The review wrote:
However, to satisfy more performance-oriented and less noise-conscious users, the Ninja 3 ships with a relatively high speed Slip Stream PWM fan rated for 1900 RPM. On the bright side, there's a manual fan speed controller attached.
I would not describe it as a manual fan speed controller. What it does, based on Scythe's spec, to to vary the automatic PWM controlled speed continuously as a band of speeds, from a Low range of 470 to 1370 to a High range of 740 to 1,900 rpm. In practice this means that you can dial in the idle speed you want, and this will allow the idle to be set lower than the default setting with motherboard PWM control alone. In actual use the Low setting will allow idle speeds of 500/600 rpm to be achieved. At this level the fan is effectively silent. Equally, it retains PWM control so the fan speed will increase automatically under load, but set to Low this is limited to a maximum according to spec of around 1300 rpm.
Where the fan control does become a form of manual controller is when it is used with software which controls PWM fans such as SpeedFan or HWMonitor Pro. The software sees the fan speed setting as 0% duty cycle, regardless of where the fan controller is set. However what fan speed you get at 0% does vary according to the fan controller setting. And it will vary further once the setting in software is increased beyond 0%. This means that you can use a combination of the fan controller and the software to set a wide range of manual speeds.
With the software set to PWM manual control at 0% and the controller on Low I got 490 rpm, and set to High 750 rpm. At 100% this resulted in a top speed of 1450 rpm with the controller on Low, and 2080 rpm with it on High. These higher figures than spec are, I suspect, because at 100% the motherboard is supplying a touch more than 12v. But the main point is that the combination of software and the fan controller allowed a manual setting anywhere between 490 and 2080 rpm. More importantly perhaps, without the need for, or cost of additional voltage control hardware.
Incidentally Scythe sell this fan separately, as the Scythe Kaze-Jyuni Slip Stream SY1225SL12HPVC, so it can be deployed on other makes of cooler and also as a case fan.