Novatech Elite Sentinel Gaming PC Review

If you're new (or soon to be new) to the world of PC gaming (or perhaps are looking for a nice upgrade), there is always the small matter of ensuring that you have a system that is not only good enough for what you plan to do, but also the problematic aspect of, you know, actually getting it. While some may choose to build their own system (which is very brave if you're not experienced) others prefer to utilize the services of a company who can put together a pre-built system that offers amazing performance at an affordable price. Enter Novatech! Novatech Elite Sentinel Being one of the UK's leading PC system builders, Novatech has just launched its brand new 'Elite Sentinel'. Featuring an Intel i5 9600k processor, Nvidia 2070 'Super' graphics card and 16gb of DDR4 3200MHz RAM, this system certainly ticks all of the right gaming boxes with an aesthetic to suit all situations. In addition, the Elite Sentinel is more than a little inspired by Gigabyte components with the power supply, motherboard, RAM and graphics card all falling under their manufacturing umbrella. Specifications As you might expect, despite this being a pre-built system you can (if you wish) look to customize the specifications a little. For example, if you'd prefer more storage or RAM. In regards to this system specifically, speaking to Novatech they have confirmed that to add to the overall aesthetic of the system, two of the RAM slots are 'dummy' chips. It is, therefore, 2 x 16gb rather than the apparent 4 you might notice in the following pages. The main specifications, however, are as follows: 9th Gen Intel Core i5 9600K ProcessorGigabyte AORUS RTX 2070 Super GraphicsAORUS 16GB DDR4 3200Mhz MemoryAORUS 240GB NVMe M.2 SSD + 2TB SATA HDD For more details on the system and specifications, you can visit the official Novatech website via the link here! Accessories All of the main components are provided to you within a nice box that comes with an itemized and checked list to make sure you get everything you need. In terms of paperwork and parts, you are given a fair bit as there are clearly a lot of components in this system and all with their specific drivers or manuals. With the Gigabyte AORUS P750W 80+ GOLD fully modular power supply, you are provided with the canvas bag containing all of the spare power cables not used in this build. This is more than helpful if you plan to make further additions to your system in the future. Finally, you are also provided with a couple of Gigabyte Aorus badges. You know, just in case you want to emblazon your system further. The Exterior After opening your system, you'll find it all fitted within an Antec DP501 Windowed ATX RGB Case. This chassis provides a great combination of practicality and aesthetics and is a great choice for any system. Its sleek black design with RGB lighting trims to the front and above the power supply bay really look fantastic. Particularly with that windowed panel to the side giving you a look at everything going on inside! With the RGB lighting switched on, everything is nice, bright and vivid behind that side panel and, although you can cycle through colors, I rather liked the blue it defaults to. The top of the system acts as the main ventilation point for the 240mm AIO liquid cooler (more on that later). To prevent (or at least slow down) dust accumulation, this is supplied with a magnetic cover. An increasingly common feature for newer (and improved) chassis designs. So, first impressions for the Novatech Elite Sentinel are really good. Time to get in and have a closer look some of the finer exterior details. Exterior Detailing Starting with some of the aesthetic touches to the chassis, the two most notable aspects are the RGB lighting strips to the front of the case and to the side (the latter being inside the system). Despite these RGB 'exterior' lights being quite small in size, they really stand out and add an impressive level of visuals to the system as a whole. All, of course, operating via sync controls on the motherboard via the RGB software. The front of the case ventures an air vent set around the RGB light strip but also has some Antec branding. While this is nice and understated, it also compliments the system well. Finally, we again have the Antec branding lightly embossed into the base of the chassis. It is again, understated and actually in this instance easily overlooked. On the whole, however, the overall aesthetic is fantastic and should suit this system in any environment. Ports and Connections The front I/O port bank has you well covered in terms of general day-to-day connections and functions. These include a power on/off switch, a reset button, a controller for manual RGB light mode cycling, a 3.5mm headphone/microphone port, and two USB 3.1 ports. Rear I/O Panel The main rear I/O panel gives you plenty of connection ports for all of your peripherals. This includes 5 USB 3.1 ports (including 2 'constant power' connections - those are the red ones), a USB Type-C port, 4 USB 2.0 ports, HMDI connector, ethernet port, and your audio bank. Down with the Nvidia 2070 Super graphics card, we find 3 HMDI ports and 3 display port connections as well as a single USB Type-C port. Finally, at the bottom with the power supply, we find it to be fairly standard with just the main power input cable and physical mains on/off switch. Ventilation & Air Flow The Novatech Elite Sentinel has an airflow based on 5 fans. All of these features RGB lighting with 2 as intake and 3 as exhaust. As you might expect, the front of the system features the 2 main intake fans with a main rear exhaust fan and two more via the 240mm AIO liquid cooler. With all of these fans in such a tidy system, this should help promote a nice strong airflow which is absolutely what you want! More, of course, on the cable management shortly. Overall So, having taken the system as a whole, it all looks really good so far. It's sleek, slick, impressive and comes with more than enough connections. I guess it is, therefore, time to have a look inside. A Look Inside With the simple removal of the 4 thumb screws on the tempered glass panel, you can easily gain access to the system interior and first impressions are certainly good. It looks clean, tidy and very well presented. Although we will cover cable management later in the review, as you can see, even despite the AIO cooler and those pipes, it has been very well organized inside here with a lot of nice large open spaces to promote solid airflow. Motherboard With a Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Pro LGA 1151 Z390 Chipset ATX motherboard, although this isn't quite top of the line in what Gigabyte has to offer, it's pretty close to it. For this system, the Auros Pro is an excellent foundation to build from. Processor/Cooler With a CoolerMaster MasterLiquid ML240L RGB AIO liquid cooler, this Intel i5 processor is in some solid and reliable hands. The 240mm radiator and those two RGB fans should provide an excellent cooling solution (certainly in terms of aesthetics - there will, of course, be more on its performance later). Graphics Card This system has the Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX 2070 Super 8GB graphics card fitted. Being the 'Super' variant, this is a pretty recent release (just a month or so old in terms of the initial product launch) and adds more than a little extra 'oomph' to the standard Nvidia 2070. This should easily have your gaming needs met for anything now or in the foreseeable future! As with many Gigabyte products, it does have an RGB logo to the side which, with the sync capability can match your overall system color scheme. RAM With 16GB of Gigabyte AORUS RGB DDR4 3200MHz memory, this is both large and fast enough to give you a nice slick experience. With the RGB lighting, however, it really does look pretty amazing. As noted earlier in this review, while 4 sticks of RAM are visible it should be noted that two of these are 'dummy'. This has been done to allow for the overall strong aesthetic design of the system without compromising on the RAM. Seeing two empty RAM slots always makes me feel like they're a bit lonely. Power Supply With a Gigabyte AORUS P750W 80+ GOLD fully modular power supply you know your system is in good hands here. With gold-rated efficiency and 750w of power, you've got more than enough for all of your components (and more) with the knowledge that the power is being delivered both clean and crisply. Storage With a Gigabyte AORUS RGB M.2 NVMe SSD 256GB and 2TD hard drive, you're not exactly struggling for storage space here. Admittedly, it would perhaps have been nicer to see a little more SSD storage, but 256GB is still more than enough for at least 2-3 high-end AAA game releases at any one given time. Cable Management As this is a pre-built system part of what you pay for is the expertise of Novatech to really get some solid cable management in place. This isn't just in terms of the overall aesthetic, but a tidier cable placement ultimately leads to a better, stronger, and more streamlined airflow. As you can see, the Novatech Elite Sentinel is pretty solid with its cables. There's nothing overly out of place with the exception of the AIO radiator hose pipes and, let's be honest, there's never much you can do about them. Even the areas which can usually get a little cluttered (such as at the bottom of the motherboard) have been well organized with zip ties to keep the cables tight and tidy. Looking at the back of the motherboard, the cable management is again excellent. All cables are well bunched up with zip-ties so that the side panel closes neatly without you having things sprouting out all over the place. Testing & Methodology To test each system or notebook, we want to stress every component of the system to check stability and performance, giving us an idea as to why those particular components were picked for this particular system. We use a wide variety of applications to gain a broad spectrum of results for comparing diverse aspects of system performance. Games Used All games are tested at both 1920 x 1080, 2560 x 1440 and 3840 x 2160 (4K) (where supported). *Please note that for systems which do not support a particular resolution, such as 1080p laptops, we will not test the higher resolutions on those devices. In an attempt to bring our games more into line with modern releases and specifically those that offer Nvidia RTX/DLSS features, we have decided to update some of our games accordingly. Please note that not all games listed below may be used in our tests. Games and Settings Used Shadow of the Tomb Raider DX12 Medium Preset - Includes Separate RTX/DLSS Tests - Steam Link1080p1440p*2160p*Deus Ex: Mankind Divided DX12 Medium Preset - Steam Link1080p1440p*2160p*Rise of the Tomb Raider Medium Preset- Steam Link1080p1440p*2160p*Metro Exodus DX12 Medium Preset - Includes Separate RTX/DLSS Tests - Epic Games Link1080p1440p*2160p*Far Cry New Dawn Medium Preset - Steam Link1080p1440p*2160p* World of Tanks enCore Medium Preset - Official website1080p1440p2160pFinal Fantasy XV Windows Edition Medium Preset - Official Website1080p1440p*2160p*F1 2018 Medium Preset - Steam Link1080p1440p*2160p* Software Used 3DMark Fire Strike (download)FireStrike (1080p) BenchmarkUnigine Superposition (download)1080p Extreme BenchmarkPCMark 10 Professional (download)Express BenchmarkWPrime (download)32M and 1024MCineBench R15 (download)CPU MultiCPU SingleHandbrake (download)Custom MP4 to MKV 4K conversion (details below)AIDA64 Engineer (download)CPU-Z (download)HWMonitor (download) Handbrake To stress processors to their absolute limit and accurately judge their performance in video editing workloads, we transcode a 7.7GB compilation of gaming footage; this particular file is freely available from here. The captured footage is 22 minutes and 12 seconds long, it has a bit rate of 50.1 Mbps and it uses the Advanced Video Codec. Additionally, the video runs at a constant 30 frames-per-second and opts for a 3820 x 2140 (4K) resolution. Once loaded into Handbrake, we then transcode the 4K MP4 to an MKV file using the “normal” profile. 3DMark Firestrike Coming with some fairly beefy hardware specifications, it starts with no surprise to see the Novatech Elite Sentinel near the top of our charts. While the Intel i5 9600k processor does prevent it from competing with the highest-end systems we have reviewed (all of which have either top-end 8th or 9th-gen Intel processors), what's clearly evident is that it has more than enough grunt to cope with gaming. Unigine Superposition 1080p Extreme It's certainly little surprise that with an Nvidia 2070 'Super' graphics card onboard, this system easily handles the Unigine benchmark test with some very impressive returns. That little added 'boost' in the 'Super' series is a nice touch to this system that certainly creeps it up a lot higher in the charts than a standard 2070 would have. PCMark 10 PCMark 10 acts as a more CPU intensive benchmark and, specifically, the ability to multitask in a 'day-to-day' scenario. As can be seen below, the results are very good and perhaps closer to the top than you might have expected. In all truth, we're not quite sure why the results are quite this high comparatively (and we tested this twice), but you won't hear us complaining! WPrime 32m and 1024m The WPrime testing is a straight-up brute force examination of how the CPU can handle its workload. Specifically through working out complex mathematical equations. Being that this system has an Intel i5 9600k processor, it provides some very strong results and finds itself comfortably in the top third of our test result charts. Cinebench R15 As per the WPrime test, the Cinebench R15 benchmark shows very similar and consistent results. While not the best we've seen, these results are still very strong by modern standards and more than a little encouraging. Handbrake MP4 to MKV Conversion 4K As we often say during these desktop gaming PC reviews, video editing is likely not going to be your highest priority. At least, not comparatively to gaming. If you do engage in online content creation, however, faster speeds here can really start to make a difference to your overall rendering time. Less time rendering, by proxy, leads to more time in-game or further content creation. As you can see below, the results for the Novatech Elite Sentinel are really impressive achieving an FPS conversion rate of 71.4. We don't quite know what Novatech or Intel has done here to get such good results, but all we can say is that they're welcome to keep it up! Storage Offering a 240GB NVMe M.2 SSD drive and 2TB SATA, the Novatech Elite Sentinel offers you plenty of storage space. In terms of speed, however, that NVME drive (as you might expect) provides some excellent results. While the read speeds are significantly more impressive than the write, remember that your system will be reading data far more often than it writes it. As such, it's pretty clear which stat is better as the faster one. While clearly not the quickest storage solution we've seen, you should still find some lighting quick load times here! Gaming Performance At a glance in our benchmarking charts, the Novatech Elite Sentinel doesn't appear to do particularly well. There are, however, a few key aspects we should highlight. Firstly, that as part of our transition to more modern gaming titles, we are still in the process of building-up our review list based on the new methodology. Secondly, by and large, the Novatech Elite Sentinel is (unfortunately) finding itself comparing with systems that are of some of the highest specifications currently available. Also, as it should be noted, with many of them coming in at a significantly higher price. As you can see, however, despite this gulf in comparative components, this system comes remarkably close to matching their performance in a lot of areas. You can trust us entirely we when say that the Novatech Elite Sentinel is no slouch in gaming and, with its specification, provides an exceptionally solid and future proof solution for any foreseeable release. World of Tanks enCore Far Cry New Dawn F1 2018 Metro Exodus Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition Shadow of the Tomb Raider Acoustics & Temperatures One of the biggest standout results in our tests here is the CPU temperature performance. Achieving a maximum temperature of 52c, this CPU runs amazingly cool. It is, of course, an i5 processor and will, by proxy, not generate the heat seen from higher-end chips. Despite the clear praise for the processor design, it shouldn't overlook the fact that the cooler is clearly doing an impressive job in working hard without breaking a sweat. So, at this point, it begs the question if these CPU temperatures are compromised by a noisy cooler. Well, the short answer is no. The Novatech Elite Sentinel was very discreet (despite those 5 fans) and if cool and quiet is a top priority of yours then this certainly ticks that box! CPU Temperatures GPU Temperatures Acoustics Price The Novatech Elite Sentinel retails for a price of £1549.99 including VAT. As this is a pre-built system it is, of course, important to know how this price stacks up against real-world components prices. In that regard, the Novatech Elite Sentinel is exceptionally good value. While we did have to modify our comparative build slightly to accommodate for the components the website was unable to obtain a price for, we received a 'bare bones' component price of £1557.41. Those individual shipping costs can really start to mount up when you look to build your own system! The bottom line is that this system does appear to be available to buy, premade, for less than the individual components would cost you. When you consider that Novatech throws in a 3-year warranty, lifetime support, and their expert know-how into this system (as well as presumably a little profit margin), the Novatech Elite Sentinel represents some amazing value! It will, however, cost you a little extra if you want to obtain an operating system with it ready to run out of the box. Performance When you take the system specifications of the Novatech Elite Sentinel into account, it falls into a category of what you would call the lower-mid top tier of systems. They're not the best specifications available, but they're close enough, and still bloody good! As such, as clearly demonstrated in our benchmarks tests, while this isn't the strongest system we have reviewed, it's without a doubt still an excellent build in terms of gaming and overall day to day tasks. One that should see you easily settled in with no problems on the highest gaming settings (within reason) for at least the next 4-5 years. Design & Aesthetics The system as a whole looks fantastic. It's both sleek and professional with more than a little RGB flash that adds rather than detracts. It's genuinely hard to think of a situation where this PC would not look good. Be it in an office or gaming palace. The build quality from Novatech is undeniably great and this is highlighted not only in the benchmarking results but also in the aesthetics and basic good PC building practice of cable management and system design. Should I Buy One? For a pre-built system, this would usually be the part of the review where we try and off-set the overall price of the system against the case of just buying the parts and building it yourself. The Novatech Elite Sentinel, however, throws a (very pleasant) spanner in that usual comparison. Seemingly retailing for a price below the sum of its parts and packing a 3-year warranty, if you were looking for a strong gaming PC on a relatively solid but still reasonable high-end gaming PC budget, then the Novatech Elite Sentinel will provide you with some excellent gaming performance with build quality with style beyond question. Pros Aesthetically fantasticImpressive specifications to blitz practically any modern gaming release with no problems!Easily suited to professional or gaming environmentsBuild quality is excellentStrong performance in both work and playtesting3-year warranty as standard with life-time supportExceptionally good value for money! Cons None. Neutral None Novatech Elite Sentinel Gaming System Review