With the increasing number of fans that most enthusiasts tend to have in their systems these days, the ability to control these becomes a vital factor in being able to stay in control of both temperatures and acoustics. Most cases now have 4 to 8 fans and most high end CPU coolers need 2 fans or mores. Even some relatively high end motherboards don’t offer enough fan ports for your needs, or aren’t close enough to the fans to allow you to plug fan cables in. That combined with the fact fan control software can often be buggy and problematic means the modern enthusiast system can easily become a total nightmare.
So what options does this leave you? Well as you might of guessed from the review title, we are implying the need for a fan controller. Fan controllers do serve a niche market, but if you have a lot of fans that need controlling then they can be an absolute saviour. Today we have with us a budget fan controller offering from Aerocool. However, for a budget price the Strike-X X-1000 fan controller still offers a lot of features for your money.
Now that you’ve seen a few of the features Aerocool themselves pick out as being important, let us briefly skim over the box before moving on to looking at the product and it’s performance.
The front of the box more or less re-iterates the key features we have already seen and also points out that this unit occupies an entire 5.25 inch drive bay.
Controller + USB 3.0 + Audio jack is another awesome combination, Unique!
If Aerocool can add a little bit of aluminum finish with the “x” and a little bit of LED… ^^
The rotation of the fan controllers uhmmm…
Aerocool hardware is extremely plasticy, and cheaply red/pinky, roughly finished. Even worse than cheap Thermaltake hardware… just the way to cater to the children.
I’d much rather get a proper Lamptron/G-VANS (rebadged Lamptron) or a Sunbeam Rheobus controler.
Besides, most decent cases you’d buy nowadays are already going to have an audio an a USB 3 jack, so why bother? This is just a half-assed solution for some old and ugly cheap case. I’ve seen an Aerocool Strike-X PSU in person and man, it has the worst finish I’ve ever seen on a component in my life. It’s pinky and redish and very rough. Was absolutely terrible looking…
There is a reason why it is plastic, its all about the price. If you want to pay nearly three times the price for a Lamptron fan controller (of which we have a review coming soon!) then you get much more quality like you say. You can’t really fault Aerocool as this costs £25-£30 and still offers a lot of functionality. If you don’t like the aesthetics then again that is down to your own opinion, I have the fan controller here still in my case and yes while it won’t match all cases there are still a lot it will match plus even though you suggest USB 3.0 and front Audio isn’t important many cases are increasingly skimping out on front panel connectors or putting them in inaccessible places so it can still be useful. If you don’t like the extra ports then obviously you can get a fan controller without them, maybe they might make their series of fan controllers better by offering models without the extra ports.
Uhm…
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811999244
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811995017
There’s no point in buying this controller. It really looks awful, is poorly built and is extremely overpriced.
I don’t get how a Lamptron is “three times” the price, as neither of my FC8, Fan-Atic nor my Lamptron HUMMER cost me anywhere near 3 times the price of this controller. They all cost about $50.
Okay well we are a UK review site. In the UK this costs £25 and the Lamptron FC8 costs about £50, yes 3 times was an exaggeration. From my experience it didn’t beep for no reason and nothing fell off. I was also informed by my supplier that the one I had been sent was a revised version because previous versions had issues, which I am assuming fixed previous wrongs with the product. I’m not one to hold back and if it sucked then I wouldn’t recommend it. Yes most people won’t find it suitable for the cases (because of the looks), but for people that do like how it looks I see no reason why you shouldn’t get it. I do update my reviews, should I find that anything deteriorates with this product over time I will come back to this review and edit it.
I agree with some of your feedback and I have made some edits. Thanks for your feedback I appreciate it when readers dig into reviews and delve deeper, without criticism and discussion review sites can’t interact effectively so it is appreciated.
I think for the price its a good buy! Looks decent with the addition of USB 3.0 it woud b a niceti to my case! I had already been looking it over but I glad o s review on! Thanks
that’s a shame.
It’s not even worth entering that TPU contest for.
Besides, you should NOT get free crap to play period.
Don’t be a cheap ass, buy your own. One of these I spoke of in here. They’re all great controllers.
Sorry I don’t get you and the context of your comment.
Please explain more.
There is a TechPowerUp contest giving away free Aerocool stuff including this fan controller. I think he is suggesting buying lamptron fan controllers instead of these.
Absolutely.
http://www.frozencpu.com/search.html?mv_profile=keyword_search&mv_session_id=KZht5tXU&searchspec=G-Vans&go.x=10&go.y=16
ok. Then your post would have had better effect if you have posted in techpowerup forums, specially in the contest thread.
Well, here is the thing.
1) I can’t post in that forum because I changed my account to a GUEST account, NEVER to log back in again, because it is FULL of AMD fanboys.
2) It was, from the way your genius post sounded like, obvious that you were going for the contest.
And three, this site caters to the ENTIRE World, not just the UK.
Oh and, four, you need to use your brain a little bit more.
Should I go on?
You seem pretty in the know. What are your thoughts on the G-Vans vs Lamptron issue from last year, what was the outcome of it in the end? Since you linked to G-Vans while talking about Lamptron I am assuming you know more than me about it.
I don’t TBH.
I barely even use fan controllers anymore.
Y-adapters just do it much easier for me. I only run extreme speed fans like Nidec’s at full blast so you can guess… lol.
Actually what confused me is the word ‘TPU’. It means several things, and the most famous being Asus TPU feature. And while reading you post, I didn’t think about techpowerup . I said it’s a shame because the buyers will suffer most.
And how am I supposed to know that you didn’t use their site/forum anymore, specially after you, yourself have mentioned them at the first place? 😉
I suppose anyone with a gram of brain can Google TPU and come up with thermoplastic polyurethane…
that is, if it has ANY relation to anything that’s being spoken in here…