Sharkoon Rainbow TC

Examination:

At first glance, the fan may simply look like a traditional 80mm case fan with translucent blades and fan grill, but distinguishing the product is the PCB and circuitry between the fan blades and the grill. What the Rainbow Fan TC (Temperature Control) does is read the present case temperature, in Celsius, and projects that data upon the rotating fan blades. A chip on the PCB synchronizes the fan speed and projection in order to certify that the text displayed is readable as the blades quickly rotate with their designed fan speed of 2250RPM. The fan grill used by the Sharkoon product is composed entirely out of translucent plastic and the design of the grill should not interfere much with the airflow nor does it do much in the way of protecting your extremities but rather prevents the PCB and its components from being damaged. On the opposite side of the fan is the motor as well as Sharkoon's logo on the motor housing. With 19CFM @ 2250RPM the fan is certainly no Vantec Tornado or Delta fan but should be able to adequately cool inside of a computer chassis while being relatively quiet at 28dBA.

Continuing in our smashing tradition for breaking apart everything from PC vacuum cleaners to USB flash device, all in order to provide exclusive details that cannot be found through other publications, we disassembled the Sharkoon Rainbow TC after the testing had been finalized. After removing the fan grill, we were able to remove the complete display as it was simply attached to the fan housing via simple adhesive. With the green PCB completely removed from the fan, we were able to study its design and on the underside of the PCB were two of the chips Sharkoon had referred to for synchronizing the fan speed. In order to read the markings on the chip we had to first remove all of the adhesive residue but marked on the larger chip was MDT2010ES 581EJE, which appears to have been manufactured by Micron Design Technology (MDT) while the smaller 4-pin chip had no visible markings except for the number 598. The 18-pin MDT2010ES is designed for applications from appliance motor control and high speed automotive to low power remote transmitters/receivers, pointing devices, and telecommunication processors. For those inclined, some of its generic features are a fully COMS static design, 8-bit data bus, 32 byte internal RAM size, 14-bit instructions, 2.3V - 2.6V operating voltage, and 0 - 20MHz operating frequency. In order to protect these chips, as well as a single 16V capacitor on the side, is a plastic casing that covered the underside of the device. Successfully removing the casing, we were simply left with some white markings on the PCB as well as some smaller circuitry.