PCMods.Com Rheobus Kit Review
Date : Wednesday, 23 May 2001
By : Wolfman
Product : Rheobus Kit
Provided by : PCMods.Com

Introduction
I bet every overclocker/modder has some kind of Fanbus/Baybus in their case nowadays. For the hardcore modding freak, nothing beats the satisfaction of building one themself and seeing it works in their case. Just in case you need a refresher course, you can check out my Rheostats Baybus Guide. :O) But for the average newbie or for someone's who's just not comfortable or efficient with the soldering iron, they can always drop by their favourite online modding store and get one.

And one of those online retailers that has been hard at work improving their current line of products and introducing newer ones every now and then is PCMods.Com. Their first line of Fanbus/Baybus product was the Dual Voltage/LED Baybus Kit, which we reviewed here previously. And now their back with yet another baybus kit, only this time using rheostats. the advantages of rheostats over the conventional switches is that you have a much wider range of control over the fans. Plus, it looks much cooler on yer case than the switches. That's my own personal preference though... :) OK, let's take a quick look at the kit shall we?

 

The kit came nicely packed in a cardboard box and upon opening the box, you'll find the following;

 

 

The first thing that caught my attention was the professionally-made PCB of the Rheobus Kit. While some of us would just be satisfied with a bunch of wires coming in and out of the rheostats, PCMods.Com went one step further and mount all the components onto a PCB. Each rheostats is capable of handling a total of 17Watts of power. YES! You read it right! 17 Freaking Watts! Some of you have been emailing me about the difficulties of finding one with a high power rating but now you dun have too! :O) PCMods.Com also includes a bright Blue LED with each rheostat channel. Nice touch there! If you like switches with LEDs, now you can have rheostats with LEDs too! One terminal of the LEDs are also shielded/protected to prevent short-curcuiting with the other terminal.

 

At first glance, the rheostats that came with the kit doesn't really look like any I've seen before but it works all the same. Another great addition to the kit is the large black heatsinks. These heatsinks are used to cools the transistor installed in the silver colored cage at center of heat sink. What the transistor does is to buffer the voltage supplied by the rheostat. Another component also caught my eye. Right in the middle of the PCB sits an LM324N chip. According to PCmods.Com, it is a quad op-amp which detects current in the circuit and tells the LEDs to light up! How cool is that? :O) OK, let's get to more details here.....

More Details....
Power is supplied to the unit through a 4-Pin Male Molex Connector sitting on one end of the PCB at the rear. A Molex Y-Cable is also provided just in case you've ran out of connectors from your PSU. 4 pairs of spring-loaded terminals is located right in the middle of the PCB at the rear for connecting your fans. The markings on the PCB clearly states which pair of terminals is controlled by which rheostat so you would not connect them to the wrong one accidentally. The setback here is that you'll have to remove the PCB from your case each time you want to connect a different fan or remove a faulty fan to/from the terminal. Maybe a Fanbus type connection would be more suitable in this case.

 

And sice LEDs are also included with the Kit, LED mounting kits are also provided for you to install them onto your case faceplate. The knobs for the rheostats are made of aluminium and comes with te mounting washers and nuts. One thing I noticed about the knobs is that the locking pins on them requires a very tiny Allen Key to tighten them onto the rheostats. Not everyone has those tiny Allen keys, I'm one of 'em! LOL! I tried every possible tool to try tighten them down, but to no avail. Alas, I used my old school black knobs from my old rheostats setup. :O) Something PCMods.Com should look into here. Don't get me wrong, the aluminium knobs are way cooler than my black plastic knobs, but I just can't get them to tighten down on the rheostats!

 

Installation
While there's nothing you really need to do on the PCB kit, you'll still have to drill out your case faceplate so that you can mount it into your case. Now that's where the Template comes in! it has these holes already drilled at the exact locations for mounting the rheobus kit. All you need to do is to paste them onto your faceplate via the double-sided tape and you're set to go! You'll need to drill 6.2mm holes for the LED holders and 10mm holes for the rheostats. Mark out the holes location with a dot punch and then start drilling! Don't forget, wear that safety glasses! It shouldn't take you long if you have everything planned out right from the start.

 

 

Once you're done drilling, remove the template and test-fit the rheobus kit with the faceplate and make sure everything fits nicely. You'll need to bend the LEDs terminals and mount them into the LED holders in the faceplate. Carefully does it so that you do not break the terminals. Place the washer and locking nuts over the rheostat terminals and secure them tight. You're almost done! Like I said previously, the provided knobs could not be tighten onto the rheostats so I had to go with my own. Looks OK I guess... :O) Once that done, it's time to connect the fans and mount it into your case! I mounted the unit into my new Lian Li PC61 case... Looks schweet doesn't it? :OP

 

 

Testing
To test the unit, I hooked the following fans into the Rheobus Kit;

I set the knob to the minimum position and then start the unit up. The 60mm fans, all through to the 92mm fans started up with no problems. The 120mm fans however required me to jack up the rheostats up a little before it starts to spin. Having LEDs in the unit, you might be thinking that the LED is dependent on the supplied voltage to the fans. I thought so too! Sorry folks, but that ain't gonna happen! The LED just shines brightly at no matter what settings the rheostats are in.

 

Using my al-cheapo DMM (Digital MultiMeter), I took the voltage readings of the fan terminals on the Rheobus Kit. The kit has a minimum start-up voltage of around 6-7V, with no fans connected. I found that with fans connected to the unit, the start-up voltage drops to about 5-6V. I guess it's pretty normal for the voltage to drop a little once there is load on the unit.

 

Conclusion
If you are a hardcore modder, you'll probably have like a tons of fans in your case and the Rheobus Kit from PCMods.Com goes a long way in helping you to reduce the noise from all the fans. The rheostats gives you a much wider range of control than conventional switches and it just looks plain kewler than those switches! :O) It's professionally made with a clean PCB layout to help reduce wire clutter in your case. It can handle up to a maximum of 17Watts of power each channel and comes with bright Blue LEDs for power indication. It's that simple to use and installation just requires you to drill a few holes in your case faceplate. Alignment of the holes is achieved through a supplied template. A well-writtten manual is also provided, together with warranty info.

There are some perks to the unit though. First of all, you'll need to have an empty 5.25" drive bay to install the unit. The wire terminals are also located on the PCB to help keep the unit compact but at the same time, forces you to remove the entire unit if you ever need to change the fans. The aluminium knobs provided are cool too, but the tightening screws should have been a larger one. I have difficulties finding the right sized Allen Key or any tool for that matter to help me tighten them down onto the rheostats.

The Rheobus Kit can be purchased from PCMods.Com at a retail price of US$59.99. Some of you might think that it's a little pricey but considering the effort and R&D put into bringing this product to the masses it's gonna be worth it! My own rheostats baybus project cost me close to Singapore $110 the last time round! That's about US$62, very close to the Rheobus Kit's price. :) If you want it, go get it! Big thanks to BJ and Carl over at PCMods.Com for the evaluation unit.

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