The FC Touch

The Lamptron FC Touch comes in two flavours, that is the usual black or brushed aluminum and one can notice that our review model is the black edition. However, first we shall go through the  box contents before looking at the product.

• 1x Fan Controller
• 6x 3-pin Fan Power Cables (524mm)
• 1x 4-pin Molex power Extension (195mm)
• 6x Thermal Sensor Cables (725mm)
• 1x Jumper (enable alarm)
• 4x Screws
• 1x Screen Cloth
• 1x Installation Guide
• 1x Product Catalog

Below are a few images of the aforementioned contents:

It really is a good idea on Lamptron’s part to include a series of thermal probe sensors which monitor actions such as air in and out. Also included is a handy cleaning cloth for the screen, which does away with the days of ‘spit and polish’ cleaning. One criticism we can lay at the feet of Lamptron is the lack of a 12 volt Molex to 3 pin power adapter. Such an adapter would enable water cooling enthusiasts to connect their pumps to the controller as well. Since each channel is 30 watts, and most pumps are either 10 or 18 watts, then attaching a water pump to this fan controller would not be an issue

At last we come to the fan controller itself, we notice that the aluminum face place is brushed and then anodized. This serves to give the controller a nice quality feel. We can also see that the controller itself consists of two PCB boards, the first enables the touch screen and the second houses the controller chip, capacitors (more on these later) and the fan headers themselves. Below are a series of gratuitous shots showing the product in all its glory.

Next we examine the back of the fan controller in order to examine what makes this product so special, if indeed it does.

Altogether there are six three pin fan headers. Additionally there are six large Rubycon capacitors, which have a temperature tolerance of 105 degrees and an ARM chip. More details on the latter mentioned can be found at (http://www.icbase.com/hotic/html/docs/1221142709.pdf) Warning the file takes a long time to load. The STM32 chip acts as the ‘CPU’ of the fan controller, and is based on the Cortex-M3 core. Strangely enough it is not so much the ARM Chip that is interesting it is those large Rubicon capacitors. At 30 watts per channel we have a total 180 watts if used to its full potential, and as a result the product is going to get hot! Finally we come to the molex power connector which powers the device, the two pin connectors for the sensor probes and lastly the jumper to enable the alarm function.

All in all a really good showing by Lamptron with great amount of care given to detail. Let us now move onto the fun section and that is the testing.

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