Digital Doc 5 fan speed controller

**EndobioticChaos** · November 8th, 2002, 11:23 AM

Anyone have any experience with this nifty-looking piece of equipment? Is it worth the dough? And, can you tell me if it includes a thermal diode to put up close to your CPU, so you can get accurate CPU temp readings?

**thekingofpain** · November 8th, 2002, 12:30 PM

I have one of the older ones, yes it does have thermistors, it measures temps displays them and turns fans on/off at preset levels you set, the display is pretty small and the one I had didnt have the backlight so it was very difficult to read---I does work well for what it does and the backlit one has to be easier to read...

**Idigguns** · November 8th, 2002, 12:52 PM

I was going to say that I have an older one too (about a year or so), but I guess mine is newer than thekingofpain's because mine has the backlight.

I wish they came in black when I got mine, It was a big pain in the butt to paint that sucker. It came out nice though! It came with 8 thermistors, some were the flat "tape" type ones and some were the "bulb" type ones. I find it VERY handy for displaying my temp's and giving me high temp. alarms. It also monitors your voltage and gives alarms for that too. I don't have my fans hooked up to it. All my fans are hooked up to switches so I can control the speeds as well as on and off. But, it does that too. You can hook up to 8 fans to it, but they have to be 3-wire fans, or you can adapt them (big pain in the butt though). I find it very easy to read. I monitor temps on my CPU, GPU top, GPU bottom, DDR, sound card, HDD's, and a couple case temp's as well. Very nice! You can see it on my site.

**EndobioticChaos** · November 8th, 2002, 12:57 PM

Oh man... I guess that means I'm going to have to spend ANOTHER $45.

Thanks for the info guys.

**Idigguns** · November 8th, 2002, 01:00 PM

Cool, money well spent! Post some pic's of your PC.

**nomadman** · November 8th, 2002, 02:37 PM

i have the newer one's with 8 temp sensors and 8 fan buses. i originally needed it to watch the AMD TB chips and agp gpu. with the AMD XP's internal diode sensors and the GPU's high temp capablilites, i found that i didn't need it anymore.

other than it being informative, i found that i had too many wires snaking around in my case. i would recommend the 3 sensor compu-nurse, thermaltake, or lian-li that fits in the extra floppy slot.

just my $.02

**EndobioticChaos** · November 8th, 2002, 03:27 PM

Hmm, that's some good points there, nomadman. But my primary purpose for getting it is so I have a good way to control the extremely noisy Vantec Tornado fans I recently added. Another question... I have a Soyo KT333 Dragon Lite... the temp it gives as the CPU temp, is that automatically taken from the XP's internal diode? If not, how do I get that temp?

**Idigguns** · November 8th, 2002, 07:48 PM

I don't know of a CPU having an "internal diode sensor" but mobo's have a temp. sensor mounted inside the CPU socket. That's the temp. that you see in BIOS. It's known for being pretty inaccurate. Plus, I like to play it safe. That's why I have another temp. sensor from my Digital Doc mounted to the CPU as well. As for the wires, they are pretty long, I found it easy enough to route all my wires out of the way, and more importantly, out of sight. I like knowing exactly what's going on inside my case at all times. I like all the temp's on the DD5. And it looks cool to!

PS: Take a look at the pic's of my PC on my site, see if you see any of the wires from my DD5.

**EndobioticChaos** · November 8th, 2002, 07:55 PM

No, he's right, I know too that there's an internal diode on XP chips. I just don't know how to access the info it puts out.

And the wiring will be a bit of an issue for me, because I don't do so well at routing wires neatly inside a case. Mostly because I'm too impatient.

**nomadman** · November 8th, 2002, 10:34 PM

Originally posted by EndobioticChaos
Hmm, that's some good points there, nomadman. But my primary purpose for getting it is so I have a good way to control the extremely noisy Vantec Tornado fans I recently added. Another question... I have a Soyo KT333 Dragon Lite... the temp it gives as the CPU temp, is that automatically taken from the XP's internal diode? If not, how do I get that temp?

I'm not familiar with Soyo as i am with epox but i can tell you that most kt333 boards out do read the temp from xp's internal diode. i guess the only way to know is for someone here to confirm this, the manual, or mail there tech support.

Motheboard Monitor IS prolly the best software monitor around. it does support most mobos around.

i try to keep my fans to the minimum. one 120mm modded to 7v intake and one 80mm exhaust. my xp hsf is the volcano 7+ so i can control the speed manually.

**Idigguns** · November 9th, 2002, 11:48 AM

Well, I was just browsing through some of the white papers at AMD's web site. Some great info in there if you have the patience to go through it all. I found some interesting things about the internal diode. Read this... http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/cont...docs/24228.pdf

**EndobioticChaos** · November 9th, 2002, 12:09 PM

Very interesting. I'll probably end up actually using some of that info.

**Shocker** · November 10th, 2002, 01:26 AM

My new machine has a black DD5. I use it to monitor all of my temps throughout the case. I'm still tweaking it. That seems to take a little time to work out all of the temp settings and alarms. When people look at it, the say "What's that?" Instead of describing what it does, I just say "I have no idea, but it looks really cool." I got tired of explaining it. As for CPU temps, my Asus A7V333 has C.O.P. which is awesome. When I first seated the HSF, I put it on backwards (yea, I know...) and the systemboard protected my CPU and even gave an audible that I had a CPU problem.

**woodbutcher** · November 10th, 2002, 01:44 AM

EC
Great product.
Checked out your link, paid $55.00 6 months ago.
At $41.90, well worth it IMO.

WB

**EndobioticChaos** · November 10th, 2002, 01:07 PM

Well, I ordered it Friday and it's on the way... so I'll see how I like it sometime this week. Check back for a mini-review, and maybe some pics.

**EndobioticChaos** · November 18th, 2002, 07:52 PM

Well, it finally got here. But I've run into a problem... all the fan output leads from this thing are 3-pin. For the life of me, I can't imagine why, since most case fans are 4-pin. but anyway, I need some way to hook up my case fans to these 3-pin connections. What my fans have is the standard 4-pin pass-through connectors, and then another 3-pin lead with just the yellow "info" wire going into it. What I figured I'd do is just find some 3-pin connectors on old fans, clip them off, clip off the connectors on my case fans, and then solder the 3-pin connectors on. Only problem is, it seems we threw out all the old fans, so the only 3-pin connectors I have availabe are on some orb heatsinks that I'm a little reluctant to mess up. Plus, I only have two of those, and I need 3 connectors. So, any ideas??

**woodbutcher** · November 18th, 2002, 08:17 PM

EC
I'll dig up where I picked up the adapters from.

WB

**EndobioticChaos** · November 18th, 2002, 08:37 PM

That would be great. The sooner the better, because I really would like to have them by thursday.

**xjjeep96** · November 18th, 2002, 10:59 PM

well i used to use the Asus I-panel when i had an Asus board, now i'm using the Abit and a lil proggie called "speedfan" it works great!!! monitors all my temps, fan speeds etc and you can have it displayed down in the tray. it also has an auto shutdown if a fan fails or if a temp gets too high. i got it off of download.com and best of all it was in my price range.... FREE.....LOL try it you might like it.

**nomadman** · November 18th, 2002, 11:32 PM

it shouldn't be too hard to find a 3 to 4 pin adaptor at the parts store. might wanna try Radio Shack. i modded all my case fans from 4 to 3 pin. it just looks better behind a window case.