Once I established a spot for the device it attached without a problem. After I had all the wires and LEDs hooked up I attached the 12v power to it. Then I attached the temperature sensor to the CPU barb. Innovatek recommends you place it on a radiator barb, but I thought it could be more interesting on the CPU barb.

   I fired up the computer and the fans were at a median speed. I still have yet to play with the adjuster knob to reach a nice alarm value. After letting the computer run for a while, the fans stayed at the same speed, so I powered down. I switched the jumper to enable the fan shut off feature and started tinkering with the adjuster knob. It took me a while to find a setting that was perfect, but once I did it was nice.

   Now, when my computer is doing very minimal work the fans are completely off, but when the temperature starts to climb, they are soon boosted on again. It is really nice when I go to bed, the fans do not run at all during the night, or if they do, it is only for a quick 10 minutes or so.

  Some people may think that if the error LED comes on that it is bad. This really is not true; the purpose of the error LED is to tell you if the set temperature has been exceeded. It is basically telling you that the fans will be coming on very shortly. If the error LED is blinking, then the current temperature is approaching the set value, and if the error LED is constantly lit, then the current temperature has exceeded the set one.

   With my settings I found the fans to turn off when the water temperature was around 24 (degrees celcius), and around 28 (degrees celcius) the fans started to be supplied with power to turn on (note that my temperature probe is not actually reading the water temperature, I am taking that reading from another device and just using it as a reference to give you an idea). The installation was very easy in my mind; it was just the tinkering with the knob to find an ideal temperature took some time.

   Note that I was basing this installation on a water cooled setup. The Fan-O-Matic Micro is just as effective with an air cooled setup. You can hook your CPU fan up to the device and place the thermal probe on your CPU. This would adjust your fan just like a water cooling setup. If the temperature is too high, it will speed up the fan, if the temperature is too low, the fan could just completely shut off, but I do not recommend enabling that feature if using for a CPU fan.

Inside

Temperature Probe

Conclusion:

   I could not be any happier with this device. My PC is basically inaudible most of the time. (2) 120mm fans at full power was quite the annoyance and this controller definitely solved my issues with noise. Innovatek has built a strong product that many people should find useful for either water cooled systems or air cooling. It does everything for you, the only adjustments you make are to the manual temperature knob.

   If you have the Fan-O-Matic Pro everything is controlled by software, no manual adjusting at all! I just love that I do not have to do much, it just auto adjusts when it is needed. If the fans are not needed the device slowly decreases the voltage until they are off. If they need to be turned on, the device slowly bumps up voltage until the result is achieved.


   I would like to thank FrozenCPU and Innovatek for their continued support of Virtual-Hideout. You can pick up a Fan-O-Matic Micro right here at FrozenCPU.

   You can also discuss this in the VH Community Forums!