14 DAY TRIAL // With most chassis manufacturers focusing on state-of-the-art automatized cooling capable of handling any type of hardware configuration, such mechanisms offer little in the way of direct control over power allocation. This means that such complicated cooling modules, although truly effective and strong, are really mostly suited for just those systems meant to handle even the most monstrous of computing and graphical tasks. The folk at Zalman decided to put together a gizmo meant to allow for the reduction of the amount of power eaten up by the chassis fans by giving users complete and direct control over their rotary speeds.
Scheduled to be released soon, this new product in the area of cooling management, called the MFC1 Combo fan controller, fits into a normal 5.25-inch bay, thus becoming an integrated part of the system itself. The front of the device is built from aluminum and each of its five channels delivers 7W or 0.6 A to handle up to five fans.
Four will be managed via voltage, whereas the remaining one will be handled through Pulse-width modulation (PWM). The functionality of the device is not limited to this much, though. A PWM mode with one user-defined and three automatic settings will also be made available along with the standard version.
This product is very well suited for those configurations that are not outfitted with automatic power adjustments to fans. Now, purchasers will no longer have to buy an expensive and complicated casing or advanced cooling mechanisms in order to provide their temperamental CPU or GPU with a strong-enough fan that can speed up depending on the workload.
With just a turn of a dial, each one of the five individual fans can be slowed down or sped up according to preference. Naturally, such adjustments will lead to power being less wasted, overall, since fans will no longer consume excess energy by running at a max speed all the time.
The Zalman MFC1 Combo will be soon available for purchase throughout Europe and will have a recommended price tag of slightly under 40 Euro.