With the USB cable plugged in you will notice new hardware is being installed on your next boot-up. If you are using Windows 9x you will need to install the drivers included on the CD, XP users can skip this step.



After installation of the T-Balancer control panel you start it up like any other application. It connects to the unit and reads out the current configuration. By default all fans are set to "manual" mode and running at 100%. The first thing you need to do is disable the manual fan mode, you do this by clicking on the "panel" option and removing the check box next to "man"



Now you go back to the main control panel and hit configuration. This starts up the configuration wizard which guides you through each step. Clicking the "?" symbol pops up a separate window with tons of information on what each option does and how to use it, a lot of effort has been put into making it very easy for the end-user!

First up you select which fan that you connected have RPM readout/tacho signal:



Next you give each fan a name, you can either call them Mickey Mouse and Mini Mouse, or use some more informative names like:



Step 2 consists of calibrating each temp sensor to match the actual temperature more closely; this is done by increasing the temperature with X percentage. Using MSI's core center and the nVidia's GPU temp monitor I matched the temperature read out from the T-Ban sensors with the "real" ones. During my testing temps did not deviate more then 2-5°C with the actual temperature, not too bad considering the sensor are located pretty far away from the actual heat source. To obtain the real temp of the HDD you can try Speedfan or an another nifty tool from mCubed's website: DTemp (click=download).




In step 3 you decide the critical temps of each sensor, what you see below are the default values, I increased the CPU temp up to 70°C



Now you assign each Fan to one or more Temp sensors in Step 4, if you forgot to disable the manual mode you won't be able to change a thing. My config is pretty straight forward, CPU for CPU, forward intake to Southbridge, and "Case Back" to HDD and Vidcard.



If you select multiple sensors it will only show the highest temperature recorded, in order for the T-Ban to work optimally you better limit the amount of sensors each fan should react to. So the screenie below is a bad example:



Step 5 is vital to the temp/noise balance you will end up with, each fan can be given a predefined curve, higher temp, higher speed ->





If you are not happy with the default options, you can click the advanced option and go all out and design your own pattern,



The last step sets up fan blockage detection:



Clicking the "load/save settings" button on the main config does just that, very useful when experimenting with different setups!



mCubed also provides a custom setup for those who want to set up their kit right away, the config file is in plain text as seen here

In the introduction I've mentioned that the T-Balancer uses PWM technology to control the speed of each fan. When using LED fans you might experience flickering when the PWM frequency is too low or too high. Using the Panel and clicking the advanced box you are able to change this setting.




The effect of moving from 26 to 174 intervals can be seen here in this little movie:



The feature list of the T-Balancer is quite extensive, the software can be customised and there's a special software tool in case you have CCFL's or LED fans hooked up the to unit, more on that on the next page ->