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Ultracool II Digital - Eye Catching Fan controller

Modding/Small Mods by jmke @ 2004-02-21

This eye-catching fan controller enables you to hook up 3 fans and reduce the noise in your system considerably. How effectively is the Ultracool II, find out in this review!

Testing

Specifications :

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Automatically controls the speed of 3 fans (8-12v)

RPM monitoring of 3 fans

Detects 3 heating points accurately

Whole Aluminium chassis and bracket.

Time and HDD and power indicator icons.

Every heat sensor can be set a specific maximum, if the temperature comes within 7°C of this preset, then the fan will start spinning faster (75%). If the temperature surpasses the preset then all fans in the system will go to "max" (100%).

The time it takes for the CPU fan to reach its maximum speed seems to be slower than for the ones attached to HDD or SYS fan-headers this can lead to higher then expected CPU temps, hooking up your CPU fan to another header is of course a possible solution, but it would have been easier if the default configuration was the other way around. Because the CPU tends to be main source of heat in any system.

The Ultracool slows down the fans by reducing the voltage from 12V to ~8V, it reduces the sound produced by the hooked up fan quite a bit, but it would have been useful to provide an "ultra" setting where the voltage is dropped to 5V (not all fans support this, but the Ultracool features RPM monitoring and will sound an alarm if the RPM drops to 0)

Display and Usage

The display is nicely organised and is clear during night/day:

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The fans' speed is controlled by the preset temperature limit, you can not manually increase the speed of the fans which can lead to some frustrating moments when you are gaming or stressing your system. If you overclocked your system and the CPU should not pass 45°C otherwise it crashes. Well you set the limit of the sensor you placed near the CPU's heatsink to 45°C. As soon as you hit 45°C the Ultracool starts beeping and gives full power to all fans, this causes the temperature to drop to 44°C, the fans slow down, the temperature goes up, beep beep, fans speed up, temperature goes down, fans slow down, temperature goes up... you get the picture

If you are however looking for a way to monitor your system's temps and are not running your system on the edge, you can then safely put the limits a bit higher and the fans will speed up as the temperature rises without the temperature reaching the preset limits.

The blue display is clear and lights part of the case, it is not disturbing however and won't give you sleepless nights if you keep your PC in the same room where you sleep.

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