I recently installed a TMS-200, about a week ago. Previously I was using a Koolance RP-1000 to control my primary 4 x 120mm fan / radiator, with sensors to my CPU, one of my GPUs, and one for ambient. I'm using the latest TMS-200 software, 2.1.26, and my board revision was 2.5 or something like that.

When I installed the TMS-200 I added a flowmeter, added an in-line water temp sensor, and had four other sensors going to CPU, one for each of my two GPUs, and one for RAM.

My impression so far is fairly positive, although I haven't used any of the other options currently on the market. I went for the TMS-200 as my initial choice because, of the competing offerings, it seemed to have gotten the most recent support. The T-balancer software, for instance, hasn't been updated since 2008, and that is labeled an 'alpha' version.

There are definitely a few areas for improvement. Starting up the TMS-200 software requires an admin prompt if using UAC on Vista or Windows 7, even if the program starts up at logon. I worked around this by making it a scheduled task set to run with highest priveleges; I found I had to give it a 30 second delay to start after logging on, otherwise the program would start but the tray icon would be missing. The 30 second delay fixes that.

I set the TMS-200 to control my pump speed based on water temp, and maybe 90% of the time upon reboot and logon the pump is controlled correctly. The other 10% of the time the pump starts at max power and remains there until manually set back to 'Auto', which sort of defeats the purpose of 'Auto.' Fortunately reboots are fairly infrequent with Vista / Windows 7, so this issue rarely presents itself.

One option the TMS-200 lacks when compared to the T-balancer is the ability to control a fan through a group of sensors. The TMS-200 limits you to controlling a fan header by one sensor only. You can use the same sensor for all three fans, or three different sensors for each of the three fan headers, or any combination; but you can't, say, have a fan controlled by the highest temp sensor between CPU and GPUs.

I installed the TMS-200 in a 5.25 bay using an internal USB header, and haven't had any com port issues; apparently this is an issue with some users on earlier versions of the software. I did have an issue with the ATX pass-through power switch and the TMS-200, particularly during my Indigo Extreme reflow session. I ended up just removing that. The TMS-200 software does have an 'OS shutdown' option when defined alarm conditions are met (as opposed to the hard-off provided by the ATX passthrough power switch.)

One minor annoyance with the com port interface is that when the software initiatizes after a reboot, it has to do a 10 second 'com port scan' before it becomes operational. During this time you can't move or minimize the window, preventing my scheduled task from starting minimized. Just a minor issue, but something I noted.

I sent in feedback regarding this to Koolance. I also suggested LCD keyboard and Windows Gadget support, as well as the ability to read temps from third party programs like RealTemp. I wouldn't hold my breath though; Koolance replied to some of my suggestions by stating that they had limited programming support but that their software code was on the website if users wanted to modify it.

Hopefully this doesn't mean that software support for the TMS-200 has ended.

So far, though, I'm happy with the interface, and it lets me run my system a lot quieter than previously. I particularly like the ability to control my pump speed based on a sensor, and to customize the fan profiles to my liking. Now my computer is so much quieter I'm noticing my hard drive noise more... I'll have to figure out a way to silence them better.