Hardware Bistro

Product: Touch 1000
Manufacturer: Aerocool
Supplied by: Aerocool
Price: 40USD/RM140
Launch Date: June 2009

 

Today we are glad to introduce another new brand arrived on our doorstep; Aerocool. Aerocool isn't a new brand, in fact they are in the market quite some time ago and LCD touch screen control panel is one of their legend products. Let us have an in-depth review on Aerocool Touch 1000 which is a single 5.25" control panel with fan speed controller and temperature monitoring.

 

Company Profile

AeroCool Advanced Technologies (AAT) was founded in 2001. At the earlier stage of operation we were committed to share our technical expertise and innovative design in providing total-solution for thermal management in industrial and personal computers.

Our unique and innovative design also made "AEROCOOL" as one of the favorite brand name in over-clocking and PC DIY (Do-It-Yourself) market. With this successful experience in thermal products, AAT has expanded its product lines to computer peripherals such as computer case, fan, mutli-function control panel and power supply etc.

 

Features

- Stylish "hair brushed" alum front panel w/ Diamond cutting
- Innovative "Touch" LCD technology
- Monitors and controls 4 sets of temperature and fan speed individually
- Switch between Celsius and Fahrenheit
- Overheating alarm temperature warning
- "Lock" function provided to prevent careless miss-touch

 

Specifications

Package & Contents

 

LCD touch panel is an expensive device in old days but not today and hence Aerocool Touch 1000 is packed with a simple and small cardboard box; cheaper packaging cost as well as lower freight charge. Some basic information and features regarding Aerocool Touch 1000 are printed well on the back of the packaging box. 

 

Here are the complete bundles of Aerocool Touch 1000. Besides the Aerocool Touch 1000 5.25" control panel, Aerocool Touch 1000 still comes with other accessories such as two additional spare thermal sensor cables, installation screws, adhesive pads (yellow sticker) and a multi-languages user's manual.

 

A Closer Look: Aerocool Touch 1000

Aerocool Touch 1000 is not really a totally brand new product from Aerocool because Aerocool has launched such similar products previously such as Modern-V, CoolPanel3 and FP01. However the new series of these successors are come with touch screen feature which is absolutely fascinating. Among all these new Aerocool control panels, only Touch 1000 is single 5.25" control panel while the rest of the two models are dual 5.25" control panels; V12XT and Touch 2000.

Among these three latest Aerocool control panels, it is obviously showing that Aerocool Touch 1000 is a lower end and cheaper version. However the better term to define Aerocool Touch 1000 is "simplified" version because not many users will really able to accommodate dual 5.25" control panel especially those desktop and mini case wihich come with limited 5.25" bay. In technical perspective, Aerocool Touch 1000 can support up to four sets of fan speed controller (6W fan) and temperature sensor.

 

The front panel of Aerocool Touch 1000 is constructed by "hair brushed" black aluminum panel with diamond cutting; pretty stylish and fashion. The exact touch screen dimension of Aerocool Touch 1000 is around 12cm x 2.5cm which is pretty huge for such touchable LCD panel that we have ever seen. During the power off state, the specific touchable sensor areas of Aerocool Touch 1000 are viewable if you look closercarefully.

For better understanding, here are the preprogrammed functions of Aerocool Touch 1000. Two major functions of Aerocool Touch 1000 are increase & decrease (red) and left & right moves (yellow). Other functions are fan speed reading in RPM (FAN 1, 2, 3, 4), temperature reading in Celsius & Fahrenheit (CPU, VGA, HDD, SYS) and Aerocool logo for locking and unlocking the whole LCD panel. Basically the LCD screen of Aerocool Touch 1000 is not fully touchable because only 7 touchable areas are intergated with sensor with preprogrammed functions (increase, decrease, left, right, RPM, temperature & aerocool logo).

 

Here is the rear panel of Aerocool Touch 1000 and as you can see the overall build structure of Aerocool Touch 1000 is pretty simple and neat; just with a small piece of blue PCB plus couple of electronic components. The largest white connector with a black flat cable which is shown on the picture above consists of Molex power connector and four fan connectors. All these black individual sub cable can be split to reach some specific locations.

 

Besides the white power connector, here are the black temperature sensor connectors with four independent 2-pin cables. This independent 2-pin temperature sensor cable is good because any non working cable can be replaced easily since such temperature sensor cable is pretty common which is widely being used in computer sector. Anyway all these connectors are glued on the PCB to ensure that these cables are not loosened easily. Other components on the PCB are voltage regulators with aluminum heatsink and a buzzer for alarming purpose.

 

Here are the top & side views of Aerocool Touch 1000. Since Aerocool Touch 1000 is a small device, its chromed steel brackets are only come with half size (70mm) compares with other full 5.25" devices. However Aerocool Touch 1000 provides three different levels for screw installation as most of the cases nowadays come with different and unique ODD/HDD rail system or tool-less installation methods.

 

Aerocool Touch 1000 comes with plenty of cables such sensor cable, fan connector and Molex power cables. Since the Aerocool Touch 1000 can supports up to four temperature sensors, four sensor cables are prefixed on the PCB and two additional spare sensor cables; pretty caring consideration. Besides that Aerocool Touch 1000 also comes with four fan connectors but only FAN1 comes with additional 4-pin connector for CPU cooler so that the CPU fan speed can be monitored through the motherboard.

 

Installation, Testing & Performance

 

Next let us discuss about the installation and setup for Aerocool Touch 1000 since it is not so straightforward compares with other hardware that we have reviewed before. First of all, the Aerocool Touch 1000 needs to be installed on one of the 5.25" bay which is simple but the real difficulties are cabling installation and setup. Connect the Molex power connector and fan connectors to the PSU (must) and cooling fans (if necessary). However remember to connect the CPU cooler's fan to the FAN1 connector and connect the FAN1 sub connector on the motherboard CPU fan connector else the system will generate false alarm since the system doesn't detect any active fan.

  

Next will be sensor cable setup and since Aerocool Touch 1000 supports four temperature sensors, we have fully utilized all of them over on our system; memory, PSU, HDD1 and HDD2. We didn't place any temperature sensor on the CPU because CPU setup is more complicated and basically CPU temperature can be monitored in BIOS/window mode with motherboard built-in sensor .

 

Overall we didn't really encounter any major issue during the setup but due to unique rail setup of our casing, we have taken sometime to modify Aerocool Touch 1000 together with our case so that Aerocool Touch 1000 can be installed and secured firmly on the 5.25" drive bay. Another minor issue will be cable management where it must be handled careful but one advantage of Aerocool Touch 1000's cable is splittable feature where each of these individual sub cables (either fan connector or temperature sensor) can be split manually so that it can reach the specific location to either connect the fan or measure the hardware temperature.

 

Test Bed:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8300 @ 2.83GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3 (Gigabyte G31M-ES2L)
Heatsink: Noctua NH-C12P
Memory: Kingston HyperX DDR2 8500
Hard Drive: 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Seagate
Graphic Card: Galaxy GeForce GTX260+
Casing: In Win Maelstrom
PSU: In Win Commander 750W
Router: TRENDnet TEW-639GR
Optical Drive: DVD RW
Monitor: Dell 22" Wide Screen LCD
Speaker: Edifier R501
Mouse: SteelSeries Ikari Laser
Mouse Pad: SteelSeries QcK+
HeadSet: SteelSeries 3H
Operating System: Microsoft XP Pro SP2/Vista Home Premium
Ambient Temperature: 27 Degree Celsius

In order to let you to have better understanding regarding how to adjust and control the Aerocool Touch 1000, we have recorded a video and uploaded to youtube (the color is not that vivid due to lightning issue so please bear with us). Touch on the Aerocool logo will unlock the touchable panel of Aerocool Touch 1000 which is a protection feature to avoid wrong setup due to accidentally miss-touch. Basically each of the single valid touch will result a beep for alerting purpose. "T" logo will be turned off after Aerocool Touch 1000 is unclocked.

Controlling the left and right buttons (in yellow) will instruct the Aerocool Touch 1000 to display the fan speed and temperature readings accordingly. In order to adjust the fan speed of the specific connected fan, user needs to press on the RPM reading to activate adjustment for that specific fan then adjust the increment/decrement slowly. Once the desired speed is achieved then press again on the RPM reading to deactivate or save data and the fan speed will be adjusted instantly. Do the same thing for the alarm setting and the Aerocool Touch 1000 will start beeping if the detected temperature is higher than the pre-set value.

Based on our testing on this Aerocool Touch 1000 over a weekend, we found that Aerocool Touch 1000 is pretty responsive in term of fan speed controlling where the fan speed will be changed instantly once the desired value is saved. Same for temperature readings, we have compared the temperature data with the data that we obtained by a temperature monitoring software in window mode; both of the values are pretty close and accurate. Besides that we also tested Aerocool Touch 1000 with a fan with more than 6W output but unfortunately Aerocool Touch 1000 doesn't work in term of fan speed controlling which is same with what Aerocool has stated in its specification. Anyway Aerocool Touch 1000 is able to control most of the cooling fans since most of them are less than 6W output except those tornado and delta fans.

 

Verdicts

Aerocool Touch 1000 is definitely the best fan speed controller that we have ever tested with its stylish and awesome design. With supporting four set of fan speed controlling and temperature sensor, Aerocool Touch 1000 is suitable and applicable for most of the users. Besides that Aerocool Touch 1000 also comes with responsive respond and additional features like overheating alert and "lock" function. However if budget and case supportability are allowed then it is better to go for Aerocool V12Xt or Touch2000 which are much advanced controller panels. Anyway the MSRP of Aerocool Touch 1000 is just around 40USD which is pretty reasonable since most of the fan speed controller without touch screen is also priced at similar price range. If you are looking for a fan speed controller plus a temperature monitoring panel then Aerocool Touch 1000 is one of the good choices.

 

Pros:

+ Fantastic & stylish control panel
+ Touchable LCD screen
+ Support 4 set of fan & temperature sensor
+ Responsive & accurate data
+ Overheating alarm temperature warning
+ "Lock" function for avoiding accidental miss-touch
+ Spare sensor cables are provided 

Cons:

- Only 1 set of date can be displayed at the same time
- Not able to control more than 6W output fan

 

Thanks to Aerocool for providing this sample for us to review.

Only registered users may post a comment.

There are currently no user submitted comments.