- Feb 2, 2004
- 435
- 0
- 18,790
I want some kind of sweet-looking module to stick in a 5.25" bay that will give my graphics workstation some front-panel USB 2.0 and Firewire ports, temperature probes for my hot-swap hard drive enclosures, and/or CPU usage gauges so that I can tell if the machine is still rendering frames or not without having to turn the screens back on.
The most important is the front-panel ports because the case doesn't have any otherwise. I wanted temp probes at first because I have hot-swap HDD bays that get pretty hot and the weather is warming up a lot, but now I wonder if I would even be able to use those because all the parts in the bays can be moved, and I don't know how I'd fix a probe to a HDD. So I think the CPU monitors are a better bet. (it's a dual proc Xeon system w/ hyperthreading BTW, so there would be four "processors" to monitor.)
The second most important thing is I want it to look really nifty and high-tech, in the hopes of scaring the living crap out of the kinds of people who walk up to your screen and point at something by tapping an open ball point pen on it. (yes, this has happened to me; I couldn't believe it.)
So anyway - I can find devices like this, but I cannot tell if they are really any good, if they are a pain in the butt to use when you want to check a setting, or any of the numerous quality issues like how good does the light on the display look. So do any of you have units or have seen units like this that you really like?
(I'm also curious how the CPU monitoring works? I saw a device that does it but I don't know how?)
The most important is the front-panel ports because the case doesn't have any otherwise. I wanted temp probes at first because I have hot-swap HDD bays that get pretty hot and the weather is warming up a lot, but now I wonder if I would even be able to use those because all the parts in the bays can be moved, and I don't know how I'd fix a probe to a HDD. So I think the CPU monitors are a better bet. (it's a dual proc Xeon system w/ hyperthreading BTW, so there would be four "processors" to monitor.)
The second most important thing is I want it to look really nifty and high-tech, in the hopes of scaring the living crap out of the kinds of people who walk up to your screen and point at something by tapping an open ball point pen on it. (yes, this has happened to me; I couldn't believe it.)
So anyway - I can find devices like this, but I cannot tell if they are really any good, if they are a pain in the butt to use when you want to check a setting, or any of the numerous quality issues like how good does the light on the display look. So do any of you have units or have seen units like this that you really like?
(I'm also curious how the CPU monitoring works? I saw a device that does it but I don't know how?)
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