Aerocool V12XT Touch Screen LCD Fan Controller Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
1,699 words · ~8 min read
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okay so today I'll be unboxing the aerocool V12 XT this is a touch LCD fan
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controller so you can see right off the bat it is a dual Bay controller and it
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sits in two 5 and 1/4 in Bays they have
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a finger here so and it's called a touch LCD fan controller so this is a
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touchscreen LCD display that you see on the front and uh you know what why don't
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we just go ahead and work our way around the box and see if we can find out some
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more information so other languages are on the sides but English being
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apparently the most important to Arrow cool oh and look they've even started
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the package open for me so I can just uh rip off the plastic very easily without
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a knife okay almost I you know I was doing
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really well there ah there we go yes no
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knife success okay so let's have a look
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at the features on the back so you got a large LCD screen 2x 5 and 1/4 inch Bay
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which I already covered Innovative touch LCD
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technology racer style fan controller design so they've designed it to look
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kind of like a speedometer and then a tachometer which is kind of cool if
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you're into that monitors and control four sets of temperature and fan speeds
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individually the LCD backlight can be either on or off you can switch between
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Celsius and Fahrenheit I've actually seen this feature missing on fan
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controllers before and it drives me crazy because everyone sets it to
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Fahrenheit by default and in Canada we use celsius overheating alarm
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temperature warning hard drive working display okay so you can plug this into
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your hard drive LED uh header on your motherboard lock function provided to
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prevent careless mouch that's kind of neat okay so why don't we get this
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opened up and have a look inside the
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first thing we will find is the unit oh
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and then okay good there is some documentation I thought there was Zero
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documentation inside and I was going to freak out because uh then I would have
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nothing to talk about except what I already just talked about so why don't
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we have a look at the documentation first number one is a user manual so
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this unfolds pretty good here I did it again okay so here English
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the fen controller is operated by a touch LCD screen okay we got that much
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okay you can browse fan speed select a fan of your choice from fan one to Fan 4
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to view the fan speed so you just touch it on the fan speed and then browsing
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temperatures you can select a Channel of your choice to view the temperature and
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the thermometer display so you can choose either CPU VGA hard drive or
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system and then you'll get a temperature reading right here uh key lock and
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unlock so you can unlock or lock it setting fan speed okay so you touch to
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unlock the LCD touch fan one to see the RPM display and then you touch the
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digits inside the pink Square I don't see a pink Square huh
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okay well you touch the digits inside the pink Square the digits begin to
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Blink and then you touch plus or minus to adjust the fan speed at 100 RPM
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intervals very cool okay around the other side and this is you okay so it
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shows you basically how to change change every aspect of this displays and touch
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screen and fan controllers settings okay
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so here is how to replace heat
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sensors or how to install the heat sensors I guess so you split the cables
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and then run them to wherever you want them to go so you can see they've got the little temperature sensors here and
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then you unplug the failed fan C oh replacing a fan cable they're showing
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you how to replace failed cables that can't happen that often okay so why
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don't we have a look at the accessories that are included right off the bat here
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and uh okay everything seems to be
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mostly pre-attached to the unit but why don't we have a look at what's in this
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bagy first so the first thing we have are little adhesive strips okay the next
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thing we have are what appear to be some extension cables so we have two fan
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extension cables here okay and then we have two temperature sensors so these
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seem to be Replacements yeah so they've included instructions and Replacements
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just in case the fan cables or temperature sensors here fail well
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that's very helpful of them at any rate they're covering all of their bases here
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then we have eight installation screws that we can use to install this into two
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5 and a/4 in bays and then why don't we
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have a look at this guy here so it uses
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steel construction on the side so you I've seen too many that use like an
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aluminum sheet here that's not thick enough but you can see this is not going
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to flex and bend because what can happen is while you're installing it you might
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need to pinch them a little bit tight to get it into the front of the case and
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then they don't go they don't go back into place and it's hard to screw them in from the side so they've thought of
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that which is very helpful and why don't we just uncoil all the cables that are
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plugged into the back of this guy and then we you can have a look at how long
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the cables are for one thing because that's another big complaint that I've
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had about fan controllers in the past is if the cables aren't long enough to
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reach something then it's not very helpful at all is it okay so oh this is
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kind of neat okay so while this fan controller doesn't use pwm technology it
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just uses straight DC to control the fans what they've done is they've made
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it so that the three Pin cable goes out to a 4pin compatible cable so you can
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either plug a three pin fan or a four pin fan into this in order to get the
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most out of your compatibility for different fans and I don't know what
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this does this is interesting so this is an RP p m sensor that also includes
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another ground so you could potentially
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plug a fan into here and then you could
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take this out and plug it into an RPM
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sensor on your motherboard but you've already got an RPM sensor on the fan
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controller so it seems to be all about redundancy with this thing it's got
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alarms for if your fans fail you can plug it into your motherboard so your
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motherboard can set off an alarm if your fan fails this is all about system
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safety and temp sensors so these are oh
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you know what I never showed you how long these cables were did I okay so the
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cables are about this long that is all okay and then for the
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temp sensors these are actually hot glued in okay but they should come off
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fairly easily if you really wanted to do that so you've got the four temp sensors
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and then you've got see this red stripe down at the other end that is the hard
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drive LED so not only can you plug this
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into the hard drive LED header on the motherboard then you can take your case
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hard drive LED and plug it into this one
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so they'll both go off whenever you access your hard drive redundancy there
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you go so this thing is taking functions that you could have already done and
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doing them better but then you also still have the old functionality that's
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awesome because I hate it when you plug in like a front panel uh like a new
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front panel thing and then what it does is it just makes the stuff that came
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with your case dead like if you plug in like a like a 5 and a/4 in so the full
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SD card cut me off in the middle of my rant about how um duplicated
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functionality on a front panel thing that you add to your system might render
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something else useless like if you buy something that has an ESAT port on the
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front and then you have to unplug the es SATA port on your case in order to make
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that one work is like pretty stupid but this one makees sure that you don't run
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into that problem so I've actually in the time I've been off camera plugged in
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a couple of fans okay into the back back of the unit so I plugged one in using
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their extension cable and I plugged one in directly so you can see the back
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light from around the side of the PCB and you can actually see the front
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display so um yeah we're monitoring the
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RPM of fan number one right now it's at
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uh 1700 and then 2600 RPM and then 1200
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RPM I'm not sure how completely accurate
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that is but honestly I don't think it really matters okay I think it's
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unlocked right now and I think I can adjust it I don't know I didn't the
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instructions very carefully on how to adjust the fan speed but one thing I did notice is that if you unplug it oh
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there's an alarm there you go there's your alarm anyway thank you for checking out my unboxing today of the V12 XT Fen
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controller from a aerocool