- Joined
- Aug 12, 2003
- Location
- West Virginia
Are there any comparable products that also include fan control, or should I buy this and a seperate fan controller?
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Digital Doc 5+
- Thread starter Cuda
- Start date
- Joined
- Jun 20, 2003
- Location
- Shallotte, NC
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2003
This is a very touchy subject for me. So here goes my essay on this topic.
First thing first. DO NOT GET Digital Doc 5. It is a horrible product. The screen is too small, and the viewing angle is pretty small. My pc sits on the floor, and looking down at the fron panel, its sometimes hard to read the display. Here is the worst thing: The fan controls lack any enginnering sence. In the 1st yr of college in engineering we learned that any control system must have a hysteresis or a certain margin. Let me explain. When you set a temperature on digital doc 5 to lets say 25C, it will turn on the fan at 25.0c, and it will turn it off at 24.9. That coold down takes about 15 seconds. So what you get is chattering. Fans turning on and off 3-5 times a minute. At pretty much random intervals. And when you have 80mm Tornados connected to it, it gets very very annoying. It should be like your home AC system, it lets the temperature rise above the set temperature a little bit, lets say 1c, and once it turns on, it cools down the house 1c below the set temperature, thus the AC only turns on and off once an hour or so.
A much better product is
633 Monitor by Crystalfontz.
Link
it is 16x2 character LCD, which connects to your USB port. And has a sh&t load of options. Besides the regular LCD stuff such as displaying your CPU speed, Winamp titles, processor load, time, or any other message you can dream of, it has fan control options and temperature sensing. You can connect up to 32!!! temperature sensors (sold separately from Maxim-ic, product DS18b20). The best thing is you can log the temperatures into an Excel file, through the usb connector. Digital doc 5 has no data conection to your pc. The sensors DS18b20 are small enough to be glued to the back of your CPU. The fan controller is awesome. It is a pulse modulated controller meaning that instead of turning the completely on or completely off it can actually regulate the speed of the fan. What it does is send short power impulses to the fan and by varying the time between the impulses the speed can be regulated. It is impossilbe to hear the impulses, the only way you can tell is by seting the fan to the lowest speed, and pressing your finger on the motor, this way you can feel the mottor slightly changing speed. So any of the 32 sensors can control any of the 4 fans. And you can set min and max temp for a sensor and min and max speed for a fan (0-100%) and the controller will linearly change the speed depending on the temperature.
If this sounds confusing, here is an example.
Lets say you set sensor 5 to min temp of 20c and max of 30c
and fan 1 to min of 0% and max of 100%
so at 20c the fan will be spinning but at the lowes possible speed before it stalls, virtually silent.
at 21c it would be at 10%
at 22c it would be at 20% etc...
and at 30c or above it would be at 100%
The 633 monitor monitors the speed of the fan and can display that too.
Over all its is an amzaing piece of hardware and if you get the blue backlight, white letters, it looks AMAZING.
Ok, i am done rambling, and bragging about this great product.
But i definately think that its the best LCD out there. The company does sell other LCDs, with more lilnes and more charachters but this is the only one that supports the fans and temp control stuff.. 32 sensors should be enough to test everything you might want to in your pc.
by the way here is a guide on hooking up the temp sensors:
Link
if you are wodering, yes i do have bot of these items (633 by crystalfontz, and digitaldoc5)
now i am really done, sorry for a long post.
First thing first. DO NOT GET Digital Doc 5. It is a horrible product. The screen is too small, and the viewing angle is pretty small. My pc sits on the floor, and looking down at the fron panel, its sometimes hard to read the display. Here is the worst thing: The fan controls lack any enginnering sence. In the 1st yr of college in engineering we learned that any control system must have a hysteresis or a certain margin. Let me explain. When you set a temperature on digital doc 5 to lets say 25C, it will turn on the fan at 25.0c, and it will turn it off at 24.9. That coold down takes about 15 seconds. So what you get is chattering. Fans turning on and off 3-5 times a minute. At pretty much random intervals. And when you have 80mm Tornados connected to it, it gets very very annoying. It should be like your home AC system, it lets the temperature rise above the set temperature a little bit, lets say 1c, and once it turns on, it cools down the house 1c below the set temperature, thus the AC only turns on and off once an hour or so.
A much better product is
633 Monitor by Crystalfontz.
Link
it is 16x2 character LCD, which connects to your USB port. And has a sh&t load of options. Besides the regular LCD stuff such as displaying your CPU speed, Winamp titles, processor load, time, or any other message you can dream of, it has fan control options and temperature sensing. You can connect up to 32!!! temperature sensors (sold separately from Maxim-ic, product DS18b20). The best thing is you can log the temperatures into an Excel file, through the usb connector. Digital doc 5 has no data conection to your pc. The sensors DS18b20 are small enough to be glued to the back of your CPU. The fan controller is awesome. It is a pulse modulated controller meaning that instead of turning the completely on or completely off it can actually regulate the speed of the fan. What it does is send short power impulses to the fan and by varying the time between the impulses the speed can be regulated. It is impossilbe to hear the impulses, the only way you can tell is by seting the fan to the lowest speed, and pressing your finger on the motor, this way you can feel the mottor slightly changing speed. So any of the 32 sensors can control any of the 4 fans. And you can set min and max temp for a sensor and min and max speed for a fan (0-100%) and the controller will linearly change the speed depending on the temperature.
If this sounds confusing, here is an example.
Lets say you set sensor 5 to min temp of 20c and max of 30c
and fan 1 to min of 0% and max of 100%
so at 20c the fan will be spinning but at the lowes possible speed before it stalls, virtually silent.
at 21c it would be at 10%
at 22c it would be at 20% etc...
and at 30c or above it would be at 100%
The 633 monitor monitors the speed of the fan and can display that too.
Over all its is an amzaing piece of hardware and if you get the blue backlight, white letters, it looks AMAZING.
Ok, i am done rambling, and bragging about this great product.
But i definately think that its the best LCD out there. The company does sell other LCDs, with more lilnes and more charachters but this is the only one that supports the fans and temp control stuff.. 32 sensors should be enough to test everything you might want to in your pc.
by the way here is a guide on hooking up the temp sensors:
Link
if you are wodering, yes i do have bot of these items (633 by crystalfontz, and digitaldoc5)
now i am really done, sorry for a long post.
- Joined
- Jun 20, 2003
- Location
- Shallotte, NC
Good lord!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My speed reading class I took last semester actual came into use!!!!!!!! 
OP
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2003
- Location
- West Virginia
- Thread Starter
- #5
The 633 looks nice, I especially like the blue backlight. Unfortunately, I have 8 fans to control, 2 front, 2 back, one side, one top, one cpu, and one NB. I could parallel the front and back on one controller, but that still makes five. It's still worth considering though, it does look sharp and has a lot of inputs.
Thanks.
Thanks.
I recently got a 633, and love it, www.procooling.com has a good review on it.
The fan control feature is great. If you really wanted you could setup a relay type system to control multiple fans, not true fan control but a votage switching.
The best part of this display is it's ability to concect up to 32 temp probes to the unit, and display the temperatures in MBM as well as use temperature readings to control fan speeds.
The only problem i have had with it is, it can only handel a 1.5 amps (i think) per channel on the fan controller, and that isn't remotly enough for my 172mm 12v cormair rotron.
The other thing is the temp probes are not included, and you need to do some soldering to get the whole thing working. But for .5 C accuracy who is complaining?
Good Luck
The fan control feature is great. If you really wanted you could setup a relay type system to control multiple fans, not true fan control but a votage switching.
The best part of this display is it's ability to concect up to 32 temp probes to the unit, and display the temperatures in MBM as well as use temperature readings to control fan speeds.
The only problem i have had with it is, it can only handel a 1.5 amps (i think) per channel on the fan controller, and that isn't remotly enough for my 172mm 12v cormair rotron
. The other thing is the temp probes are not included, and you need to do some soldering to get the whole thing working. But for .5 C accuracy who is complaining?
Good Luck
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