There’s no skirting around it, so I’ll get it out of the way right now: I have never heard of Sentey before. In fact, not a lot of people have, which puzzled me. Founded in 2005 and based out of Florida with manufacturing in Shenzen, China, Sentey offers a wide range of hardware from cases to power supplies. I really didn’t quite know what to expect out of their premiere gaming full-size tower, the Sentey Burton GS-6500. Costing about $110, Burton looks to be chock full of features and innovative ideas, and comes in solid black, or black with blue or red accents. Let’s take a look and see if Sentey really has what it takes to compete against more well-known brands.
The Burton is a full-sized beast.
Specs
- Model: GS-6500
- Case Type: Full Tower
- Case Material: 1mm SECC Steel
- Front Panel Material: Plastic
- Expansion Bays: 5 x External 5.25” or 3.5”, 5 x Internal 3.5”
- Expansion Slots: 7
- Cooling: 1 x Blue LED 120mm fan (front), 1 x 120mm Blue LED fan (back), 2 x 120mm Blue LED fan (top), 2 x 80mm fan (side)
- Dimensions(HxWxD): 21.65″ x 8.43″ x 20.47″
- Weight: 27.56 lbs.
- Special Features: Card reader, SATA and eSATA ports, 5.25″ drive shrouds, removable side fans, watercooling support, cable routing
In the box
Sentey packages up their Burton case up pretty well to make a good first impression. The cardboard box the case ships in is attractive, so at least I know the company doesn’t skimp on branding. Opening it up, I find the Burton case wrapped up nicely in a black cloth dust cover and bordered by a styrofoam shell on both sides, which is a good sign. Sure enough, once I took it out and removed the dust cover, the case was free of scratches or other damage.
Included is a cute little accessory kit.
Inside the case I find all the little accessories—the documentation, including a user manual and warranty card, a small cardboard box containing a set of SATA extension cables, a microfiber polishing cloth, and strangely enough, a blank 3.5″ media CD. Also included is a cute little built-in accessory kit, which contains a screwdriver, case screws, and brass motherboard standoffs. The kit locks into the rear-bottom corner of the case, which is a fantastic idea.
The grand tour
Reviewing the cosmetic design of a case is tricky due to the subjective nature of personal taste, but I found the Burton case to be quite attractive. It skips the fancy side windows and opts for simplicity, with blue LED-lit fans on the front, left, top, and rear sides of the case. The case exterior is covered with a polished black paint that looks nice. Fingerprints show up badly, but it’s really a non-issue as I don’t touch it often, and Sentey included the polishing cloth for this reason.
The top 2 drives swing out of hidden doors.
The front of the case has a nice look to it, mostly consisting of bands of plastic and fine metal mesh and spots for up to five 5.25″ drives. What’s nifty is that the top two optical drives are hidden by their own hinged door that swings down automatically when the drive tray is ejected and pushes out. This preserves the streamlined look, even if you have different colored drives—for instance, my drive is white, so I’m thankful for this feature. There’s also a 120mm blue LED fan with the metal mesh and a filter. The entire front bezel is removable, but it took a significant amount of effort and patience to separate from the case via eight auto-locking pegs that each needs to be pinched before pushing through. Since you have to remove the bezel anytime you want to swap out optical drives, I found it to be a real pain in the ass and hope it gets tweaked in design revisions.
Grip handles make side panel release easy.
The side panels of the Burton are steel and also painted a nice glossy black. Both of them are kept in place by two thumb screws in the back, and have a small grip with release button towards the back to slide open the panels. This grip handles worked quite well, making the side panels a breeze to take off, and clicks when slid back into place. That’s all there is to the right panel, but the left panel also sports a large plastic fan vent cover. The vent is held in place by four screws and three plastic pegs, so it’s probably removable. Underneath are two 80mm blue LED fans, which I’ll touch on later.
Sentey threw some neat features into the top of the case, mainly with the I/O panel. The power button is nice and large, surrounded by a ring that glows blue, with the HDD activity fused at the 9 o’clock position that blinks red. The reset button is oval, about the size and shape of a pill capsule. There are four fan-controlling buttons labeled F1 through F4 that activate and disable the different case fans. While adjustable sliders would have been strongly preferable, it’s still neat to have the buttons to turn off unneeded fans while idling.
The top panel is chock full of goodies.
Also included in the I/O panel is a little door that slides out of the way, revealing four USB 2.0 ports, and audio ports for headphones and mic. There’s also an eSATA port to connect to a powered external HDD enclosure, which is handy. What surprised me, however, was the inclusion of a standard SATA data and power connector. While several cases these days now have a SATA HDD dock, the Burton lets you connect native SATA cables (included) to a normally internal-only bare HDD and set it down anywhere you want that’s within reach. While potentially not as convenient as a dock, this still has its advantages and I approve of its inclusion. There’s also a flash memory card reader for Compact Flash, SD, Memory Stick, and so on, which is handy to have.
Installation
The Burton looks nice inside, considering there's no side window. It's also quite roomy; even the lenghty SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 has plenty of room. Note: 5th HDD tray removed for photo.
Installation of my components inside the Sentey Burton was generally a smooth process, despite a few design hiccups. There’s no removable motherboard tray, but because the Burton’s a large case I was able to install the brass standoffs and slowly lower my motherboard onto them and tilt into the I/O shield. I kind of wish Sentey included a few more brass standoffs, as I was short one; it’s not a big deal, though.
You can go tool-less or use screws.
Once my motherboard was in place, I started to install my GPU and expansion cards. To my annoyance, the seven card slot openings are each blocked by a metal grill that is stamped into the rear panel—which have to be bent and twisted until they snap off. I would have strongly preferred replaceable slot coverings. Once I chose which slot openings to remove, I installed my expansion cards.
The Burton uses a tool-less clamping system to hold expansion cards in place, but I didn’t care much for it. It’s supposed to snap each card in place with a red plastic clamp, which applies pressure and inserts a small plastic nub through the screw hole… but I couldn’t get the nub to go through on any card, and the pressure just wasn’t enough to make me feel confident about it. This may be just how I aligned my motherboard and may not affect other installations, but fortunately I could still install cards the old fashioned way with metal screws.
These fans use a copper prongs for power.
Regarding clearance inside the case for long GPU cards and large CPU coolers: I felt confident that the Burton can take just about anything. TheSAPPHIRE Radeon HD 6870 is a rather long card, and fit just fine. Likewise, CPU coolers should have plenty of room for smaller aftermarket coolers, even with the case’s side fans installed. But if you need that extra inch or so of room, the side fans can be removed, as they rest on a bracket that unlocks and swings out of the case. To my surprise, the bracket comes out easily, and requires no cables to be unplugged for its fans. In fact, they use a nifty system where copper contact prongs touch when the bracket is installed and clicked in place, and it works well.
Like the expansion cards, the Burton also employs plastic tool-less locking mechanisms for the HDD cage. While I wasn’t very impressed with the card solution, Sentey did a decently good job here. First, the entire HDD cage can be slid out and removed from the case. Inside, there are five HDD trays that slide out. You then place each HDD in a tray, which is held in place by small plastic pegs, and slid back into the cage, which in turn slides into the case. While the system is easy to use, I do fear the plastic pegs will someday snap off and would have preferred steel.
Tool-less is nice, but plastic tabs may snap.
The optical drives are also held in place with a similar system. First, you flip up the plastic tool-less drive locks for the drives you want to install by pressing firmly down on the red “eject” tabs. Once the front bezel is removed (again, not easy), up to five 5.25″ or 3.5″ drives can be slid into place. Line up the drive to the plastic pegs that snap into place when the lock is closed, and it’s set. However, these are almost entirely plastic, and besides the pegs there are also thin plastic tabs that hold the drive locks down. While they seem sturdy enough today, if any of these tabs breaks loose, the entire drive lock fails for that drive.
Cooling and Cable Management
Overall, the Sentey Burton sports a pretty good setup of fans. To summarize, there is a 120mm fan in the front, one 120mm in the back, two 120mm’s on top, and two 80mm’s on the side—all of which pump out as much air as they do blue LED light. They do put out audible noise, but I don’t find it at all bothersome. If you need it to be as quiet as possible, you could always turn off the top and side fans during times of low activity by using the fan buttons—especially if the side fans are removed entirely to fit larger CPU coolers. Also, this case has the modern design of placing the power supply unit on the bottom of the case. There are filtered vent openings on the bottom of the case, so the PSU can pull air in from the bottom and exhaust it directly out the back. It’s also worth noting that the case is also liquid cooling ready, with two openings in the top of the rear panel for water hoses.
Built-in cable ties: good idea, but fall off.
The Burton case is also designed with cable management in mind, with built-in cable ties and plenty of routing options. There are slots all over the right side of the case, allowing for some nice behind-the-scenes routing. Thus, power cables from the PSU can go right into the slots and resurface near the components they power. Cables are held in place by large adjustable cable ties that are attached between the fixed mobo plate and the removable right panel. Unfortunately, these ties are only attached with peel ‘n stick adhesive, and it doesn’t stick well. Half of the ties fall off with even light cable load, one of which was detached when I opened the box. They still hold your cables together, but the adhesive needs to be changed to something else: stronger glue, epoxy, or even screws and/or rivets would have been a much better idea. A revision to the cable ties, coupled with the copious options for hidden routing would make this a very strong cable management solution.
Where do these mystery "VCC" cables go?
While I’m discussing cables, I wanted to touch on the cables that connect the I/O items on the case to the motherboard. Most of them are easy to match up. The USB 2.0 pins are combined together into what they describe as “fool-proof” blocks, and the power, reset, and activity LEDs are all clearly labeled and detailed in the instruction manual. However, there was a set of four pins that were just labeled “VCC, Data+, Data-, and Ground”. While some may instantly recognize it as a USB connection, “VCC” isn’t very clear, and there was zero mention of it in the manuals anywhere. Only after Googling Sentey’s website did I find a single-page document that reveals the VCC cables to go to the card reader. Perhaps I was accidentally shorted this document, but as it is I wouldn’t call this a “fool-proof” USB device setup.
Conclusion
Overall, I have to say I’m pretty damn impressed with Sentey, especially considering I had no idea what to expect from a company I’ve never heard of before. As of this writing, the case runs about $110 on Newegg, which is pretty good for all you get. While it does have some issues to revise, such as the cable ties and missing documentation, it certainly has some neat design choices to make up for it. For instance, the removable fan bracket on the side and the SATA cable ports on top are quite handy to have, and the case itself looks very nice. It also was rather quiet, and kept my components nice and cool, even under heavy gaming. I would indeed recommend this case, and will keep my eyes on what else Sentey is sending our way in the future. We’re proud to award the Sentey Burton the Icrontic Outstanding Product award.
Pros
- Gorgeous black design that hides optical drives
- Top I/O panel includes useful features, like SATA ports, card reader
- Plenty of space and cable management options
- Moderately quiet fan operation, side fans can be easily removed
Cons
- Plastic tool-less retention brackets may not fit, vulnerable to snapping
- Built-in cable ties need better attachment methods
- Missing documentation on card reader cables
- Front bezel difficult to remove
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