TLD:

 

I'm almost embarrassed to ask this, but I have got a case of 'shiny thing, my precious' over this touch screen fan controller that sits in a 5.25 bay.  I mean I wouldn't dream of adding RGB enhanced components to a build, and I kind of know I like this more from a bling point of view, than because of its functionality.  It's cheap as chips as well, which is making it irrisistable.

 

But would you put something like this in your computer case?  Or is it totally naff?  

 

https://www.nzxt.com/products/sentry-3

 

I had the previous model of this i think it was called the sentry 2. 

It ended up failing on me, also i found the touch interface terrible. We are talking over 7 years ago now so things should be better. 

I replaced it with another unit that had analog dials with an led/lcd screen. I think the brand was Scythe. 

Something occurred to me this evening that puts some perspective on this.  The Sentry 3, with its touch screen read out and multiple fan controllers, cost just NZ$70.  I realized tonight that I was looking at the same PSU in two versions.  One that had the 'Link' monitoring software, and one that didn't.  The difference in cost being a hefty $200.  All the Link software does is provide accurate feedback on all PSU voltages and other stuff.  I don't know if you can get the same information from the likes of Speccy or CPU-Z — probably not, as there are hardware differences in the PSU to enable this feedback.   Who the heck ever looks at this stuff after a new build is up and running, and settled into whatever speed it is going to run at for the rest of its life?  Not me. 

It would be useful to have an alarm to let you know that a fan has stopped working or similar.  A few weeks ago we were chatting about system temperatures on another forum, and I fired up Speccy to see what mine was doing.  I got the shock of my life to find it was in the mid 80s at idle!!!   I thought it had slowed down a couple of times just prior to this, and a closer look revealed that the pump had failed on my six year Intel AIO cooler. 

The big Noctua D15 air cooler I replaced it with, has things running cooler than the liquid cooler ever did, and makes a lot less noise.  If only it was that simple with the i9-7900X :-(