (as I did) and sometime later
decide to put the Nexus into a different box, just change the cover and
your all set. Vantec also makes three other covers on their
website... but the boxed version only includes the three basic colors:
purple, blue, and green.
Purple Face - Click for a larger view.
Blue Face - Click for a larger view.
Green Face - Click for a larger view.
Installation and
Performance:
One of the things I noticed once I opened the packaging was there were
lots of different cables... which I frowned upon. When case modding, you
want to keep the visible cables to a minimum... so this install required
a lot of tricky cable routing. I ran all my cables first, and then
installed the the Nexus, this gave me a little more room for what I was
doing. I ran the cables for the temperature sensors first, these stick
in place with the use of little pieces of tape... which it came with. I
placed the CPU temperature sensor on the copper part of my heatsink...
towards the edge of it so as not to cover the core of the processor.
I ran the hard disk temperature sensor next, in which I just taped it to
the top area of the hard drive. The last temperature cable I ran
was the ambient case temperature sensor... this one I just taped to the
motherboard side of the case. Now I went into running the CPU fan
cable system, this was a pretty nifty way of making this work also.
Instead of eliminating the use of your bios fan speed sensors... they
have a cable that runs from the CPU fan to the Nexus, and then one
running from the Nexus to the motherboard.
Wiring - Click for larger view.
Front - Click for larger view.
After installing the CPU fan cables I went to install the USB 2.0 and
1394 IEEE Firewire cables... but found that I would either have to run
them out one of the PCI slots or drill a hole in the rear of the case.
This really discouraged me... I didn't want to have to run them out of a
PCI slot, that just looks too tacky and I am running a micro ATX
motherboard so that would take up one of the 2 slots I have left. So I
still haven't installed the USB 2.0 or the Firewire, but I will come up
with a way of doing it shortly. Next I hooked up the power... and
turned my rig on. It was pretty cool... nice green LCD display
showing what the different temperatures where... but when I tried to
turn the fan speed down using the rheostat, nothing happened.
Turns out the rheostat got broke in shipping, but
2CoolTek
is sending me a new Vantec Nexus to replace mine... so it should be in
shortly.
Test System:
- Biostar VIG-Plus Micro ATX Motherboard
- AMD Athlon XP 2100+
- 512mb PC3200 DDR
- Maxtor 80gb ATA133 7200rpm Hard Drive
- Western Digital 8gb - MP3 Hard Drive
- MSI GeForce3 128mb Ti500
- 350watt ATX Power Supply
- LG 16x DVD-Rom
- Realtek Ethernet Card
- Gentoo Linux 1.4
- Ambient room temp = 70* F
HD Temp - Click for larger view.
Case Temp - Click for larger view.
Conclusion:
Overall this is a decent product and I like being able to check my CPU
temp. at a glance. I went ahead and painted one of my faceplates
to match the rest of my case, and now I think it looks much better.
I only have a few things to complain about and its obvious that the
broken rheostat is one of them. The other is that you can't get
the LCD's in blue, or any other color for that matter... so I'm going to
change the LEDs out for bright blue ones. Also if you have a large
case, you might have some problems getting the temperature sensors to
reach certain devices... I had no problems with that since I'm using a
micro ATX form factor case (In-Win v500).
Pros
- Nice looking accessory
- USB / 1394 ports
- Fan controller
- See your temp without exiting your game.
- Not very expensive at 38 bucks
Cons
- May not be exactly accurate
- Green LCD backlight looks out of place
- Audio alarm is LOUD and goes off for no reason
- Rheostat is made of plastic
I use this product quite a bit, checking system temps and such... plus I
always have friends asking me about it. So I rate the Vantec Nexus
3 out of 5 X's.
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