Sharkoon Rainbow TC

Performance:

Keeping in mind Sharkoon's theoretical specifications for the Rainbow TC, we were pleased to see that all of the fan specifications were accurate with our in-house values we had recorded. However, the subject of our testing today is largely upon the unique feature for the Rainbow TC and that is its temperature display. Thanks to our location, we were benefited by our natural sub-zero cooling abilities in order to see how cold the device can operate at while some artificial heating was required to see the Sharkoon Rainbow TC maximum. Before we share the accuracy of the Sharkoon TC, we were quite impressed by its incredibly bright appearance with blue lighting and red text. As the fan powered up, the present temperature along with the word "COOL" rotated clockwise around the fan blades. In order to test the accuracy of the display, we used a thermal probe attached to a WinMax WIN8696 digital multimeter that displayed the Celsius reading down to a tenth of a degree. When the Sharkoon Rainbow TC ran inside of our normal confines, we found the two thermal readings between the multimeter and Sharkoon sensor to be near equal with the greater accuracy coming from the WinMax meter. In order to see the limits on the low side of the temperature scale, we had run the Sharkoon Rainbow TC outside for quite sometime along side the WIN8696. When the temperature had dropped into single-digit numbers we had noticed quite a discrepancy between the two thermal readings by as much as 6°C, with of course some margin of error being expected due to the small physical distance between the Sharkoon and WinMax. Dropping the temperature even lower onto the negative side of things, the temperature was minimized at 1°C and below that the display would simply read "LOW". In fact, the temperatures were even so cold that for some time during the testing that half of the text would simply not appear. Bringing the fan back indoors to see how the Rainbow TC could handle a bit of heat, we had cranked the temperature up to 61°C and still it had shown no signs of a struggle. During this entire experiment, however, the opposite side of the fan continually displayed "COOL" even while the device was at its lows and highs. It would have been interesting to see this message change depending upon the temperature threshold but it could always be implemented in a future product revision.

Conclusion:

When it comes down to it, the Sharkoon Rainbow TC is a respectable fan. The only real negatives had occurred when we had attempted to stretch the temperature boundaries for the Sharkoon and then its readings began to flake and show inconsistencies. However, during usage in a normal room temperature environment its unique display had shown no signs of a struggle. During all of this, the display when lit up was incredibly visible and definitely not on the dimmer side of things. On the contrary, its unique current temperature display may be useless for users who have thermal sensors integrated into their motherboard and components, use independent thermal monitoring peripherals, or simply have no side window on their chassis where they would be able to see the operating temperature. Whether this fan really comes down to being a necessity, or to simply spruce up the appearance the case, is largely depending upon your personal setup and interests. As for the costs of this 80mm fan, it is currently selling for about $19 USD and can be found from the folks over at CrazyPC.