Sunbeam Rheobus with 4 Blue And Red LED'sIntro: Many of you know that as you over clock your PC the need for more fans and better airflow become a major concern. Over the course of 2 years, I went from 1 a 92mm intake and 2 80mm intakes, to a 120mm blowhole, 2 120mm hard drive coolers and a 92mm intake on my YY cube. As part of this upgrade, I decided to try out the Sunbeam Rheobus to help keep my beast of a rig quiet, but still cool at the same time. Having a small case like the YY cube can indeed cause temperatures to rise very easily when you start pushing your AMD/Intel CPUs. My main problem was having a 2100+ that was capable of 2.4Ghz air-cooled but put out tremendous amounts of heat. Since I was going to be sleeping in the same room as my PC, the Rheobus 4 channel fan controller seemed like a reasonable addition to my YY cube. What you get:

• Rheobus with 4 0-12V controls
• Aluminum or Black finish
• A Molex Y-cable
• 2 3Pin to 4pin converters
• 1 3Pin to 2pin converter (perhaps for video/north bridge)

Features: Now one would expect a Rheobus to do just control fan voltages, however this Rheobus has some special features. First of all, we have 20w of power output per channel. This is impressive, because that is over 1.5 amp of output per channel. This translates into no problems for possibly 2 delta high output fans (screamers!) Secondly, the bi-color LED's allow you to know exactly what how much voltage you're giving your fans (as if your ears weren't good enough). At 0-7v, the LED will be red; 8-12v the LED will be blue. But, if you decide that you'd like the colors the other way, simply pull the LED from its housing; flip the pins on the LED over. Insert the LED back into its housing and ‘tada', you have reversed the colors. Again I mentioned I sleep in the same room as this PC and man, these LED's are insanely bright. Another feature worth noting is the use of large heat sinks on the power transistors to help keep the unit from a big meltdown when you've got your array of Delta's at full power while LAN'ing. But lets move on to installation. Installation: Installing this unit is quite simple. Hook up power, hook up your fans (and maybe dictate to yourself or make a note of which fan goes to what) and install into an unoccupied 5.25" drive bay. On my YY cube, I must use rails in my 5.25" bays. If you take a closer look, you'll notice that my YY cube is a fat small little industrial microwave type-looking case. It creates a problem when it comes time to hook up the necessary connections as I have 2 hard drives below the Rheobus, and 2 CD-Roms right above it. Very tight quarters indeed, however, this did not cause any problems after I was done installing. Performance: I have my alpha pal8045's stock delta 80mm running on channel one, my 120mm blowhole (some generic red led fan) running on channel two, a pair of boxer 120mm fans pushing air through the front of my case on the hard drive side running on channel three. And last, I have a 92mm sucking air front the bottom front on the motherboard side on channel four. This configuration allows me the best possible cooling/noise control I could ever dream of. My 2100+ Thoroughbred B core runs 2.3Ghz @ 1.75v no problem all day, but when it comes to gaming I need to keep everything else cool. The 120mm's are nearly silent at 7v, so is the 92mm, but when I'm gaming I need that extra cooling, so I'll kick up all the fans to 12v with the flick of my wrist. Temps will vary as much as 8C from having everything except the CPU fan running at 7v to 12v idle. Overall thoughts: I really do believe that for the price, you can't do better than this Rheobus. If manual control over your numerous case fans is necessary, I highly recommend this cheap solution. The quality is bar-none and the features help reinforce the products highpoints. The only negative things I could say about the unit would probably be including some sort of extra long quick-disconnects with this product. For those of us with smaller cases, a 6" long extension from the back of the Rheobus to a quick disconnect fitting would greatly improve any issues I had concerning cramped space issues. Perhaps I will just have to custom-make some sort of solution for this problem. Besides my small problem with space issues, the SunBeam Rheobus is quite possibly the best bang for your buck when investing in a fan control solution for your custom PC. Pros:

• 20W (over 1.5amp) of power per channel, amazing!
• Great looks
• Reversible LED's look great and function well
• Included wiring makes easy, no-cut mod
• 0-12v fan control is amazing

Cons:

• Hard to connect the Rheobus in cramped spaces, possible wire extensions would make things easier!

Final Score: 8.6