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Ecuador, Quito
1 Level
708 Review
47 Karma

Review on Aquacomputer Quadro Fan Controller PWM Fans by Jason Hill

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Great little fan controller

This is one of the best fan controllers on the market. The hardware is top notch, but it's really software. Aquasuite is the most comprehensive air-cooled, water-cooled and RGB software package. Many people complain about the additional cost of a trial license when making their first purchase, but the functionality of this software is not found anywhere else. Aquacomputer is a small company and it's amazing that they support software with such a feature set and feature set. I have no problem paying extra for new licenses as it's worth it. Paired with the Aquaero 6, you can program this thing without using another precious internal USB slot. Instead, you can use a proprietary "aquabus" to discover and control the Quadro and all other aquabus-enabled devices. Aquabus can be a little tricky to set up if you have multiple Aquabus devices, but once set up it's reliable. Aquaero communicates with Quadro even when disconnected from USB. Just add power and these two devices work as one. All configuration settings are written to the Aquaero's onboard memory and control the unit independently from the software, which is a useful feature for redundancy. When your device freezes and your USB freezes it just keeps chugging instead of setting the default max fan speed and changing fan speed based on what temperature sensor you have plugged into it, whatever fan curves you have programmed too. A feature of the Quadro that is greatly underestimated due to the non-standard connection is the RGB controller. It appears to be the same addressable RGB controller found on the single channel inking 360, which is a top-notch lighting controller. Again, the Aquasuite software shines, with the band's color swatch customization being the most comprehensive and customizable I've seen. You'll need to buy an adapter to connect to the standard 3-pin RGB 5V input, but nothing else is required. Warning; Some AMD chipsets have USB issues on this device. Usually 1 will work fine, but all others will be problematic. The chipset's USB implementation appears to be non-standard, and this affects many aquacomputer devices. For example I have a Threadripper and an X399 chipset and while the Aquaero will work alone and the Quadro will work alone, the Aquaero and Quadro will not work together even though they have an Aquacomputer USB hub. I ended up buying a PCI-E USB card just for Aquacomputing gear, but I connected it with a PCI ribbon cable and hid it behind a vertically mounted GPU, so no big deal. In any case, try it out! If you appreciate the best and have a passion for water cooling/PC, you will appreciate this and other Aquacomputer products.

Pros
  • Internal components
Cons
  • Expensive