| Cooler Master Musketeer |
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| Written by Sam Bruce | ||||||||||
| Wednesday, 01 November 2006 | ||||||||||
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Let's set the scene, it is a dark cold night, and two young modders decide that the next project they embark on, will be adding to the front of their case, is an analogue gauge, they wanted the retro look. After heading down to the local electronics store, and picking up an appropriate voltage meter and some LEDís they head home. The problems they encounter are huge, first of all, the voltage meter is way to big for the front panels, so they have to splice two normal 5.25î bays together, and then cut a hole out of the middle.
The meter is mounted and the LEDS are placed, but the needle wonít move because of the interfering leds, so after some skin burning and desoldering the leds are replaced, the needle is free to move. The voltage meter was meant to sit between the fan array, and the fan speed controller, the only problem being the voltage meter seemed to draw quite a bit of power, and when you cranked it right up to 12 volts, the LEDís had a nasty tendency to burn out, no matter what kind of resistors were fitted. The two give up, and hit the internet where they discover The Musketeer, a piece of system monitoring hardware, that measure temperature, voltage and sound levels, while keeping that ever-so-cool retro look. Cooler Master have produced yet another top quality piece of hardware, but for the real skinny, read on in. 
Design: The Musketeer reminds me of an old school amplifier. The VU meter style monitoring system, adds a certain touch of class to even the bleakest looking case. You can choose The Musketeer to suit you case, it ships in either silver or black. The gauges are backlit with blue lights, which complement the black or the silver perfectly. Because of the neon printing on the readouts and the blue glow, all of the text seems to have a neon aura to it. When you have The Musketeer installed in your case, you are instantly monitoring temperature, voltage and sound levels. You can adjust the voltage of the fan you are monitoring with the small knob that is located next to the voltage meter, similarly, you can also adjust the sound sensitivity of the sound meter. The adjustment of the sound meter completely depends on how loud you have your system volume on your PC. I have my PC set at the default levels, from installation of windows, with this I chose to have the sound sensitivity set up towards the max or completely maxed out, this makes the needle bounce along with your music. Put on something with a nice beat, and watch it go. The Musketeer is a full size 5.25î device, about as long as a modern CDRW drive. The front of the device is full metal.
Installation: When installing The Musketeer all you need to do is slide the unit into a free 5.25î bay, and connect the cabling. The cables that are provided in the box are as follows: 3.5mm to 3.5mm plug (to go from the audio output of your soundcard to The Musketeer audio panel) Musketeer Audio Back panel Molex to 3 Pin Fan Connector (so you can control your fan speed if you power the desired fan through Molex) 2 Pin Thermal Sensor 3 Pin female to 1 wire three pin male and 2 wire three pin male (so you can monitor the fan speed, but still control the fan voltage)
In my particular case, I hooked the voltage monitor (and controller) up to my CPU fan, and I put the thermal diode in my 9800xt (itís a hot little bugger). These aspects of the setup are really easy to do. Setting the thermal diode is really easy, just double sided tape, clip, or place neatly where you want the temperature from. In my case, I just slid the sensor under the heatsink on the back of the graphics card. For the CPU fan, you just plug the single wire cable into the CPU fan header of your mother board, plug the cable from the CPU fan into the female connector of the cable, then plug the 2 wire plug into the back of The Musketeer. Easy as pie. By far, the most complicated part of the setup is plugging the audio input into The Musketeer. For this, you need to install the Cooler Master audio back panel. Basically this is a standard PCI back plate, with two 3.5mm sockets. Using the supplied 3.5mm plug to 3.5mm plug cable, plug one end into your audio output, and then the other end into the input on your new back plate, Then just plug your speakers into the output on the new back plate. From there plug the cable on the inside of the back panel, into the back of The Musketeer, and viola, you can monitor your audio.
The back panel is basically a splitter for your audio signal. This causes little to no loss of sound quality. All of the cables are long enough to cater for even the largest of cases. Conclusion: The whole idea behind The Musketeer is simple yet brilliant. It adds a very unique mod to your system (who wants a generic looking box?) and will make your PC stand out at a LAN. While The Musketeer does not provide much functionality, its aesthetic values are amazing, analogue gauges are something that should have been brought into computers a long time ago. In keeping with Cooler Masters philosophy of product excellence, it is built to last. Retail pricing on this bad boy is around NZD$120, which could be a stop point for some people, but, for what I would consider a less than extravagant purchase, you are giving your case a huge point of difference. My suggestion, buy a Musketeer now! It will do wonders for your love life, or least, make your friends drool :) 
If you are after a Cooler Master Musketeer of your own, you can pick yourself up a unit @ PCTronix for the very reasonable price of NZD$112.50 incl GST. I would just like to thank the people @ Cooler Master for providing this hardware. Cheers Guys Cooler Master MusketeerCooler Master Musketeer Review Images            |
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| Last Updated ( Thursday, 02 November 2006 ) | ||||||||||
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