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Hardcano 13 Review
October 2004 - Taipei, Taiwan - Thermaltake Technology Co., Ltd is proud to announce their all-new extravagant, modish application for the 5.25” drive bay, the Hardcano 13. For the contemporary life, the Hardcano 13 displays creativity and uniqueness. Not only is the Hardcano 13 an ideal solution for integration of a Smart Card Reader/Fan Controller but also an in vogue additive to users’ PC chassis. The Hardcano 13 is the best six in one card reader, which is compatible with six different media: CF/BM, Microdrive/SM/SD/MMC/MS. The great fan controller/monitoring device contains four sets of temperature display, four sets of fan speed display, and four sets of fan failure display. In addition, the Hardcano 13 displays temperatures from Celsius to Fahrenheit readings. On top of its flamboyant appearance, the Hardcano 13 demonstrates a hip eight color change illumination. By pressing on the precision electronic button control for four seconds, it allows users to start the cycle of eight incredible color displays. In addition to its stylish housing, the Hardcano 13 has a large EL back light LCD monitor for temperature and fan control. More information about HardCano13 Packaging Classic Thermaltake packaging. Thermaltake has always been a leader in marketing computer hardware with flashy designs and graphics. The packaging for the Hardcano 13 is no exception. The box looks great and really helps to make the product stand out. The packaging inside is well done. Everything is in order and he foam inserts should definitely keep the components from becoming damaged during shipping and handling. All components are wrapped in protective plastic bags. Contents
Features 1: 4 sets of Fan Connector Functions Card Reader Installation Originally I had planned on installing this in my own PC, but this was not an option. The reason is because I currently have 8 fans installed in my case and the Hardcano 13 only comes with 2 x 4 pin Molex adapters. The Hardcano 13 is designed for fans that have 3 pin connectors, not the normal 4 pin Molex connectors that 99% of us use. This bothered me greatly, because Thermaltake makes most of their fans with 3 pin connectors, meaning they also want you to buy their fans as well. In order to use this product properly you would need to purchase Thermaltake fans or fans from another company that offers fans that work with 3 pin adapters. So basically, if you have more than 4 fans installed, you won't be able to utilize this piece of hardware properly unless you want to purchase some fans with 3 pin connectors. Thermaltake only provides 2 of these connectors. You won't be able to take advantage of the fan monitoring capabilities unless you happen to have fans that support the feature. In this case I was only able to control the speed of 2 fans with the unit. Thermaltake provides some 3 sided tape for the temperature probes. Simply place the probes wherever you want them, then place the tape over the probe and apply firm pressure. Then remove the paper backing. I placed a temperature probe behind the CPU socket here. I also placed probes behind the videocard GPU, the Northbridge heatsink and the RAM, using the tape provided. Look closely at the RAM and you can see the probe there. Testing Using the photo below as a reference you will see it says 35.3°C. This is the temperature reading from the videocard. I think Thermaltake has attempted to compensate temperature readings by adding 10°C to 15°C to each probe reading, in order to give a better idea of a true temperature reading. By choosing FAN1 you can change the speed of the fan with the dial and it will also give you the temperature of Probe1, which in our case is the CPU. FAN2 in the photo above is the reading from the videocard. You can also see that the display says "MANUAL". By choosing this setting you can manually change the speed of your fan. If you set it to "AUTO" it lowers the fan speed down considerably. Without the 3 pin connectors for fan speed monitoring, this makes running it in AUTO mod pretty much useless. In the photo above you can see the "Alarm Temp." display. The Hardcano 13 allows you to set a global temperature alarm setting for all of the probes. You can change this from 40°C up to 70°C (60°C default) or 104°F to 158°F (140°F default). This is useful for people that overclock their hardware. The card reader works by connecting the USB wire to your motherboard. After you install it you can use the drivers provided on the CD to make the card readers work. Unfortunately I was only able to get this feature to work once. After installing the drivers from the disk it was working. Once I restarted the computer the feature would not work. I tried uninstalling the drivers and reinstalling them, but nothing I tried would make them come back. I am not sure if it is a driver issue or a hardware issue, but it wasn't a very good sign. Conclusions Overall the Hardcano 13 is a decent product with a lot of really cool features. There are problems though. Mainly the fact that it was built to work with 3 pin fans. Most of us use fans that only have 4 pin Molex connectors, therefore we can't use the fan monitoring feature of the Hardcano 13. Thermaltake only includes 2 x 4pin adapters, so you can really only use 2 fans (maybe 4 by daisy chaining). I also had problem with the drivers for the Card Reader feature. It stopped working after a reboot and I was unable to get it working again after that. One other problem that I noticed was that the Alarm and Time reset to defaults when the system is powered down. Which means that you'll have to reset them every time you start up your PC. I would really like to see this component redesigned in the future to handle 4 pin Molex fans, instead of 3 pin fan. I would also like to see the drivers fixed so people don't run into the same problem I did. I would also like to see the Time and Alarm settings fixed so that they don't get lost every time the PC is powered down. The coolest thing about this piece of hardware is the neat looking backlit display, other than that I am not impressed. I personally would never purchase one of these for myself. As I stated before, my PC currently has 8 fans installed. I use a Nexus fan controller to handle them and it works just fine. It can handle 2 fans on each channel without any problems. Of course it doesn't come with the fancy card reader, temperature display or backlit panel, but it works, which is more than I can say for the Hardcano 13, which only provided me with less than half of the features it was meant to provide.
On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best) I give the Hardcano 13 a rating of 4. |
