Summary:
It’s a decent little hub that can connect to your motherboard in multiple ways, letting you connect and control how you want. If you use their software the fan controls are great! The RGB controls are decent but need a bit of work to really feel modern and give as much functionality as I’d like. The software is also a bit old feeling in its design. I couldn’t properly resize it, and I wish it had things like a mini mode and other features. Overall though, most of my issues are with the software just being new, so hopefully a lot of those problems will go away in the future.
I also wish they offered some sort of bundle for this. I bought 7 fans plus this, so it would have been nice to save a few bucks, but their fan pricing is decent compared to the competition, and performance is good, which is why I went this route in the first place.
Pros:
- It controls the fans great!
- You can assign each fan group to run off CPU or GPU temp, or whichever is highest.
- Fans, at least the nexlinq fans, can go to 0 rpm.
- It uses and extra PCiE 6 pin power connector directly from a PSU for power, so it can support quite a few fans. I used the pigtail from an existing pcie GPU power connector and it works great.
- The back is magnetic for easy mounting.
- The software seems lightweight and simple to use.
- The hub is fairly small and easy to connect to.
- You can connect to your motherboard directly with a usb 2.0 header, OR directly to a Fan and RGB header.
- When connected via usb header you can control it with their software OR the built in windows dynamic lighting stuff, though you have to toggle that option via their software first I believe.
- If connected straight to the fan/RGB headers you can control it with your motherboard and any other software.
- There is a port for a regular fan and RGB connection as well as two for their proprietary connectors. Since you’ll likely only be buying this to use with their stuff it’s nice they included an easy way to connect a few extra fans you may be using that aren’t in their ecosystem.
Cons:
- The software still feels a bit early.
- The RGB controls are mostly pre programmed options, there are a decent amount, but I would really prefer to be able to set each led separately.
- You can’t control the speed of the RGB effects. I like my effects slower, so I wish I could control their speed via the software.
- you can’t control each fans RGB in a group separately, they all act as one fan, so change the color on one, they all will change. Not sure if this is commenting they can solve via software, or if it’s somehow hardware limited.
- The instructions aren’t super clear. They try to be simple, but they are maybe a bit too simple. They aren’t awful, but I did have a few questions on simple things that I couldn’t find a great answer to.
- This is minor, but there is a 4-6 inch cable that comes off the hub, this cable is used for the optional ability to connect the hub directly to the motherboard via fan and RGB header. I understand why it’s there, but I wish it was implemented in a way where it could be detached. Similar to how the usb cable can be detached to make a cleaner look.
- Currently they only support their newest fans, but that is likely to change in the future.
