Verdict: Innovative looks, but it's an extremely limited fan controller

At face value the Musketeer is one of the most limited system monitors on the market. But if you simply judge it on its capabilities you're missing the point. It's been designed first and foremost to look good rather than to tell you all sorts of important things about the health of your PC.

For starters, you can only adjust the speed of one fan, while most other system monitors allow you to change either two or four. However, unlike the rest of the crowd, the Musketeer displays the voltage being sent to the fan, rather than the rpm. Similarly there is only one temperature probe, although the analogue display is quite novel compared to a digital readout. The middle dial is perhaps the most bizarre, though, as it limits the maximum volume level of your speakers, so that you don't accidentally deafen yourself. It does this by connecting to the line-out of your soundcard and you can then adjust the line level by moving a lever on the Musketeer's panel. It's an interesting feature, but not one that we see as particularly useful, especially when it's one of only three things the Musketeer does. However, unlike most other system monitors, the Musketeer has been designed to be visually distinctive and thoroughly original.

The looks certainly are different, and are more reminiscent of dodgy moustaches, prop-driven aircraft and the rat-tat-tat-tat of machine gun fire than the clean digital display era we live in now. Whether you want something that looks like it came from the 1940s in your 21st century PC is entirely up to you, and I wouldn't be lying when I told you that the Musketeer caused quite a few heated discussions in the Custom PC office. It certainly wasn't all for one and one for all, I can tell you.

As a system monitor it's extremely basic as it can only control one fan and does take up a lot of room (there's no space behind it for a hard disk) but it does add flair to your PC, whether you buy the silver model pictured or plump for the black model also available.

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