Corsair Commander PRO Review

PC Cases and Modding 227 Page 5 of 8 Published by

teaser

Product Showcase

Img_7160

 
Once you have setup the hard and software and checked that everything is functional, it is time to install the hardware, and probably re-wire everything. The HD140 fans we'll place in the top, the chassis already has three SP120 fans in the front and since we feel we still need some more RGB bling, we'll be adding an extended RGB LED strip at the left side top, bottom, front and rear. Yep, that's four strips ala Las Vegas. 

Img_7162

 
So here I realized that I would be running into an issue. To steer everything RGB we'd need three LED channels, the Commander PRO only has two. We need three as for our three different components there are different types of SMBUS communication, the SP120 fans are not compatible with the HD140 fans, hence they each need their own channel. My advice, leave the three front SP120 fans for what they are. You could simply opt to run the RGB strips over it's own LINK control unit and then add the SP120 fans towards one Commander Pro RGB channel, but that kind of defeats the idea of one controller unit for them all. So yes, I am obliged to state that Corsair probably should have implemented more RGB channels to the Commander Pro, at least three and preferably four.
 

Img_7169

 
As you can see here I was almost done with the initial mounting / trial phase here, the RGB LEDs and fans at default kick into the RGB rainbow mode once you activated them in LINK, and shit that's a whole lot of Christmas lights man. Obviously you can choose whatever you want it to be animation wise.  We quickly configured it to a single color fade in and out (slowly).
 

Img_7174

 
So basically I ended up routing the RGB functionality of the three SP120 front, two HD140 top fans to the two RGB channels on the Commander PRO. And for the RGB strip (I tied four together) I used the supplied LINK controller that also provides two channels. Problem solved. But again, even once additional RGB controller on the Commander PRO would have prevented me adding more hardware controllers.
  

Img_7178


So like yeah, I am not the Christmas LED kind of guy, but like subtlety and tastfully LEDs I do like: one color here, everything white, slowly fading in and out. Isn't that lovely? Once you configure all fans at say a fixed 400 RPM, you still have massive airflow, however on a chassis that is totally silent. 

Share this content
Twitter Facebook Reddit WhatsApp Email Print