Lamptron has been leading the way with great peripherals for awhile now. They always seem to bring top quality products to the marketplace and today we have Lamptron’s new fan controller, the -FC6- , up for review. If this is anything like our past experiences with Lamptron products, then we are in for a treat. Let’s see if the -FC6- lives up to our high expectations, shall we?

Packaging:

*We do need to point out that on the box it has “Power Output: Up to 10w per Channel.” It also mentions 10w per channel in the instruction manual. This is wrong. It’s real power output is 20W per channel. This typo has been fixed in retail samples.*

Features:

• CNC-milled face plate from blocks of 3/4″ thick solid aluminum
• Bring out that full aesthetic appeal you always wanted in the 5.25 inch bay
• Four knobs to control four 3-pin connectors
• User’s choice of displaying Celsius or Fahrenheit for the bottom line readout

Specifications:

The Lamptron -FC6-:

Once we opened the box we finally got to see this beauty. We took everything out for a quick picture in order to show everything inside that you would get when you purchase this fan controller. Here are a few quick notes on the wires. The power connection extender is just under 10 inches. The fan connection extenders are about 20.5 inches long. The 4 temperature sensors are 32 inches from end to end. This should provide enough length to place the sensors anywhere you would like in a mid-size case.

Most skeptics out there have an idea that most fan controllers are wimpy, with cheap aluminum and/or plastic. For the FC6, this could not be further from the truth. You will find this out once you pick up this unit. It feels heavier than the other average fan controllers on the market and there is a very good reason why. This fan controller is CNC milled from blocks of 3/4″ thick solid aluminum.

This is solid craftsmanship. Nothing felt cheap or loose on the back of the PCB, and the fan connections are placed in the middle and labeled nicely for ease of use.  The power connection is placed in the top right out of the way. It is always a plus to have big connections and wires off to the side, however, Lamptron did put the temperature sensor connections under the power connection. We were curious as to why? There are a lot of other options they had and they chose that area. I guess we could let this slide for now, but maybe in the future they might consider looking into a new location for the temp sensor connections.

Setup and Installation:

The one thing that had us scratching our heads was the power connection which was an extremely tight fight with the power connector. We had to jam it on to the point of bending the PCB. We have noticed this on previous models as well. Hopefully you only have to plug it in once or twice, as we are not sure how much it could really take when using this kind of force.

Here is a look at one of the wires installed on a hard drive. A quick side note: the Lamptron FC6 does not come with tape so you will need to use your own. The temperature probe installs just as easily as any other probe you will use and takes very little time. Temperature probes are always nice to have around your system, especially if you are overclocking. You can install them on your RAM, North Bridge, CPU, inside your water cooling setup to know how hot your water is, and outside the case to gauge ambient temperatures. There are a lot of uses that can be very helpful to the average computer user and especially the more extreme overclocker.

With the FC6 installed into our testing case, you can see how great it looks matched with a solid black case. This fan controller adds a lot to the aesthetic look of the case.

Front Panel Display:

You can choose from a couple different readouts on the front panel display. It all really depends on what you want to look at.

• Alarm Status Display: The alarm is indicated by the alarm character
• Bottom Line Readout Mode Displays: Temperature Mode (Celsius and Fahrenheit) indicated in units of 0.1
• Fan Channels: Adjust the fan RPM’s with the corresponding switch (knob)
• RPM Display: RPM is displayed in units of 10 RPM for each channel, fans need sensor wires for this function to operate

The seven color options: (Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, Purple, White)

The seven color choices are always nice. It gives you some options so that you aren’t stuck with one or two colors you may not like very much. The colors are vibrant and the display crisp, which is a big deal because there are some cheaply made fan controllers and other peripherals where you have to be at just the right angle to see what is on the screen. There is nothing like spending $40-$50 on something you can’t even read! However, with the FC6 you will not have to worry about that problem because Lamptron provides quality in this regard.

Conclusion:

The Lamptron FC6 receives the TechREACTION.net Silver Silicon Award!







You can purchase the Lamptron FC6 fan controller at Performance-PCs.
Thanks to Lamptron for the review sample.