Phobya MaxGuide 6 Dualbay Fan Controller Review

In terms of usage there isn’t much to show. With the unit turned on you get only one display screen. This shows all six temperature sensor inputs and all six fan speed inputs. You can adjust all the fans via the dials but the temperature inputs serve no purpose – you cannot set temperature targets or anything like that.

Performance

Screen Quality:  The panel used is solid quality and seems durable enough. It is unfortunately glossy which means that there is some reflective glare and it also has no brightness adjustment. That said it is more than bright enough to display everything you need to see. There was no backlight bleeding and I couldn’t possibly comment on LCD fade as I will not be able to test it for long enough. From my usage the LCD certainly does a good job and I had no complaints.

Usability: Usability is pretty simple, to tune the fans you turn the control knobs and that’s about it really. It is worth noting that yes you can turn fans off and then the 0000 RPM turns into an OFF. The USB 3.0 port and card reader worked totally normally and you’ll need to use your motherboards latest USB 3.0 or USB 2.0 drivers to power these.

Fan Tuning: Fan tuning is reasonably precise and you can range between off (0 volts) to maximum (12volts). As far as I am aware the lowest starting voltage is 5 volts but not all fans will start at 5 volts, though this is no fault of the controller. From using it I can see that the fan knobs turn the fan up in 30 RPM increments, that is each very slightly turn adds approximately 30 RPM depending on your fan of course. It is also worth noting slight input/output lag of around 3 seconds between turning the dial and seeing a speed change.

Build Quality:  The quality of this unit is a bit of a mixed bag. What I liked was the all metal construction and brushed aluminium front bezel. The metal frame also gives it great structural rigidity. Furthermore the cables provided are also very good quality and its nice they are all black, the fact that are black cables not black sleeving means there is no issue of sleeving sliding up or down the cables. It is also worth noting the fan fail alarm can be turned off at a hardware level using a jumper which is nice. On the other hand though I did not like the Green PCB – it stands out like a sore thumb. Additionally, I found the control knobs were not solid and wobbled as you turn them. You can see a demonstration of that below. Finally the glossy screen doesn’t impress me much either, I prefer matte screens myself as they have to be better quality, also the lack of brightness adjustment is slightly sad.