Glitz is nice, since these are "front-panel" controllers, and Zalman makes high-quality stuff. Stay away from the Enermax controllers.
When you shop for a controller, you should gather some data about the maximum power capacity (in Watts) on each fan channel. For instance, a very modest fan controller -- all aluminum with high-quality rheostat knobs -- is the Sunbeam Rheobus. The LED's are modest: they glow red at lower rpms and blue at higher rpms. And that's all you get for appearance -- precision knobs and simple LED's. But each channel of the Sunbeam will handle about 24 Watts.
The Silverstone Eudemon -- which appeared early in the year -- allows you to program alarms and fan speeds to preset temperatures based on thermal sensors which come with the kit. I've heard good things about the Eudemon, which are consistent with the good things reported by Tom's Hardware Guide.
I currently run a CoolerMaster Aerogate II in one machine and the Sunbeam Rheobus in another machine. Despite thermal and fan-speed monitoring, the Aerogate lacks what the Sunbeam has -- you know if you set a fan speed on the Sunbeam, power down the computer and then power it back up, your fans will be spinning at the same rpms set during the previous session.
I always feel I have to adjust the damn Aerogate every time I boot the computer, although the variations from previously set fan-speeds have never been critically large. Anyway, the Aerogate provides a maximum 18 Watts per channel while the Sunbeam, as I said, gives 24. The Aerogate cost me $55 when I bought it; I got the Sunbeam for $15 (and bought two of them. I still have plans for the second which is still in the shipping carton).
