Sentey GS-6000 II Optimus Mid Tower Review

Back in 2010 we had a look at the GS 6400 Arvinia case from Sentey which left us with mainly positive feelings. Today we take a look at another of Sentey's gaming series cases, the GS-6000 II Optimus. The GS-6000 II Optimus is a black steel mid tower chassis which uses plastic and steel mesh to make up the front and top panels. The left hand side panel features a small window and a large mesh section to allow for better airflow. Specifications: Case Type Mid Tower Materials Laminated Steel SECC 0.7mm Front Panel Plastic / Mesh Side Panel Window / Steel Mesh Drive Bays 3 x 5.25” + 4 x 3.5” Motherboard Support Micro ATX, ATX Color Black and Red Cooling fans 2 x 120mm / blue led The Sentey GS 6000 II Optimus ships in a cardboard box that has a large image of the case located on the front. They also include information regarding prominent features that are included such as USB 3.0, a built in card reader and a fan controller. These items are located on the front panel to provide easy accessibility to the end user. Turning to the opposite side of the box, Sentey have included a number of images that give a better breakdown of the main features. Once removed from the packaging, the GS 6000 II Optimus is protected by two sturdy Styrofoam inserts as well as a plastic bag that helps to prevent any unwanted scratching while in transit. Also included is a product manual, a warranty registration card and screws and standoffs which will be used when we install the test system. The front panel design has an On/Off and Reset button. The two buttons are surrounded by a small transparent area that illuminates blue to indicate that the system power is on, as well as flashing red when the hard drive is active. The next item is the front I/O panel which includes a single USB 3.0 port, 1 USB 2.0 port, a card reader, audio and microphone plugs, and a fan controller. While the number of USB ports on the I/O panel is limited to just 2, the audio jacks, fan controller and SD/MMC card reader offer plenty of connectivity. Located just below the front I/O panel are the 3 x 5.25" drive bays. The top drive bay cover is spring loaded which allows the user to hide an optical drive . The cover has a spring loaded button that aligns with the open/close button on the "hidden" optical drive. Pressing the button triggers the optical drive to open the tray which then fully opens the bay cover that has the spring attached. Closing the tray on the optical drive is a reverse process, once again hiding the optical drive. The two remaining removable 5.25" bay covers are made of steel mesh and include a thin dust filter inside. The lower third of the front panel is a combination of solid plastic and steel mesh. The Sentey insignia is featured here in eye catching raised white lettering. The remainder of the panel has two centered silver stripes with a blue led illuminating the area between them. This section of the front panel also hides the 120mm front intake fan. The right hand side panel of the GS 6000 II Optimus is solid with no additional areas designated for ventilation. There is however a small recessed area at the rear of the panel to assist with removing the panel. The panel on the opposite side of the GS 6000 II Optimus has a large area made up of steel mesh with a small acrylic window as well. The mesh promises excellent airflow, but with holes as large as these, we would have liked to see a dust filter installed. The rear panel of the GS 6000 II Optimus is a standard design layout. The power supply mounts at the bottom of the case and draws in fresh air from below. There are a total of seven expansion slots available for add on cards. The bay covers are still attached to the chassis and have to be physically removed to gain access. Sentey has utilised the same tool free design that we saw when we reviewed the Arvina full tower chassis in back in 2010. The design works well enough but personally I use thumbscrews on the graphics card because of the additional weight of the card. Directly above we have 2 factory cut water cooling holes which have rubber grommets in place to prevent any type of abrasion to the tubes. Next we have the 120mm blue led exhaust fan and opposite the fan is the area cut out to hold the I/O shield. The top panel of the GS 6000 II Optimus is a combination of solid plastic and steel mesh with 2 solid red stripes running the full length of the panel. The front portion is solid black plastic followed by three rows of angled ventilation slots which are reminiscent of what you may see on a Raven. The next section is steel mesh that is designed to allow the warm air to escape out the top of the chassis. Positioned just below the top panel are areas designated for 2 additional 120mm top mounted fans. This would definitely increase the airflow and should lead to potentially drop temperatures of system components. The bottom panel of the GS 6000 II Optimus has 4 large solid rubber feet that will absorb vibrations created by the system. The feet raise the chassis far enough off the ground to ensure good airflow and the removable filter should stop the majority of dust entering the system. The interior of the GS 6000 II Optimus is painted entirely flat black, which is quite common. The company use contrasting red plastic on the 5.25" bays, the hard drive bays and card retention system. The GS 6000 II Optimus ships with a single 120mm front intake fan and 1 rear exhaust fan which is pictured above. The body of the fans are transparent and include blue led lighting. They spin at 1300 RPM ±10% and the noise level is rated at 26dB(A). The fans have the ability to produce a maximum airflow output of 44.71 CFM. The second image is an inside view of the top panel of the GS 6000 II Optimus. There is a large area of steel mesh on this panel where we can mount two 120mm fans if we want to increase the airflow. The power supply mounts at the bottom of the chassis and sits on four small hard rubber mounts that help reduce any unwanted vibrations. Sentey uses a tool free method for add on cards. They implemented simple to use plastic clips that actually work quite well. To save on production costs, the expansion bay covers are still physically attached to the chassis. It is not difficult to remove them, but we feel that any additional flexing of the relatively thin metal used on the chassis could potentially lead to bending. The next thing we are going to focus on are the removable hard drive trays. The drive trays are made of a combination of metal and plastic and they support both 2.5 and 3.5" hard drives. There are 4 of these trays in the GS 6000 II Optimus which should accommodate most peoples storage needs. 2.5" SSD drives and 3.5" hard drives are both simple to install in the removable trays. The SSD installation simply requires 4 small screws to secure the drive to the tray, while 3,5" installation is totally tool free. Sentey have an deployed an interesting concept by cutting a small hole in the base of each tray. This area supports the installation of a low profile 60mm fan that will blow cool air on the hard drives. When preparing to build a system in a new chassis, the first thing I like to do is install a full size ATX motherboard to determine how much space will be available to work with cables and such. The photo above shows us that the GS 6000 II Optimus has some room around the components for the installation phase. We installed our power supply with the fan facing downward so that it can take advantage of the ventilated area below to draw in cool air from outside the chassis. Our next step is to install the GPU. The GS 6000 II Optimus supports graphics cards up to 270mm long. Some of the largest graphics cards will not fit in this case. Above: The Radeon 6950 is one of the longer cards and it just fits inside the GS 6000 II Optimus with perhaps a mm or two to spare. Sentey uses a tool free design to secure any add on cards. The clips are made of sturdy red plastic and they make securing cards a simple task. For those of you that are concerned about the weight of large graphics cards; we need to release the retention clip so we can use of a thumb screw to secure the card. When it comes to cable management the GS 6000 II Optimus is too narrow to allow any of the thick power supply cables to be hidden behind the motherboard tray. We can still hide SATA and other flat power cables, but it is not ideal. The last photo shows the finished system build. Even with the limited amount of cable management options available, the end result is not that bad. To test the Sentey GS 6000 II Optimus we will be building a system based around the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T CPU and the Asus M5A97 AM3+ motherboard. We are going to be using the Noctua NH-C12P SE14 heatsink combined with one of the 140mm fans from the Havik 140 to cool the processor. Test System Chassis: Sentey GS 6000 II Optimus Mid Tower Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Motherboard: Asus M5A97 AM3+ Cooler: Noctura NH-C12P SE14/NZXT 140mm fan Memory: 16GB DDR III Storage: OCX Petrol 64GB SSD, WD Caviar Black 750GB SATA 6 Gb/s Power Supply: Corsair HX850 Graphics Card: Sapphire HD6950 2GB reference model Windows 7 Professional (64-bit) AIDA64 Prime 95 64bit Furmark Digital Sound Level Noise Decibel Meter Style 2 To get started let us look at the 'out of the box' air flow pattern. To prepare for testing we let the system sit idle at the desktop for 20 minutes before recording the results. Then we run Prime 95 and Furmark for 15 minutes to stress the CPU and GPU and generate plenty of heat. After the 15 minutes we stop the testing and record the results. The system is running at stock speed for this test and we use the logging feature in AIDA64 to record the results. Our testing generated some surprising results. Considering the fact that the stock fans are not high performance, the temperatures remained under control. The Prime 95 testing handled the 1090T which is running at stock speed up to 53 Celsius under full load. This is not really a great result, but it is well within the guidelines for this CPU. Furmark pushed the Sapphire Radeon 6950 up into the seventies, topping out at 74 Celsius. The performance would have been better if there was a top mounted exhaust fan included, and we have no doubt that the use of more powerful fans would improve on both sets of results as well. In the default state we wouldn't recommend pushing this cooling system with hot running, overclocked components. We take the issue of noise very seriously at KitGuru and this is why we have built our test system to be as quiet as possible. We can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate specifically on the individual components we are testing. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635. Today to test the chassis we have taken it into our acoustics room and have set our Digital Sound Level Noise Decibel Meter Style 2 one meter away from the case and roughly 4 feet off the ground. This represents a real world situation and gives us an accurate reading of the noise level produced by the fans inside the Sentey GS 6000 II Optimus Mid Tower. To further reduce noise we have reduced the fan speeds on our CPU and GPU to the minimum operational speed possible. As this can be a little confusing for people, here are various dBA ratings in with real world situations to help describe the various levels. KitGuru noise guide 10dBA - Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves 20-25dBA – Whisper 30dBA – High Quality Computer fan 40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator 50dBA - Normal Conversation 60dBA - Laughter 70dBA - Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer 80dBA - City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal 90dBA - Motorcycle or Lawnmower 100dBA - MP3 player at maximum output 110dBA - Orchestra 120dBA - Front row rock concert/Jet Engine 130dBA - Threshold of Pain 140dBA - Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range) 160dBA - Instant Perforation of eardrum The low performance fans don't generate a lot of noise, which is fortunate considering they are not suited to dealing with hot running components. The Sentey GS6000 II Optimus Mid Tower has been released to target the budget gaming audience who don't have a lot of capital to work with. The appearance is very appealing, especially considering the modest price point. There are some clever design decisions, although the company could have improved some areas to make the GS-6000 II Optimus a more tempting proposition. The chassis is spacious inside and there is plenty of room to install components, even with a full sized ATX motherboard in the mix. The tool free, expansion and ODD/HDD bays are a nice touch and will help improve the installation phase. Sadly, the largest graphics cards will not fit, although as shown earlier, AMD's HD6950 just made it in. The cooling performance out of the box is rather dissapointing, although with a total of 10 fan positions, there is plenty of potential to improve this. If you are willing to dip further into your wallet that is. Cable routing is a weak point of the design and it can become challenging to create a tidy system build. The CPU power cable for instance can not be routed without an extension cable. We cannot find this case anywhere in the United Kingdom at time of publication. It is available at NewEgg in North America for $75. This price point includes cases like the Corsair Carbide Series 300R and the Fractal Design Core 3000 which mean it faces a lot of stiff competition. Pros: Appealing appearance. Quiet operation. front I/O panel includes a card reader, fan controller, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports. enough interior space for large graphics cards up to 270mm. Cons: mesh on left side panel should have a dust filter. expansion bay covers are old school, removal can lead to potential bending. only 2 x 120mm fans included. poor cable management options. the biggest graphics cards will not fit. Kitguru says: An attractively designed case with some issues that may be acceptable for most people at this price point.