NZXT Sentry LXE Colour Touchscreen Aluminum Fan Controller Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,560 words · ~7 min read
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today we're going to be unboxing a new fan speed controller from NZXT this is
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the Sentry LXE it's a high performance touchscreen fan controller supports up
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to 8 watts per Channel I mean an 8 watt fan is a pretty beefy fan so this is
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going to support most of the fans on the market without any difficulty it
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displays RPMs for five fans which stands
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to reason because it is a five fan control fan speed controller you can
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also get five temperature displays you can get a touchscreen monitor which you
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can press to control everything anyway all right I think that's pretty much oh
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that's interesting it says 10 watts per channel on the back so I wonder which of
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those is correct maybe if someone uh someone knows which is correct they can
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uh they can tell us interesting so there's a desktop external temperature
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meter through a PCI card interface touch interface intuitive RPM control Auto and
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manual mode operation hey it displays the date time and day of the week it has
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a brushed aluminum frame and a screen onoff switch
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it also features an alarm system which it has in common with most fan speed
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controllers because the whole point of a fan speed controller besides controlling
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the speed of your fans is to alert you if anything goes wrong and it loses
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control so the alarm will tell you if fans go below a certain RPM or worse yet
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if they stop Al together and in theory that'll alert you alarm you yeah it
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should alarm you but in theory that'll let you know that the fan has failed and
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you need to do something about it quick fast and in a hurry before your stuff
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overheats and dies so here's the user manual which
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is really one panel no two
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panels okay well there this is the English one right here so it shows you
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you connect the little PCI card here you connect the three pin fan connectors to
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the board and the fans you want to control and detect you plug a little oh
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this is interesting okay well here why don't we why don't we pull this out and have a closer look okay well hold on
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let's see what else we have here so here's the touch screen interface usage so they show you uh the places to touch
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in order to select fan channels hold this button to turn off the screen oh
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you can turn off the screen that's cool because if you're sleeping or whatever
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that's pretty handy touch the switch to
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uh go between Auto and manual modes modify the time having a manual like
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that is really useful cuz I remember I was trying to use one of the touchscreen
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fan controllers a while back it wasn't an NZXT one I don't remember which one
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it was exactly but it was just a nightmare to try and figure out how to
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do anything on it and I mean I'm not exactly
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um you know this this isn't my first computer component I I can usually
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figure things out fairly easily but this one was just ridiculous I couldn't
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figure out how to do anything with it every time I tried to adjust anything I
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ended up uh like triggering the alarm or something stupid like that it was uh not
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a very good experience but hopefully this one would be
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better so you got a couple of different mounting options for this guy I think
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maybe you don't I'll open it up and find out oh no you don't oh this is
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interesting okay well what I was expecting was for this to be a dual 5
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and 1/4 in Bay fan speed controller but
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what it actually is and I guess I'd I should have known this somehow yeah you
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can see the stand right there on the box I mean it should be pretty obvious but
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this actually sits on your desk and it looks quite nice you've got the brushed
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aluminum finish that they were talking about before you've got kind of a
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chromed accent a the screen itself and then you've got the touch screen right
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here and this is I mean this is thick too this is just gorgeous metal because
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what you typically see on like a cheap component that's going to sort of sit on
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your desk like this is you'd see aluminum maybe half the thickness of
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this usually steel never mind aluminum but it would be just like thin thin
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stuff wouldn't look very nice but this is actually got like a it's got a
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plastic back on it but I don't think that really matters cuz they've just got
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a gorgeous piece of aluminum on the front here these uh bottom pieces I'm
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not sure if they're stickers or not no it looks like they're just rubber so
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they're non-slip rubber on the bottom here to uh make sure that it doesn't
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slip okay so if you were to put it down on say for example a park bench you
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wouldn't have to worry about it moving around too much see I can put a little
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bit of force on it and it won't move too badly all right so let's have a look at
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the accessories that are included with the LXE first of all we have this wow
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that's a long cable look at this I think it's longer than I am tall which isn't
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really saying much but I guess it's got to be be uh wow it's got to be like 6
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and 1/2 ft tall
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okay interesting I guess we'll find out what that does in a moment and then what
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other cables do we have so we have our PCI control card that's pretty
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cool all right so here's all of our temperature sensors five temperature
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sensors coming out of these uh temp one temp two temp three temp four and temp
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five uh headers here and then here we
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have what's this this is probably power
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I guess let's find out we'll take this twist tie off and this thing actually
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looks pretty cool I haven't seen something like this before it's quite
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unique fan speed controllers are one of those things that
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um it's really hard to find a good one
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like I actually spent uh wow after
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international shipping I had to buy it from like Germany or something
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ridiculous like that but I actually spent about $150 on my fan speed
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controller just to get something that worked the way I wanted it to so anyway
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here we have the five fans that we can control and then there are all of the
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cables for them so you can run these to any part of your case quite easily you
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can see these aren't quite as long as that other cable we were looking at but they are pretty long assuming you mount
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it somewhere near the top of your PCI slots and then the last one here is yeah
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that's power so you've got a um four pin Molex power connector here and then
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there's a battery spot and they include a battery for you so I'm guessing you
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plug that that battery in and it keeps all of your settings uh stored when the
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system is powered off and it does not have any power so that way any of your
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fan speed profiles and speeds and your time and all that is going to be stored
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without having to worry about it here we have a couple of temperature
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sensors and I'm not sure why we have additional ones because there aren't any
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more ports but yeah it looks like we have two more temp
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sensors how interesting
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huh okay I'm not quite certain that I
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can figure out why they're here but they're here so you have two more temp
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sensors maybe it's just if you want to run them somewhere else in your case
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because the other ones are all uh kind of grouped together maybe if you don't
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want
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to use two of them okay and I figured
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out what this Cable's for so this cable goes from the back of the PCI mounted
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card here so it's keyed so it only goes in one way so you can see it goes in
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that way so it goes from there to wherever you want so it goes out of the
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back of your computer assuming your computer is positioned somewhere sort of
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around here and then it plugs into the back of the touchscreen
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display ah and then you put that wherever you want that's actually really
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classy looking look at that anyway I like it thank you for checking out my
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video blog on the NZXT Sentry LXE
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touchscreen fan controller