SENTRY: Console-sized gaming PC case project

I'd say go for it. It can make a huge difference to temps, and at this point has become pretty much totally reliable as long as you're using a delidding tool rather than a razor.
Yeah, I can print a tool and watched tons of YouTube videos on it and the thermal improvement is pretty great. So, go big or go home I think.
 
I'm wondering if I should buy biostar's B350 temporarily while waiting for Asrock or Gigabyte...
Will it take long to design the mount for the dynatron or is that something relatively simple to do? Also are you planning on supporting LGA 1151 socket?
 
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first time postin hardforum as a sentry contributor, first of all thnx for this well documented project and of course for this savage case.

I already put my old gaming rig to on sale this week, and waiting for the sentry and also upcoming am4 mini-itx boards. Although their release dates seem a little bit far for me, and of course there is always a chance of a software or hardware incompatibility issues like their big brothers, I started to thinking buying kaby lake and a h270 board. They just publish their new techs like optane memory and some other extra features on the intel boards making this decision so hard. Also I should clarify that I'm not gonna use sentry as a workstation, it's going to be my new gaming rig aka console killer, another fact is temps&power usage of the 7500 is great, and its very competitive against ryzen 1500/1600 in gaming.

so what do you think about kaby lake system just for gaming purposes?
 
first time postin hardforum as a sentry contributor, first of all thnx for this well documented project and of course for this savage case.

I already put my old gaming rig to on sale this week, and waiting for the sentry and also upcoming am4 mini-itx boards. Although their release dates seem a little bit far for me, and of course there is always a chance of a software or hardware incompatibility issues like their big brothers, I started to thinking buying kaby lake and a h270 board. They just publish their new techs like optane memory and some other extra features on the intel boards making this decision so hard. Also I should clarify that I'm not gonna use sentry as a workstation, it's going to be my new gaming rig aka console killer, another fact is temps&power usage of the 7500 is great, and its very competitive against ryzen 1500/1600 in gaming.

so what do you think about kaby lake system just for gaming purposes?
In gaming only the 1600 and specially the 1600x outperform the i5 7500 so if you can afford the 1600x that would be your best bet.
 
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Will it take long to design the mount for the dynatron or is that something relatively simple to do? Also are you planning on supporting LGA 1151 socket?

Design of mounting adaptors for narrow ILM LGA2011 coolers on AM4 boards looks like fairly simple task because it looks like there's quite a lot of free space without intruding components within socket area. The problem is that I don't have the last dimension yet - at what height cooler touches cpu surface (distance from top of IHS to motherboard pcb surface). Depending on that and height of the small components that may appear on the board within the socket, I may not be able to use rivets and will have to order the adaptor to be already point-welded.

LGA115x is out of the question for this mounting simply because there are components installed within the cooler area that are taller than the IHS surface. Remember the problems with Cryorig C7 rotation and RosaJ's attempt on mounting R15 where he had to replace the capacitors on the motherboard to do that. This problem doesn't exist on LGA 2011 because the socket itself is huge and AM4 has significant free space between the cooler mounts.

I have made a thread for my adaptors concept here btw: https://hardforum.com/threads/lp-sff-cooler-mounting-adaptors-for-am4.1929996/
 
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first time postin hardforum as a sentry contributor, first of all thnx for this well documented project and of course for this savage case.

I already put my old gaming rig to on sale this week, and waiting for the sentry and also upcoming am4 mini-itx boards. Although their release dates seem a little bit far for me, and of course there is always a chance of a software or hardware incompatibility issues like their big brothers, I started to thinking buying kaby lake and a h270 board. They just publish their new techs like optane memory and some other extra features on the intel boards making this decision so hard. Also I should clarify that I'm not gonna use sentry as a workstation, it's going to be my new gaming rig aka console killer, another fact is temps&power usage of the 7500 is great, and its very competitive against ryzen 1500/1600 in gaming.

so what do you think about kaby lake system just for gaming purposes?


Cheers, welcome!

Couple of points of note:

1) In a high end rig, there's zero point for Optane. It's basically a super speedy cashe, like SSDs were trying to be back when a 64GB SSD was $200. Intel has all but admitted that Optane is not for people who already have SSDs.

2) What kind of gaming are you going to be doing? Do you have a couple games that are what you tend to invest not hours, but weeks in? Are they well multi-threaded, or are they thirsty for single-core performance? On the flip side, do you always like playing the fresh new thing that seems to be coded specifically to cripple computers? These are the questions that will lead you to your answer.
 
I'm pretty happy with my i5-7600.. No it's not Ryzen, which I would have taken if it was around, but I built it early February and can comfortably play games with my 1060. Waiting wasn't really an option, as I needed this for school, too.

Though if you can wait, I'd wait on ASRock's board. Ryzen seems very interesting, particularly with AMD's track record with how they update their GPUs software (say what you want about their other CPUs, I'm being optimistic here)
 
Rysen, while that board is very clean near the socket a LGA2011 80mm square cooler may not fit. Can you measure from the 75x75mm square socket plane to the VRM heatsink and motherboard socket? When I installed the R15, it isn't perfectly centered because of my mobo socket being to close to the CPU socket.
 
In gaming only the 1600 and specially the 1600x outperform the i5 7500 so if you can afford the 1600x that would be your best bet.

Agreed! Also the 1600 has SMT and each core is utilized lower than the 7500! Definitely future proof comparatively. Can't remember the video but 7500 was 90-100% on all cores and 1600 was in the 60%'s in a gaming benchmark!
 
Rysen, while that board is very clean near the socket a LGA2011 80mm square cooler may not fit. Can you measure from the 75x75mm square socket plane to the VRM heatsink and motherboard socket? When I installed the R15, it isn't perfectly centered because of my mobo socket being to close to the CPU socket.
The distance is a bit more than 80mm but I deleted my comment because I realized that there are 3 capacitors by the left upper hole that might be too big.
 
Good catch, didn't see them as they're black! Those might be 6mm caps, the angle and resolution is bad, but I believe higher quality boards have shorter caps.
 
first time postin hardforum as a sentry contributor, first of all thnx for this well documented project and of course for this savage case.

I already put my old gaming rig to on sale this week, and waiting for the sentry and also upcoming am4 mini-itx boards. Although their release dates seem a little bit far for me, and of course there is always a chance of a software or hardware incompatibility issues like their big brothers, I started to thinking buying kaby lake and a h270 board. They just publish their new techs like optane memory and some other extra features on the intel boards making this decision so hard. Also I should clarify that I'm not gonna use sentry as a workstation, it's going to be my new gaming rig aka console killer, another fact is temps&power usage of the 7500 is great, and its very competitive against ryzen 1500/1600 in gaming.

so what do you think about kaby lake system just for gaming purposes?

Go for Kaby Lake if the primary use is gaming. It's pointless to compare the best Ryzen R5 6-core CPU with an i5-7500. If you want more fps, go for an i5-7600k or i7-7700k. Paying for performance that you *might* get with Ryzen over time just doesn't make sense. It also allows you to get a high-end ITX-board with every possible feature you might need.
 
Cheers, welcome!

Couple of points of note:

1) In a high end rig, there's zero point for Optane. It's basically a super speedy cashe, like SSDs were trying to be back when a 64GB SSD was $200. Intel has all but admitted that Optane is not for people who already have SSDs.

2) What kind of gaming are you going to be doing? Do you have a couple games that are what you tend to invest not hours, but weeks in? Are they well multi-threaded, or are they thirsty for single-core performance? On the flip side, do you always like playing the fresh new thing that seems to be coded specifically to cripple computers? These are the questions that will lead you to your answer.

I'm a competitive overwatch player but also I generally play AAA games and wanna play them at least 60fps@1080p. So, right now my plan is buying ryzen 1600 and gigabyte 1070 g1 gaming, this will probably meet my demands, but I'm still not sure about 1070's temperatures.
 
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Paying for performance that you *might* get with Ryzen over time just doesn't make sense. It also allows you to get a high-end ITX-board with every possible feature you might need.

I... I'm sorry, but come on. It's pointless to pay for performance that you might get in the future, so you should instead pay for features that you might possibly need in the future?



I'm a competitive overwatch player but also I generally play AAA games and wanna play them at least 60fps@1080p. So, right now my plan is buying ryzen 1600 and gigabyte 1070 g1 gaming, this will probably meet my demands, but I'm still not sure about 1070's temperatures.

Mnkay. Overwatch, like most Blizzard games, is super greedy when it comes to your CPU, and can use all the cores you feed it. Ryzen 1600 is definitely the way to go.

What exactly are you worried about, temperature wise? The 1070 is a fairly cool little GPU - it shouldn't throttle or anything like that. I would, however, strongly suggest a blower-style cooler like the founders' edition. You'll pump all the GPU's heat out the back of the case and will have a little bit more headroom to give the CPU more oomph.
 
I'm a competitive overwatch player but also I generally play AAA games and wanna play them at least 60fps@1080p. So, right now my plan is buying ryzen 1600 and gigabyte 1070 g1 gaming, this will probably meet my demands, but I'm still not sure about 1070's temperatures.
a 1060 is all you need for 1080p at 60 fps on all the modern games.
 
Hello, I'm testing my system in a fanless case to have more or less the climax of what temperatures I have in sentry. I am a bit alarmed because i use an i7-7700 (no k) and a noctua n9i with maximum fan rotation and the gaming cpu arrives at 70 degrees .. i am afraid that in the sentry maybe go on still some degree, it may be normal
 
Hello, I'm testing my system in a fanless case to have more or less the climax of what temperatures I have in sentry. I am a bit alarmed because i use an i7-7700 (no k) and a noctua n9i with maximum fan rotation and the gaming cpu arrives at 70 degrees .. i am afraid that in the sentry maybe go on still some degree, it may be normal

Check out our tests on i7-6700 with different coolers here:

https://hardforum.com/threads/sentr...-case-project.1832126/page-58#post-1042802888

CPU on NH-L9i was reaching 63 degree in heaven benchmark which is really nice considering that's max temp noted and from Skylake going up to 80 degrees is still safe as the max temp was increased for more boosting. i7-7700 should perform even better as Kaby Lake has fixes of some thermal issues that are present in Skylake.

If you have a ATX tower case with no fans and you're trying to figure out what temps you'll have in Sentry - it won't work. It's not representative and you just end up recycling hot air inside the case. In Sentry CPU cooler has almost direct access to fresh air and the hot air exhausted all around is easily escaping to the room.
 
i7-7700 / 1080 GTX Founders Edition combo is 100% not recommended. Is this correct?

Nope, it's likely to be a great solution, particularly since you're sticking with the founders' edition. Officially, Dr. Zaber says to use 250W cards at your own risk, but aside from a small chance of throttling, it theoretically works just fine. :)

Edit: derp. It's not even a 250w card. My bad.
 
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1080 is a 180W GPU, TI and Titans are 250W. 1080 should be okay as FE unit since it has vapor chamber, but other coolers may get loud and/or hot.
Good to know as that's my current config that will be going in the system.
Two quick questions:
1. Is there a specified ram height limitation? Could not find one on the Dr Zaber site. I'm going with Trident Z ram at the moment and the heat spreaders look a bit proud.
2. Is there an estimated shipping time to the US? I mean from when you package and ship it off. Just wanting to know ballpark if you think it would be a week or 3-4 weeks or anything like that.

Thanks for the updates and replies. You're doing it right.
 
1. Is there a specified ram height limitation? Could not find one on the Dr Zaber site. I'm going with Trident Z ram at the moment and the heat spreaders look a bit proud.

The memory compatibility is clearly written in the campaign webpage. This question was also answered many times in this topic. We will try to add this information also to main Sentry website.
Here is an info from indiegogo campaign:

"MEMORY COMPATIBILITY
Standard profile DIMM modules
max 31.4mm tall pcb/34mm with heatspreaders
Tall modules will obstruct hard drive bracket

"

2. Is there an estimated shipping time to the US? I mean from when you package and ship it off. Just wanting to know ballpark if you think it would be a week or 3-4 weeks or anything like that.

We can't really say how long will it take, because it is the first time we are sending something to the US with this company or with any other companies. We can only make some predictions. It shouldn't take longer than 6 weeks, but it can also be 3-4 weeks. We have to wait until first backers will receive their Sentrys. We are using National Post courier transport, which is quite cheap for what you get (insurance, tracking, confirmation of delivery), but it isn't the fastest way of shipping. You will have to be patient.
 
Is there a specified ram height limitation? Could not find one on the Dr Zaber site. I'm going with Trident Z ram at the moment and the heat spreaders look a bit proud.

This spec is in the campaign info. Tall heat spreaders will collide with hard drive bracket, but if you're going with M.2 SSD and don't need drives in central mount (like single 2.5" under blower GPU) you could use something like this, but you're still limited to space inside the case. RipJaws on the other hand have radiator oversized in the centre - I made the model according to the photo and dimensions and it looks like they should fit.

I've been looking through available memory and since I want to get single 16GB module that is at least 3200Mhz, it looks like I can get my hands only on this RipJaws module:

https://gskill.com/en/product/f4-3200c16s-16gvk

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I've made a model based on the image and checked it with total height of 42mm from its spec. It looks like it will fit with ~2.5mm of clearance:

BA5tZHD.png


I'll check that when ordering the parts for Ryzen 1700 build, but we still have to wait for the boards...
 
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8th week of Sentry manufacturing process


Before we move to our usual information about the progress we made this week in production of your Sentry case, we have one request:

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Please go to your indiegogo payment section and check if you wrote your phone number in your address field. To do that, log in to your indiegogo account, press your name in the top right corner and go to "My Contributions" panel. We found out that some of our backers didn't write it and because of that we won't be able to gave this information to our transport company, which may cause delays in delivering the package.


Here is an example of filling this field:
"Address: Street, house number, city, postal code, PHONE NUMBER".
You have a chance to write/change this information, until we will start shipping process!!! Thank you.



Ok. Now let's back to our standard procedure :)

Last time we mentioned we received first transport of body parts of black Sentry cases. Now we moved the transport containers from dark warehouse to our office for the quality control and it was easier to take a photo of what is waiting for us in the following week:


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We spent last 7 days mostly finishing accessory boxes for the first 150 Sentry cases. Here is the result:


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This week we want to finish assembling process of first black Sentry cases and start sending them to you. It means despite many external delays it looks like we are still proceding according to the original production plan:




What is more, yesterday we received first transport of unpainted elements for white Sentry units, so after our quality control we will send them to our paint shop. We hope we will get them back before our steel parts manufacturer will send us another transport of black cases (Thursday or Friday).


At the end we want to remind you again about filling in your phone number in your shipping address. This is really important!
 
Please go to your indiegogo payment section and check if you wrote your phone number in your address field. To do that, log in to your indiegogo account, press your name in the top right corner and go to "My Contributions" panel. We found out that some of our backers didn't write it and because of that we won't be able to gave this information to our transport company, which may cause delays in delivering the package.


Here is an example of filling this field:
"Address: Street, house number, city, postal code, PHONE NUMBER".
You have a chance to write/change this information, until we will start shipping process!!! Thank you.

I can't seem to find the phone number text field on the contribution page. Am I just appending it to my address by putting it in the address line 2 field?
 
Yeah, that's right.

It's an issue within indiegogo that not every country has a field for phone number - actually just a few have...

That's why we're asking you to fill out your phone number within address line because there's no size limit in those fields.
 
Yeah, that's right.

It's an issue within indiegogo that not every country has a field for phone number - actually just a few have...

That's why we're asking you to fill out your phone number within address line because there's no size limit in those fields.

Well that's dumb of them.

For shipping to the US, it's a little tricky. I have a field for:

Name
Address
Address Line 2 (optional)
City
State, Zipcode
Country


It makes most sense to put my phone number in Address Line 2, but that means it's just stuck in the middle of two crucial parts of my address - because us 'Mericans are too dumb to remember that we need more than just our streed address, so we're told to fill in each part individually. ;)

I could put my full address in the Address bar, but I don't know if that would be more or less confusing for the shippers...


EDIT: Here are a couple examples. Using the method I have at the moment, what the shippers will see is this:

John Doe,
123 Main Street
(999) 867-5309
Anytown,State, 55555
United States

The other method would look like:

John Doe,
123 Main Street, Anytown, State, 55555
(999) 867-5309
Anytown,State, 55555
United States
 
Well that's dumb of them.

For shipping to the US, it's a little tricky. I have a field for:

Name
Address
Address Line 2 (optional)
City
State, Zipcode
Country


It makes most sense to put my phone number in Address Line 2, but that means it's just stuck in the middle of two crucial parts of my address - because us 'Mericans are too dumb to remember that we need more than just our streed address, so we're told to fill in each part individually. ;)

I could put my full address in the Address bar, but I don't know if that would be more or less confusing for the shippers...

I put my phone number in the address 2 field. My hope is that the shippers are intelligent enough to recognize a phone number (which might be a little too optimistic) and to ignore it. I almost want to put something like, "PHONE NUMBER: xxx-xxx-xxxx" to be absolutely clear with what it is.

edit: Yeah I just added, "PHONE NUMBER: " in front of my phone number. If that isn't clear enough then I don't expect my package to arrive either way XD
 
Yeah, in the "Address" field, I put a comma after my street and house numer and put "PHONE NUMBER:" followed by my number. I hope that works.
 
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