Lamptron CW611 Review

Lamptron CW611 Review - Configuration and Conclusion

The Lamptron CW611's display is excellent with superb viewing angles right up to the extremes. You can adjust the brightness to several levels and even switch it off, for those moments when, er, nothing but darkness will do? It's relatively uncluttered, displaying the current channel and speed/voltage and percentage output along with its corresponding temperature and whether an alarm has been set for that channel. To cycle channels its a question of rotating the upper dial, while depressing for two seconds allows you to set whether it's a pump, fan or flow meter. A quick press then takes you into that channel's configuration, which you can progress through using the lower button.



Here you can choose between manual or automatic modes for fan and pump control, with the latter providing the ability to select minimum and maximum RPM or voltage, including off, based on a target temperature. For example, setting a target temperature of 30°C will mean the voltage or RPM remains at its minimum setting till that temperature is reached. They'll then increase based on a factory-set profile curve, which acts to stop them bumping straight up to 12V unless your target temperature is topped by a huge amount. The one thing you can't do is change the fan curve profile, as you can on the likes of Auqacomuter Aquaero 5 XT, but then it costs more than twice as much.

If you opt for manual mode, the CW611 offers a very quick way of controlling the voltages yourself on each channel. Simply select the channel you want to adjust, press the top dial and tweak away. If you've already set that channel to manual control, it's just a question of turning the dial to adjust the voltage - if not you need to toggle between automatic and manual mode first. This is a bit more of a hassle than dedicated controls for each channel - especially if you want to quickly adjust multiple channels - but such is the compromise of that massive display.



From the outset it appeared that you couldn't use a single thermal probe to control several output channels - there are six channels and six thermal probe headers and they're each paired up independently with fan header one wired up to probe header one etc. In other words you can't have your pump and fans on separate channels and control both using a single thermal probe. However, an easy way round this, especially if you don't want to have to invest in two expensive G1/4in coolant probes, is to to take advantage of the 36W per channel and use a 3-pin splitter cable, hooking up the pump and fans to a single channel. It might be messy but it would work. However the easiest route would be to set the pump speed manually and configure the fans alone to respond to temperature.

Conclusion

The CW611 is one of the easiest automatic fan controllers to use we've seen, mainly thanks to a good set of instructions. A thorough read of these with the unit powered up in front of you will have you tweaking in no time. It's simple to switch from automatic to manual control and configuring each channel takes a matter of seconds rather than hours ploughing through an instruction manual, once you're used to it that is - there's definitely a fairly steep learning curve.

The control and automation it gives over both air and water-cooled systems is superb and coupled with a great display, complete set of bundled cables and a reasonable price tag, it's a great way of taking control of your PC's cooling and allowing it to do the hard work in the background. Got a PC case with no fan control but don't want to have to fiddle with dials when the temperature changes? The CW611 could be just what you're looking for.