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Cooler Master Musketeer
Date: Saturday, May 22, 2004
Author: Joe Di Figlia
Provided By: Coolerguys.com
Page: 3 of 3
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The lighting affect is nothing more than simple. Easily stated, the white portion (where the dials and slides hide behind) is the back drop for reflecting the 6 little LED's that Cooler Master uses to illuminate the product, 2 per display. A lighting modification wouldn't be out of reach with this thing either. Red, green, and blue, yeah, like a stoplight…um… Never mind, blue is fine.
Installation is a breeze, just use the provided screws and shove this sucker into one of your available 5.25" bays. Install the expansion slot monitoring device, hook up the cables, pick which fan you want to monitor, place your sensor, and you are finished. If you can't install this thing, even with the provided instructions, the Brooklyn Bridge will be waiting for you to jump from it.
The functionality of the product is very simple, you want cooler temps, move the voltage slide to max. If you want a quieter case, bitch slap your fan with less voltage. To me, the VU is somewhat useless, and poorly implemented. After connecting everything, I noticed I can hear a hum from my fan being monitored through my speakers. The noise became increasingly louder with the voltage adjustments I made to increase fan speed, and vice versa. This is BAD!! Go to your room bad! For a product that has so much potential to have such an obvious flaw is inexcusable. I have taken a short video of the VU in action, download and view "here". There really isn't much to say about the temperature monitoring of the device. Well, actually, there really isn't much to ask outside of whether or not it's accurate. In comparison to 3 other monitoring devices I have lying around and being that all of them display the same temps, one can deduce that accuracy is achieved. Unless they all lie!!
 
Click here for a short flick of this thing in action: HERE
Outside of me wanting this product to be able to control 2 fans differently (at full voltage), and the buzzing humming sound coming from my speakers when I adjust my fan speeds through said device, I have no problems with it. I think that it could be a well rounded, stylish product that has the potential to achieve a high rating but didn't because of simple oversights. I would like to see Cooler Master offer an "advanced version" or even a revised version of the Musketeer with instead of only 1 fan control, maybe 2. Oh, and fix the noise coming out of my speaker. After that, we will get along fine.
Now here is the question you have all been waiting for. Would I spend my money on it? Sure, it's cool!
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