Need some advice on fan controllers

Just ordered an Antec 300 case and I want to make it look nice rather than having everything jury-rigged like I always have. I have two 120x32mm Silverstone fans mounted on my TRUE in push-pull fashion. The stock fan speed controller for these fans is a joke and actually allows for very little speed adjustment, plus it mounts in the pci expansion slot area at the back of the computer. Not very convenient. I really want to be able to throttle them down to reduce noise when not loading the computer. So, I'm thinking of getting one of those aftermarket fan speed controllers that fit in a drive bay. I don't care if it has temp readouts and stuff like that I just want it to have effective speed control and have rheostats hefty enough to handle the 0.62 amp load of the fans. Any suggestions?

well i dont know if its EXACTLY what your looking for, but i use the NZXT Sentry LX lets ya control upto 5 fans, and has 5 temp probes, got this guy stuck into my Antec 1200, and i like it, quite a bit actualy, did have one darn issue with the thing, my fans are able to do 1200RPM, but the NZXT Sentry LX stops the fans at 1100RPM

Sunbeam Rheobus Extreme

http://www.petrastechshop.com/5surhexfansp1.html

30 watts a channel and 6 channels. What else could you want?

thideras said:

Sunbeam Rheobus Extreme

http://www.petrastechshop.com/5surhexfansp1.html

30 watts a channel and 6 channels. What else could you want?

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Yeah, ordered the Subeam Rheobus EXtreme from Egg. It has 30 watts per fan channel and got the best customer reviews.

The only thing I don't like about those type of controllers is that they don't give you full 12V on high. You only get 11 to 11.5V max. I guess if you have a high speed fan you aren't missing out on too much but who knows.

Froggy said:

The only thing I don't like about those type of controllers is that they don't give you full 12V on high. You only get 11 to 11.5V max. I guess if you have a high speed fan you aren't missing out on too much but who knows.

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I was more concerned about throttling down effectiveness for everyday low intensity computing. I'd like to be able to make those two 32mm high output Silverstone cpu cooler fans more quiet most of the time. Right now with the OEM rheostat I can only slow them down to about 1900 RPM and that's still a lot of noise. The only actual adjustment seems to come in the last few degrees of turning radius of the control between about 1900 and full speed (about 2200 rpm).

Sunbeam is a great cheap controller. Until it catches fire. That didn't stop me from buying a second though .

Maybe I should heat sink the rheostats on the thing with bga coolers or something. Each channel is rated at 30 watts but even my most potent fans will only go about 7 watts. You would think that wouldn't overload the thing.

If you are only pulling 7 watts, that thing won't even need active cooling.

Connected my Silverstone 120x120x32mm fans to the Sunbeam Rehobus extreme last night outside the case using a spare psu just to check the precisions of control I would get. Wow! the Rehobus Extreme will let me throttle them down to almost nothing and everything in between that and full bore! Very smooth and even contol. Great improvement over the OEM controllers that came with the fans. I was impressed!

thideras said:

Sunbeam Rheobus Extreme

http://www.petrastechshop.com/5surhexfansp1.html

30 watts a channel and 6 channels. What else could you want?

Click to expand...

I just bought this..best controller on the market no questions asked.