X-Pider TM2000 Thermal Monitor

Installation

Installation is pretty straight forward and the manual walks you right through it, so in order to keep this brief I'll just make note of 2 things. The manual says to attach the CPU probe to the outside of the heatsink. I attached mine to the CPU itself for a more accurate reading. Just make sure that you attach the probe to the side of an Intel chip, or beside the protruding part of the AMD chip. Do not interfere with the CPU/Heatsink connection. 

Also, they have a probe labeled for the hard drive. Now I don't know about you but unless you're running one of those high speed, low drag drives (i.e. 15000+ rpm) I don't think HDD temp is anything to worry about so we attached the HDD probe to the video card. Attaching the probe to both the video card and the motherboard is pretty straight forward. Just find a spot on the PCB out of the fan's airflow and use the thermal tape to secure it.

Now if you have a full tower case like me, then you're gonna have to use the bottom most 5.25 drive bay because otherwise the cables aren't long enough. Why can't anyone make longer cables for us?

Let's take a look at the finished product shall we? As you can see, the back lit panel does a great job displaying those temperature readings. Clear and easy to read is always a plus in my book. And what I was looking for most of all, to have it match my case, is almost perfect.

Conclusion

Overall the X-Pider is a very good product. I'm very pleased with my purchase of it and the fact that it does actually match the aluminum of my case. It does have a few shortcomings though. Chief among these are the lengths of the cables. They are plenty long enough for your standard mid-tower case, but as with almost every other product like this, not designed for the full size tower that I like to use. I also think that even though the installation instructions are pretty straight forward, they could use a little more detail and at least get the placement of the CPU probe right.

Pros:

• Provides USB and FireWire ports on the front

• Front audio connectors

• Easy to read back lit display

• Matches MY case great!! (which is what I wanted)

• Cost, at only $35, it's cheaper for what you get than most of the other stuff out there

Cons:

• Cable lengths (come on guys, some people do like full towers)

• adds additional cable clutter to the inside of the case

• Installation manual placement of CPU probe

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