Koolance TMS-200 testing results / review

[kimoyo]

Once configured the card is OS independant. Flow based failsafes currently do not work outside of the OS. Thermal failsafes do. If this is not good enough for you go buy the aquero..it sounds like this is the one you really want anyways so be happy with the LCD screen and 40 Watt limitation.

I don't think that's fair to Brodholm. You had me almost buying this yesterday when you confirmed that the flow-failsafe worked when it didn't. I was going to post but then others beat me to it. Brodholm had this discussion (and made several informative threads on all 3) about the TMS-200 a few weeks and was about to pull the trigger when this came up. Dean was asked the question but never responded to it. And if its a programming issue that they will fix cool, but thats a strong disadvantage to the security this is supposed to give. To me there are only two reason to buy TMS-200 (or one of these types of units) especially when it doesn't support lcds, thats the failsafe and auto-fan adjustment. I guess you could buy a d5 with the tach sensor and hook that up to the motherboards cpu fan but that kinda defeats the point.

My two pumps take up 36W alone, and even one pump exceeds channel limits.... Which makes the aquero useless to me and alot of other people. You can have all the nice software and OS independant features you want...but if your controller can't run the pump, well what was the point of the controller in the first place?

I'm not following you here. You have to buy the additional expansion board to the TMS-200 to run two pumps. And you can't hook a d5 or Laing pump to Aquaero at all. You buy the Poweradjust for each pump and it runs those pumps separately from the Aquaero. They use the same software but they aren't connected physically. The Aquastream on the other hand can be connected to the Aquaero but the Aquastream doesn't get its power from the Aquaero either. So I believe you can run as many Aquastreams as you need, use just hook each up to a 4pin power connector from the PSU. It's also somewhat independent so you can change the pumping speed and monitor the conditions without the Aquaero, but for the fail-safe I think you need the Aquaero. The 40 W limitation is really only for the fans unless people are powering the Laing pumps off the Aquaero. And if you haven't bought your fans yet, there are some good 1 watt fans out there.

To me its really boiling down to what pumps you're going to use. With the laing pumps I would lean towards the BigNG more than the TMS-200 until they get the failsafe resolved (and the lcd if you want one). But once that and the other issues you linked are resolved (if they do resolve them!) the TMS-200 seems like a good bet. Also, I don't understand why people have a big issue with BigNG software updates, I mean the current software works. And if your going with an Aquastream then the Aquaero seems the way to go. On Tuesday I was set to buy the BigNG (which I think looks very cool). On Wednesday I was set to buy the TMS-200 and today I'm set to buy the Aquaero. I'll see what happens tomorrow.