The Fat/n Controller

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The fan controller is sent in a petite box which has some gold text advertising this unit as a multi fan controller and an artsy close-up of the product itself.

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Once out of the box you realise that this isn’t your ordinary fan controller as there is what looks like an external power block. The actual contents of the box include the unit itself, a pass-thru kettle plug block, a PCI bracket with USB port, a four temperature probe plug, a PWM fan cable, two standard fan cables, a two fan Y-cable and mounting screws for the unit itself and the PCI bracket.

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There are four temperature probes which are the standard diode in a film type which all terminate in one plug to allow you to easily plug it into the MFC2 itself. The cable length could be an issue in a large case as they measure about 19” (30cm for the metric folk).

The fan cables are simply extension cables meaning that you could actually just plug your fans directly into the fan controller itself. The only cable that is a little strange is the two fan wire, which allows you to connect two fans together and use one slot on the MFC2. You’ll need to use two similar/identical fans otherwise one fan will be faster/slower than the other.

Interestingly, there is the option to plug in a 4 pin fan, meaning that it will be controlled by PWM rather than voltage which is a nice little extra. However, most motherboards will control the PWM fan speed itself depending on the CPU temperature. This is a much better option than using a human controlled device as it dynamically adjusts the fan speed immediately if the temperature rises. This means that it can be as quiet as possible at all times. At least the option is there I guess.

The MFC2 cannot change the fan speed depending on the temperature which makes the temperature sensors a little redundant. This is a bit of a shame as it would make the controller very useful for people who don’t have the latest BIOS/motherboard which normally supports this option.

The large block which looks like an external voltage adaptor is actually much more than that. You plug your mains kettle lead into the back of this block, and then the kettle lead that comes out from the block itself plugs into your power supply. The block has a second cable coming out of it which is a USB plug. This slots into the provided PCI bracket which in turn connects to the fan controller. This allows the unit to display how much power your PSU is taking from the mains which is an interesting function for a fan controller. It allows a voltage range from 30W all the way up to 800W. While this sounds like a large range, if you have a 1000W PSU the MFC2 will just display ‘LLL’ which denotes an out of range input.

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The choice of using a USB plug is a poor one in my mind. As it doesn’t use the USB specification, if you were to plug this into your motherboard, you’ll probably get some fireworks. This will give someone who doesn’t read the instructions a very bad surprise. It’s nice that the device doesn’t need software to run as it plugs directly into the unit, but I would have liked to see a proprietary plug rather than an USB shaped one. On the plus side, the PCI bracket has labels on it explaining that plugging it into your motherboard is a bad call.

The controller itself used the same type of display as you find on calculators; an LCD. Rather than using an expensive dot-matrix style, it uses pre-cut shapes that are simply lit from behind. This allows for a lower cost and better looks as the shapes that are used can be more intricate. For each fan there is a rotating fan blade log which tells you whether the fan is on/spinning, and a RPM readout underneath. Below this there are the separate temperature figures. At the very top of the display is the power bar telling you how many watts are being sucked from the mains.

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The ZM-MFC2 is actually the next version of the ZM-MFC1 (no surprise there) although these two units are drastically different. This version has only two controls one being a jog wheel that you use to click and twist to set the RPM levels of the fans and the other being a ‘mode’ switch to select which fan you want to change the speed of.