Installation / Operation:
The physical installation is fairly easy. You pop the card into an available PCI slot, and connect the power and USB cables. One challenge may come as you try to keep your case tidy... When you re-route all of your 3-pin case fans down to the Theta which is in a location that really doesn't allow you to hide cables well. Then wire up all of the thermal probes you would like to use, and try to deal with the octopus that this creates in the same area. Perhaps a supply of cable ties and wire loom are in order to try to manage all of the wires heading into this highly visible area for owners of cases with side windows.
There really is no need to use a PCI slot if you don't have one, or if you don't want to locate the Sunbeamtech Theta in this area. As long as you can connect to a USB port as well as a 4-pin connector, you can place this anywhere. I think an unused drive bay might work better for cable management, and I will just use a longer USB cable to reach the back of the case. You might even want to eliminate the use of an external USB connector by wiring up a connection to a USB header on your motherboard.
The software portion of the installation comes next, and presented a few challenges of its own. The manual recommends making all your connections with the computer off, as well as the USB connection, and then starting up your PC. Upon entering Windows it should detect a new USB device and install the drivers for it from the provided CD. I am not sure why, but that did not happen for me. I proceeded to installing the software from the CD anyway, and then tried to connect to the device anyway... Nothing. So, I disconnected the USB cable, rebooted, and reconnected the USB cable and I was in business.
The software provided looks fairly simple, but it really does add a great deal of functionality to the fan controller. It allows for various modes of manual and automatic fan control, and even allows you to schedule your fan's speeds. The following sets of screen shots show various features being used, while also showing off the 4 skins that come with the software.
The Theta TP-101's software includes 4 skins that allow you to customize the look of the interface, and if you are creative (and have the time) you can create your own skin, too.
The below left image shows skin 1, while showing the controls for my CPU cooler on channel 3 "CH3", which I have labeled as the "Gigabyte G-Power Pro". You can see there 8 buttons that allow you to tab through all of the fans connected, and some are even labeled for specific functions. I didn't know this until after I connected my CPU fan, or I would have used the channel pre-labeled for this function.
 
The above right image shows skin 2, while showing the controls for a case fan which I have labeled "Purple LED Fan". All of the skins provide the same information and controls, but this one was my least favorite as I thought it was going to give me vertigo. Taking a look around the screen you can see that you can control the fan manually by voltage alone, manually by voltage with a high temperature alarm, automatically by setting high and low temperatures, and then you can turn the fan totally off.
The various automatic and manual modes all worked very well, and the fans responded almost instantly to changes made on screen. Turning a fan off with the click of a radio button made me a bit nervous, but also worked just fine. Although you may want to turn off extra cooling fans, the ability to turn off a CPU or GPU fan seems risky, and unnecessary.
As seen in the various screen shots, you can toggle the thermal sensor readings between degrees Celsius and Fahrenheit. Using a Cooler Master Aerogate's thermal probe as reference, I found that the two devices agreed on temperature readings within 1 or 2 degrees Fahrenheit. I can't say which is correct, if either, but for 'low end' thermal devices such as these, the accuracy seems good enough.
The next two images show off skin 3 (left) and skin 4 (right). Off all the skins, #3 seemed to be the easiest to read and wound up being my skin of choice.
 
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