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One thing at first I didn't care for was that you need 3 pin connectors in order too hook the fans up to this bus. Most of my fans are all Antec Blue LED fans and have 4 pin connectors that are not pass through. This posed a tiny problem. But after a brainstorm I found use out of a old dead power supply. I cut off the 2 cables which had all 4 pin connectors on it. This would allow me hook up the fan and run more than 1 off of a channel and after some searching I found some bare 3 pin molex connectors at kdcomputers.com, so now I was in business. This allowed me to hook more than one fan up on a channel took care of the 4 pin to 3 pin adapter issue and also the custom made adapters were about 14 inches long so this provided more than enough length to reach to the back of the case to get to the rear fans. In case you prefer 4-3 pin adapters, SVC sells them for just $0.99.
Sunbeam took into consideration the heat on the Power FET's. Each channel on this rheobus can handle 20 watts of power so to fight the heat they installed some heatsinks on those Power FET's. Also on the bottom of this rheobus they put a foam padding on the bottom to not only protect the PCB but to also protect you from shorting something out on it and getting shocked!
Installation of this rheobus was pretty straight forward and very easy. There are 6 screws included to mount this with. The bus goes into a 5.25" slot and mounts up just like a cd-rom drive would. Once mounted it's just a matter of hooking the fan wires up and supplying the power to the rheobus with a 4 pin connector off of your powersupply. Sunbeam also included a Y splitter with this package but it wasn't needed in my case so it wasn't used.
The only real possible problem with this rheobus that I could find was the LED's. Sunbeam used Super Bright LED's for this rheobus. When I turn the lights out in my computer room the wall 15 ft away is lit up blue and you can see everything in the room with all lights turned out. To me that just seems way to bright, but some of you may love this. If you look directly into these LED's it will leave you seeing spots for a bit. Then again, they make a great nightlight. :)
Overall Sunbeam has done an excellent job with this rheobus. It's well constructed, easy to install and comes in black or brushed aluminum. With a 20 watt per channel limit you can add about as many fans as you want. And to top it all off you can completely turn off each channel making it an excellent switch for a cold cathode tube!
A special thanks goes out to Silicon Valley Compucycle for supplying this fine product for review.
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