Lamptron FC5v2 fan controller review
Powerful outputs will allow you to not only take controls over more than one fan per channels, but also can easily handle popular models of Water cooling pumps while precise display with ability to select display info color makes Lamptron FC5v2 easy to fit perfectly almost any system
Testing and results
During the test we paid attention to the following aspects of controller operation:
- output voltage withing full range of control without load
- max output per channel specified by manufacturer
- voltage drop with load increment
For this tasks, we have a digital multimeter connected to control channels. For this tasks, we have a digital multimeter connected to control channels. As for load, we used San Ace 109R1212H1011 fans with real current consumption of 0.51А.
In the end we have collected the following data:
| Controller readings, V | 12 | 11 | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Multimeter, readings | 11.94 | 11.03 | 10.4 | 9.08 | 8.04 | 7.09 | 5.98 | 4.97 | 4.02 | 2.97 |
Note that it is not that easy to set the dial to required voltage level precisely and which is not a problem of a tight dial turning. When nearing to the next voltage level, voltage readings rapidly increase by 0.3.4V. On the other hand,between the voltage levels the controller can set output voltages with very small steps quite accurately. However, we could not set Lamptron FC5v2 output voltage to 2 and 1 V. When trying to do than, voltage dropped from 2.23V to 1, 08 V. In fact, the last value corresponds to 0 level displayed on controller’s screen.
For max load per channel check we have connected 6W fans (which is 20% of its max specified load per channel). Unfortunately we could only get stable values at max and min levels of output voltage outputs: 0 and 12V. As the first one shows more interest to most of us, we will talk about this data in details.
| Load, % | Control channel | Voltage drop, % | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| P1 | P2 | P3 | P4 | ||
| 0 | 11.94 | 11.93 | 11.93 | 11.92 | 1.81 |
| 20 | 11.87 | 11.87 | 11.85 | 11.89 | 2.30 |
| 40 | 11.78 | 11.80 | 11.78 | 1179 | 2.98 |
| 60 | 11.69 | 11.68 | 11.63 | 11.63 | 4.05 |
| 80 | 11.56 | 11.54 | 11.48 | 11.47 | 5.24 |
| 100 | 11.42 | 11.39 | 11.32 | 11.32 | 6.50 |
| 120 | 11.30 | 11.28 | 11.19 | 11.18 | 7.51 |
As you see, Lamptron FC5v2 has fulfilled this task quite easily. Moreover, it can handle even more load without any problems. The drawback of this is the increasing value of voltage drop and slightly increasing temperature of power elements.On average, voltage drop amounts to 4-5% among all four channels, which quite sufficient for devices for this kind. Another good thing is you can barely feel the warm from power elements. We have also noticed that when fans are connected to controller and voltage is set to 0 level, the multimeter displayed 0.59V which is almost two times smaller than with no load.
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