You can also use the OC Station to act as a fan controller and an alarm system to keep tabs on the temperatures inside your case just as you can if you’re working with Hardware Monitoring in the Bios.
Connect and control your fans as well as the Bios
The Performance option looks as though it should give access to the preset CPU profiles that are part of the Asus RoG Bios. However, with the OC Station connected to an Asus Crosshair III Socket AM3 Phenom motherboard, this section of the menu was empty. This highlights the point that the OC Station is an accessory for a family of motherboards. As a result, it works in conjunction with the combination of hardware and Bios that you have installed inside your PC so you can't be sure how it will work on your set-up until you've seen it in action.
Once you’ve finished changing settings with the OC Station, you can turn the unit off. It’s not necessary to have the screen blazing away at all times.
In our experience, the OC Station is a unique product. It is well made, looks good and functions well with the promise of more to come. The problem is that you can achieve the same functionality with manual changes in the Bios. Neither does it deliver any new features, unless you count the ability to view a slideshow of pictures on the 3in monochrome screen. We don’t.
Instead, the OC Station acts as an interface to save the enthusiast owner of an RoG motherboard from the clunky old Bios screen at a cost just shy of £125. The thing is, we have already seen an answer to this particular problem with the MSI P45D3 Platinum, which was updated with UEFI to an interface that responds to pointing and clicking.
You pay for convenience
We would far rather that Asus went down the same route and made the switch from Bios to UEFI instead of coming up with an expensive piece of hardware that skirts around the issue instead of dealing with it directly.
Verdict
The Asus OC Station is an intriguing piece of kit but it seems like an expensive luxury. Our view: if you’re so scared of tinkering in the Bios, just leave it well alone. ®
More Bits'n'Chips Reviews...
Asus Crosshair III Formula AM3 |
AMD ATI Radeon HD 4770 |
AMD Phenom II Socket AM3 CPU |
AMD ATI Radeon HD 4890 |
Asus Republic of Gamers OC Station control box
COMMENTS
Deeply, deeply cool....
....whilst at the same time being utterly pointless. Perfect!
No surprise there, then
There should be one toggle: 'overclock on/off'. For the users that aren't risk averse, this should find a decent overclock with a sensible safety margin to cope with changes in temperature, and stay there. A couple of motherboards do this, but don't get enough publicity because people obviously prefer to waste their time fiddling and it doesn't sell useless product.
Dare I suggest there's better ways to waste life than getting 3fps extra in MegaDeathNinjaBiscuit2?
Can you next pull up 98% of fan controllers for being bullshit? They're the same flashy gimmick.
A *decent* fan controller should automatically control speeds without the user having to be there. There are currently only about four of these on the market, but the ones with flashy lights always win despite the user having to tweak them manually..
missed the point....
I don't think it's meant to be useful (like perspex case cutouts or neon-glow hard drive cables)...I think it's meant to be really really cool, which it dosn't do too bad a job at by the look of it.
oh dear
i can just imagine comming home and findin out my cpu is crispy because the kids were playing with it
ahh, finally
This is where most PC manufacturers go wrong, we actually want lots of buttons, knobs and dials on the front to twiddle with.
