Enermax UC-A8FATR4 Ultimate (Fan) Controller

Reviews: Cases

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Bradford Day
Kurtis
Maxpoint
Feb. 20, 2004

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First Looks

Enermax currently offers 4 fan speed controllers. Each offer many of the above-mentioned extra features other than just plain old boring fan speed adjustment. Today we will be looking at the UC-A8FATR4 Ultimate Controller, the most stylish of the 4 in my opinion. What makes it the "Ultimate Controller?" Well, the box mainly, it says "Ultimate Controller" right on it. So is Enermax telling the truth, is this the ultimate controller?

Well the packaging is certainly impressive. Glossy photos greet you while showcasing the multiple faces of the UC-A8FATR4 and lines of informative text fill you in on the technical particulars. Inside the somewhat intricately folded box the UC-A8FATR4 (here after referred to as the "UC") sits within its plastic cocoon. Thankfully the plastic is easily removed. I, for one, am grateful that companies have finally started packaging their products in easy-to-open packages. This Fort Knox stuff is just ridiculous. Anyway, the UC is a solidly constructed bit of rheobus. The frame of the controller is solid aluminum about 3 or 4mm thick. No flex in this baby. Four clear plastic knobs reside on each side of the UC's face with a 20mm x 43mm LCD screen smack in the middle. Various small switches protrude through the screw mounted plastic cover, each labeled according to their respective duties. Sprawling from its posterior is an array of wiring including four 3-pin connectors and four thin thermal probes along with a 4-pin male/female molex connector.

Enermax has also included several extra hardware goodies as well. A hard drive mounting kit, two interchangeable aluminum face plates (one silver, one black), a bag of mounting screws, two motherboard signal wires (for sending fan RPM info to your mobo's monitoring units), a bit of sticky tape, labeling stickers and a not so handy user guide. Two of the seven pages in the user guide (the only 7 printed in English rather) offer information that is already printed on the package. The remaining five English pages offer a few instructions on how to install the device but fail to mention how to actually read the output that the LCD screen displays. More on this later... Perhaps if you are fluent in any of the other 4 languages the instructions are printed in, you will have better luck than I did. The choppy English instructions confused me but were rather funny at times. Okay, but seriously, more on that later!

Testing

Installing the UC is relatively simple and pain free. It easily slid into a free 5.25" drive bay on my Antec case. However, the short aluminum sides only allowed me to fasten my drive rails with one screw. Fortunately, the thick aluminum is sturdy enough to handle a forceful bout of screw tightening and the drive rails fit snugly. I suppose I could have also used the included hard drive mounts to bolster the length of the rheobus legs, but the single screw method held just fine with no wiggling. Once in place, the wiring fun begins. This controller really likes to tangle. If you have a wire jungle in your case prior to installing the UC, then prepare for a rat's nest of wiring after. Four thermal probes and four fan connections mean you will now have 8 extra lengths of wire to contend with and that is excluding the molex power connector. Luckily each wire is clearly labeled. The four knobs each control power output to the correspondingly labeled 3-pin connectors. Simply connect your 3-pin fan female end into the male lead and you are set to tell that fan how fast to spin!Obey Me! Place your thermal probes wherever you would like to monitor temp and affix them with the include pieces of adhesive tape. I stuck one on my CPU heatsink, one on each memory chip heatsink and left one dangling in the case to monitor the interior temp. Hook up a free 4-pin molex connection from your power supply and you are finished.

I must say that when powered up the controller looks quite impressive. The left knobs glow a brilliant blue, while the right a bright green. The LCD display itself glows blue or green depending on what you have it set to. But, the color switching screen features more than just the ability to swap colors as you fancy. When the screen is set to blue, fans that are connected to left-hand knobs A1 and A2 output their RPM readings on the lower half of the LCD while temperature probes 1 and 2 display on the upper half. Press the dual display switch and move into the green light. Now the remaining fan speeds and temperatures will display. The control knobs are color coded to match the LCD and tell you what fans and temp you are monitoring. When the screen lights up blue, fans controlled by the blue knobs display. Switch the screen to green and you see the remaining info. Pretty slick, eh? Well, don't expect to figure that display property out by reading the user guide. Nowhere in the guide does it mention that the controls are color-coded. Nor does it list anywhere that you can only see 2 temperature readings and 2 fan readings at a time. Needless to say, it took me some time to figure this out, though it makes sense now!

Once I put the user guide down and started fiddling on my own, the features became much easier to learn. The functions of the Celsius/Fahrenheit switch was pretty obvious, although after making the switch between the two scales you must reset the controller by depressing the reset button located below the C/F switch. Another three-position switch on the controller face wasn't so obviously labeled. Labeled "H M L" it didn't seem to do anything when I moved it back and forth. After consulting the user guide (shudder) I determined that this was the overheat alarm setting switch (or as the guide calls it, the "overheat temperature degree setting," see what I mean?). In simple English, the L (low) setting will set your overheat threshold at 45°C/113°F, the M (medium) setting at 55°C/131°F and the H (you guessed it, high) setting at 65°C/149°F. If any of your thermal probes exceed your determined threshold, an annoying beep will let you know and your temperature readout digits will disappear and flash "- - " across the LCD face. The beeping will only last 30 seconds even if the temp is not reduced. However, the "- -" readout will continue to flash until you fix the problem.

The fan speed warning system works similarly to the temperature monitor. The same annoying beeps will let you know (for 30 seconds) when your speeds drop below 1000 RPMs and the same "- -" will flash in place of the RPM readout until you fix it. You can change the RPM threshold by shorting a jumper switch on the back of the UC unit with an include jumper. Shorting the switch will raise the fan speed threshold to 2000 RPMs.

According to the packaging, the fan controllers will reduce the voltage output from 12V to 4V. This is more than enough range to harness most wild fans. I was able to completely stop my Enermax 120mm fans when set to the low-end voltage. Keep in mind though that when those RPMs drop, the annoying beeping starts.

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: First Looks & Testing
Page 3: The Good & The Bad
Page 4: Conclusion

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