We’ve seen the control unit itself, and indeed, this is the bit you should be really concerned with seeing as it will be on your desk - but there’s a lot more to the Sentry LXE. As the main unit is no longer designed to fit into your PC’s case, there must still be a presence there to attach fans, temperature probes and provide power to these items, as well as relay this data to the control unit. This is performed by the expansion card bundled in the package. It is, essentially, a fan controller without any control that mounts into a spare expansion slot. Users of multi-GPU setups may find this to be a deal breaker, as even with one slot free, space can be tight.




The bracket of the card is split by the 8-pin power connector, which is connected to the large black cable seen in the package content that then connects to the control unit.

Flipping the card around, the actual fan connectors become visible:



These may not look like a regular fan connection, and you’d be right to assume so. The 3-pin connectors are electrically identical to a 3-pin fan’s connectors, but the size and form differ. The supplied cables only connect to these ports, so you cannot attach a fan without using the long supplied cables. I’m not sure why NZXT have chosen to do this, as it adds to the cable management nightmare that you’ll see over the page! The only reason I can see is that it means you have to replace them with NZXT parts or buy another unit if you misplace the cables – not cool.