I am a firm believer in cooling. I don’t care what you are running, how powerful or how weak your system is, adequate cooling is a must for your computer to live a long and happy life. With all the options available so cheap these days, who can really come up with an excuse as to why they shouldn’t have decent cooling in their systems? Water cooling, customized heatsinks, and even cases that are completely filled with non conductive liquid have paved a highway of arctic temperatures that seem to get cooler every day. Pun definitely intended. But the cheapest and by far my favorite way to keep the old case nippy is the original fan system.
A couple of decent fans to push the air through is more than sufficient on most systems. Some of us, however, require much more to keep things cool while we put our computers through the gauntlet. The only problem is that many motherboards only have one or two places to plug your typical 3-prong fan. Three at most. And then you are limited to a single speed or whatever the motherboard decides is best. YOU control the computer, not the other way around. That’s where the NZXT Sentry LX comes in. Time to show your computer who the biatch really is.
NZXT, a company built on realizing the dreams of gamers worldwide, is proud to announce the Sentry LX, a high-performance aluminum fan controller. Sentry LX boasts a robust feature set providing gamers and PC enthusiasts with the optimal setup for monitoring and adjusting temperatures throughout the PC.
Simple Installation: Sentry LX slides easily into any dual 5.25 drive bay
Complete Control: 5 Temperature Probes keep tabs on all areas of your system while the 5 Fan controllers adjust the fans’ RPM speed
Auto/Manual Modes: Allows users to automatically adjust the fan speeds to correspond to a specific temperature or manually set your system for extreme overclocking capabilities or absolute silence
Temperature Alarm: Instant notification if temps rise above a designated point
Intuitive Interface and LCD Display: NZXT’s ergonomic interface design allows you to customize your airflow on the fly
Sleek Design: Aluminum plated front panel is designed to match any high-end chassis
Features
- Large dual 5.25″ LCD screen
- NZXT designed intuitive control, set and change fan speeds and settings on the fly
- Auto/Manual modes, let the LCD take control or set fan speeds to your liking
- Temperature alarm
- Aluminum finish
- NZXT Designed graphical interface, easy to read and understand
- Saved Settings, calender and fan settings are stored even during system off so settings don’t need to be redone
- Supports up to 4Watt per channel
You know that old saying about having cake and eating it to? That never made sense to me. If you’re going to buy or make a damned cake, you better end up in a diabetic coma over it. If you’re going to buy a set of matching fans, why not use the Sentry LX to make sure you’re getting the most out of those babies?
Right out of the box, the Sentry is something to behold. Bundles of power plugs and temperature sensors adorn the black aluminum frame that is housing the huge LCD display screen. A small plastic bag contains extra sensor wires and a battery for the system’s memory. A memory for your fan controller, rather than a set of knobs that are adjusted all the time. I’m all for it. I hate twisting those knobs. This is the computer age, knobs died out with cassette tapes and AM radio. And finally, beneath the gear, is the instruction manual. But who needs that? On with the testing.
(Just kidding, you better use that instruction manual or risk electrocution. PCs 101)
Installation is a breeze. Damn… another pun. Keep in mind that the Sentry is going to take up two bays rather than the one that a traditional fan controller would. I didn’t realize until I took the side of my case off that I had shoved my hanging PSU wires into the empty bays of the case. That was a lot of fun to rearrange. But once I had them tied back and out of the way, I proceeded to install the Sentry LX and hook a few things up. Of the five available fan plugs, I used the first two to control the lower front 120mm fan, the side fan that feeds air directly to the CPU, and the CPU heatsink fan itself. I then slid a couple of the sensors under the chipset’s heatsink and under the heatsink of my graphics card. After that was all done, I plugged in the power and made sure the batter was secure before putting the side back on my PC.
At first startup, the LCD reads January 1st, 2008. With a simple press of the SET button, I was able to cycle through the date, time, and AUTOMATIC/MANUAL modes to make sure everything was adjusted to my liking. I found this surprisingly easy considering how complex this thing seemed to be. Obviously we at OCModshop know how to extract the goodies out of something like this, but I believe this would be easy for even the most novice of computer users to figure out. And by simply pressing the FAN SELECT button, you can cycle through the fans that are connected to adjust the speed to what you want. I wanted to see how loud this thing would get, so I decided to crank all of them up. Where would the fun be if I didn’t?
At the highest settings, my PC had the decibel equivalent of a typical system using the motherboard to control the fans. It wasn’t very loud, even at the highest available speed of 1800rpm on all three fans. At the lowest setting, 700rpm, it was barely audible. The temperature began to slowly climb, however, and I set the Sentry back to AUTO mode to see what it felt the best speed was. It settled each fan in the 1400-1700rpm region, and I was satisfied with the results. In Auto mode, the inner temperature of the case never climbed above 29.5C and the chipset temperature hovered around 40C the whole time.
To conclude, I will repeat. I am a big fan of cooling, and anything that allows me to control the temperature, speed, and sound of my fans with such an huge and multi-use LCD screen is Christmas any day of the year to me. The ease of use with the Sentry LX is a plus for me, as I believe that protecting your hardware should be something anyone can do. Too many computers come with only the least available cooling hardware, and the Sentry is a big boost in airflow. The ability to either allow the Sentry control the speed or put it under manual control is a one-up on every single knob-adjustable controller out there, and the built-in temperature alarm goes a step further in protection.
All considerations covered, I believe that the Sentry LX would be a very useful addition to any computer, but would benefit the serious gamer most of all. The ability to connect and control up to five fans is a beautiful thing, as is the large screen that comes on it. I personally would recommend anyone with heat issues to consider buying a few fans and purchasing one of these and see what a difference total control can make. Sharpton for President, I’m out.
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