Written by andy on April 1st, 2006 in Hardware.
We are down to the final segment of this project. In Part 1 - we covered the power supply then it was on to the case fans in Part 2.
What is left for this cooling endevor? We decided to also install a fan controller. Now, this isn’t something that you need. (I was slightly skeptical until we finished) However; in order to get the maximum coolness and silence from the fans you will need a controller of some kind.
Again, there are many fan controllers to choose, but we needed a low profile one as the Coolmaster act-110 has a door on it. So, we could not get one of the typical controllers that has knobs which protrude.
| Below there are red circles attempting to show where the temperature probes are located. |
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top left CPU, top right Case, middle right Case (hidden)
bottom left Video Graphic Card |
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| Close Up of the temperature probe on Video Graphic Card’s Heat Sink |
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| Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX |
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| Area: Fan Controller |
| The Gatewatch comes with what we need to connect and monitor fans and temperature in the system. There are 4 extension wires for the fans and the temperature probes in addition to the power connection, thermal tape, audio input/output line for volume control and a battery to save our settings, along with the needed mounting screws for the 5 1/4 bay slow that this controller will need.
After looking around the internet and reading up on what the pros and cons where, went with the AeroCool Gatewatch controller.
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| Advise: Like pretty much everything inside your case. There are wires going to and from something and if you are trying to keep things looking as clean as possible, try to snake the extension wires along the same lines of some pre-existing wires to help minimize the clutter. |
| Installed, hooked up and working. |
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| 3 different colors to choose from |
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| Conclusion: |
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Difficulty Level: Let me put it this way, if you are comfortable with adding or removing a hard drive or a new video card, then you should have no problems doing this little project. Just make sure that you have enough time, you have the correct tools and a back out plan just in case.
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| Advise: Shop around, make sure you are getting what you can use. Just because it looks cool and says that it can do 101 things, doesn’t mean that it will do all those things with your system. |
