X-Pider TM2000 Thermal Monitor

Supplied by: me
Price: ~$35.00

by Brian Tiller  (1/3/2003)

I've been looking for a front monitor panel for some time now and haven't really liked anything I've seen until now. I was just about ready to bite the bullet and get something like a Digital Doc, and then I saw the X-Sider reviewed by some of our affiliates. What really decided this for me wasn't just the ability to attach devices to the front or the temperature monitoring, but the color. All the others I had seen were either beige or black. Well, my personal case is the Lian-Li PC-7323 that I reviewed a while back and with its aluminum finish, it matches great.

What you get

The box itself was fairly aesthetically pleasing and offered plenty of room for the contents as well as the shipping foam to keep it from bouncing around. Inside the box is the X-Pider, the installation manual, and a small bag containing thermal tape, 8 mounting screws and a PCI cover plate with pass through notches in it.

With 3 different temperature leads, the X-Pider allows you to monitor the temperature of not only the CPU, but also two other locations be that your HDD, GPU, and/or case temperature. And thankfully for me, the wires are labeled which is which (whew). Each probe has a temperature threshold which when exceeded, will sound a buzzer warning the user. Kind of useful if you're overclocking your system and want to take a leak. And thankfully it's not too irritating. As you can see from the picture these probes are thin tipped, not those awkward bulbous type things. This makes it much easier to attach to various different places (i.e. CPU, video card, etc.)

Another cool thing about this is the ability to attach not only USB and FireWire devices to the front via cables, but also the audio stuff too. You just run the cables through the inside of you machine to the hook-up in the back and voila...no more reaching around the back and trying to see what you're doing. The USB connectors are designed to connect to the motherboard and are very nicely labeled. And guess what? USB 2.0 baby!

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