Thermaltake Hardcano 13

The unit

 

The Hardcano 13 is designed to be installed into an open 5.25" drive bay.  The face of the unit is a large LCD for temps and fan speeds to be displayed on.  Its lines are clean and ergonomic.

 

 

Control over the Hardcano 13 has been simplified greatly over its predecessors.  On the left side of the front bezel is a silver circular dial with three curving buttons surrounding it.  These buttons depress on either side giving you six functions with the center dial providing for fan speed adjustment.  These buttons are for color, fan selection, alarm setting, auto/manual selection, clock and display in either Celsius or Fahrenheit. 

 

 

Looking at these one at a time, we'll begin with color.  The Hardcano 13's display is backlit as you would expect.  What you may not expect is that the backlighting color may be changed at the touch of a button.  You can choose between dark blue, yellow, red, light blue, purple, dark green, light green and white all by depressing a button on the bezel. 

 

The fan button cycles the display between fan 1 through fan 4 so you can see and adjust fan speed as well as monitor temperatures to the corresponding temperature probe.

 

Alarm settings for the Hardcano 13 are the same as with the Hardcano 12.  You are allowed only four choices as temperature trip points, 40, 50, 60 and 70 degrees Celsius.  This is adequate for 99% of uses but for me, I like the ability to pick my trip points at 1 degree increments.

 

The remaining three functions are self explanatory.  Auto/Manual allows you to either set the fan speeds yourself or let the Hardcano 13 do it for you.  If you select Auto, the Hardcano 13 compares the ratio of the recorded temperature for a given fan with the trip temp selected for it.  If the detected temperature is 50% or less than the trip, the fan runs at 50% power (6v).  As the actual temperature/trip temperature ratio increases, so does the fan speed until 100% of the trip temp is hit where the fan will run 100% power (12v).

 

 

Moving to the rear of the Hardcano 13 you can see four 3-pin power connectors, four 2-pin thermal probe connectors and a 4-pin Molex.  The 3-pin and 2-pin connectors are labeled one through four with Fan1, Fan2, Fan3 and Fan4.  Likewise the corresponding 2-pin temperature connectors are labeled T1, T2, T3 and T4.  

 

 

The Hardcano 13's cover pops on and off without the need for removing any screws.  The USB 2.0 cable connects, as shown below, the Hardcano to an available USB header on your mainboard.

 

  

 

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