DigiDoc 5 thoughts

[Surrept]

I just got a digidoc and thought I'd share my thoughts on it since it wasn't exactly what I was expecting, guess I should have read a few reviews before hitting the send button. I was expecting a slew of highly accurate temperature monitoring which would exceed anything my motherboard could offer. Unfortunatley this wasn't the case, the package only included two flat sensors used for monitoring hard to reach places, unfortunatley underneath a hsf or gpu cooler is a little to hard to reach as the sensors just aren't flat enough to allow for proper fitting of a sink. The remainder of the sensors are bulb sensors which can monitor air or can be placed on a surface with thermal tape. With 6 sensors it's almost difficult to come up with ideas of locations to corrispond a fan with a temperature, there just aren't 8 temperature zones inside a case that need their own fan. I wound up divideing my case into an X with the cpu/nb and hdd section operateing with normal 24/7 flow, I then added a fan to the rear slots attached to an ambient sensor just in front of the gpu and another fan placed in the 3.25 drive bay attached to the nb sensor. In situations of increased lower case ambient temperature the rear fan kicks on and draws air from the front/hdd section, in situations of increased nb temps the fdd fan kicks on and creates a cycle of air past the cpu. As good of an idea as this may sound it is limited by the digidocs programability, I was expecting some sort of scaleability over a range of temperatures involveing various rpms, unfortunatley this isn't the case as it's a simple on/off which is turned on at 5 degrees prior to set temperature and an alarm follows 5 degrees after this temp is reached.

 

The digidoc 5 is a good theory but lacks dramaticaly in it's ability to accuratley monitor the most crucial of heat spots, given the onboard sensors offer the best readings it would be nice to see this incorperated into the front panel. While I didn't recieve what I had expected in the mail, the package made up for it through means of an awsome glow, some beeps at start-up and the ability to set tolerances short should the opportunity arrise to show off your rig. Performance of this module is yet to be seen as accuracy is highly dependant on placement of sensors. One may be better off looking into an agreogate or other rheobus system if tighter control is desired, if the bling factor is desired along with the lazyness of a somewhat clumsy interface is desired then this may be for you.