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.

i can just imagine comming home and findin out my cpu is crispy because the kids were playing with it

This is where most PC manufacturers go wrong, we actually want lots of buttons, knobs and dials on the front to twiddle with.

....whilst at the same time being utterly pointless. Perfect!

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..