Phobya MaxGuide 6 Fan Controller Review

[Dark Mantis]

Phobya MaxGuide 6 Controller Review

by Dark Mantis





Phobya's MaxGuide 6 Controller is the top of their range of fan controllers. At first look it is very attractive and finely made. It comes in a Phobya design box which is an improvement on the two other controllers from the same manufacturer that I have reviewed recently, they were just distributed in Jiffy bags which I was not impressed with. This box is sturdy and does a good job of defending the device from damage during delivery.





The controller is bundled with a bag of screws for mounting in a single free drive bay, a power splitter cable with a large molex plug and socket with a 450mm trailing lead with a three pin molex fan socket for connection to the controller and a set of six 600mm fan extension cables with three pin molex plug and socket on the ends. Basically everything that is required to setup and use this controller is supplied so there is no need to go hunting around for that one extension cable because the one you have is too short.





This device is lightweight when picked up and that is mainly because the whole casing is all made from alluminium. The front fascia is plain black with six rotatable knobs each with it's own 3mm LED indicator and semi circle of dots so that an approximation of the value of the dial is visible. Each range is marked in white from L for low to H for high and each controller is labelled with a fan number. The LEDs are red in colour and flash. The rate of flash depends on the speed of the fan, so a slow output means a fairly slow flash rate but then as the speed is increased so does the speed of the flashing LED. Another useful thing about this is that if the fan stops working for any reason the LED will go out. In the lower right hand corner is a nice little Phobya logo sticker. It is actually quite tasteful.





Inside the casing and mounted via three standoffs is the printed ciruit board that all the electronic components are mounted on. As previously mentioned there are six channels and so there are six of everything on the board plus a single extra three pin plug that is for the input power connection. The other plugs are one for each fan. It is sprayed painted with matt black paint both inside and out just to give it a nice quality finish. 





The chassis measures  149mm x 42mm x 68mm in total and the the circuit board measures 135mm x 30mm. Each controller will scale from 5v - 12v so that will give any fan the full operating range and is rated as able to handle up to a maximum of 1.0A so that is 6 x 6W in total. This enables full control of all your fans individually and takes them off the motherboard headers which can be dangerous in so much as sometimes they burn out if too much power is drawn through them. In my opinion the only thing that could have been improved upon was to make it so that it could withstand a heavier load so that any fan or even pump could be attached to it.





This is a very nice quality and well designed fan contorller that uses high quality parts as well.  It is easy to connect up, comes with everything that you could possibly require straight out of the box and works very well. It deserves it's award of 9/10.



Suppplier: C and C Central     http://www.candccentral.co.uk/         Price: £20.99

[Gloup_Gloup]

Hi Dark Mantis, 

It is compatible with hardware monitor pro? We get the temperatures of each of the 6 buttons?

Gloup_Gloup

[Dark Mantis]

Hi Gloup_Gloup

Although I am sure that it is compatible I really doubt whether it will pass on the relevant readings to HWPro. I don't think there is any way for HWPro to read off each individual sensor on the unit. It would be nice though.

[Gloup_Gloup]

Hi Gloup_Gloup

Although I am sure that it is compatible I really doubt whether it will pass on the relevant readings to HWPro. I don't think there is any way for HWPro to read off each individual sensor on the unit. It would be nice though.

Thank for speed answer. I give infos for my brother.

Gloup_Gloup