SENTRY: Console-sized gaming PC case project

But Vega is at least (i don't believe so) 2 months later. The thing is I have a free sync monitor, do you it is worth the wait from getting the GTX 1080ti now ?

Do you have a gpu now? If you have nothing and don't want to wait you could get something cheap form ebay for $30 or whatever your budget allows. Then when Vega is released you can decide whether Nvidia or AMD is right for you. Since you have freesync I think amd would make sense. If you're already considering spending that much on a top tier you should realize that either will be a good performing gpu you just have to be willing to wait for AMD.
 
But Vega is at least (i don't believe so) 2 months later. The thing is I have a free sync monitor, do you it is worth the wait from getting the GTX 1080ti now ?
Based on current released specs of the developer version, VEGA will not perform better than the 1080ti so its a matter of price. I do believe VEGA wil be priced at around 500$ making it way cheaper than the 1080ti and thus the highest performance per dollar graphic card in the market. However, if you just want the best I believe 1080ti will be the best for a while and VEGA based on the specs we have so far is not aimed at beating it in raw game performance.

Do notice that the version that you are looking for will not be released any time soon. What they are releasing soon is the professional version for developers aimed at surpassing the titan X in performance. Like with the Ryzen line up. AMD knows they can't make a faster card than what NVIDIA provides so instead they will focus in adding more graphics memory by releasing a 16GB graphic card which is a massive change in the market if they manage to sell it cheaper than the titan x price of 1200$.
 
Based on current released specs of the developer version, VEGA will not perform better than the 1080ti so its a matter of price. I do believe VEGA wil be priced at around 500$ making it way cheaper than the 1080ti and thus the highest performance per dollar graphic card in the market. However, if you just want the best I believe 1080ti will be the best for a while and VEGA based on the specs we have so far is not aimed at beating it in raw game performance.

Do notice that the version that you are looking for will not be released any time soon. What they are releasing soon is the professional version for developers aimed at surpassing the titan X in performance. Like with the Ryzen line up. AMD knows they can't make a faster card than what NVIDIA provides so instead they will focus in adding more graphics memory by releasing a 16GB graphic card which is a massive change in the market if they manage to sell it cheaper than the titan x price of 1200$.
I do agree on the speculation that Vega's gaming performance might be worse than gtx 1080ti but then I have a 4k LG monitor and it has freesync also I learned that 4K impacts heavily on frame rate and it is better to have either G-sync or Freesync, which makes me dying waiting for Vega *sigh*
BTW beside Biostar, is there any manufacturer plans to release am4 mini-itx ?
 
Yall need to stop taking what I say personal. <.< I wasn't subtly pointing fingers or being passive aggressive, just trying to give our dudes in Poland a pick me up or something.
 
Sorry for asking but if my order id is 1048, when will I receive my sentry ? Estimate the day is ok too because if it arrives late then i will wait for vega rather than buy gtx 1080ti. Thanks !

1080ti won't fit in a Sentry AFAIK. It has a huge PCB. Check measurements with the Sentry GPU compatibility chart.
 
1080ti won't fit in a Sentry AFAIK. It has a huge PCB. Check measurements with the Sentry GPU compatibility chart.
About a page back a guy alredy tested a founders edition in his Sentry and fit perfectly. He had no issues. The Gigabyte 1080ti should fit fine too.
 
I'm not sure if you guys are updated with dondans cooler thread but he already posted pictures of the first prototype coolers that very likely will fit on the Sentry making them the best performing cpu coolers at a premium price.This plus noctua new 120mm by 15mm fan will be amazing for the Sentry.

Update: Here are some shots directly from the CoolJag factory of the DAN HSLP-48. The samples are ready to ship:

1igj4t.jpg


2avjjr.jpg


3a5jh4.jpg


4vxk57.jpg


They inluded a 100m fan for testing I can select if I want it or not.
 
Rysen
Great, but the PWM vesrion of the fan not the FLX you provided in the link up.
So this one:
http://noctua.at/en/products/fan/nf-a12x15-pwm
Also dont forget that you need a low profile DDR4 ram if you wanna use the 120mm fan with this cooler, and maybe some motherboard modifications (replacing the MOSFETS heatsink with a low profile one, etc).
But it is all easy and doable ;)
 
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I'm not sure if you guys are updated with dondans cooler thread but he already posted pictures of the first prototype coolers that very likely will fit on the Sentry making them the best performing cpu coolers at a premium price.This plus noctua new 120mm by 15mm fan will be amazing for the Sentry.

We are always waiting for an independent, objective judgement from final users. Life tought us to not believe in all such marketing talking. When "the smallest gaming case in the world" isn't the smallest, "perfect product" isn't perfect (f.e. missing components like cover for "GPU hole", questions from A4 users about how to drill a big hole because their high-end CPU's are boiling in the case or fans are extremely loud) you should ask yourself if you also should believe in such "big" words. "Best performing cpu cooler" is a slogan probably written (in this or similar form) on almost all cpu-coolers boxes we tested for you in Sentry and most of them were performing badly. It would be great if such cpu cooler would be as good as advertised, but you should wait until other people will get it and test it. This is also why we stopped answering people how this, that and that CPU or GPU will perform in Sentry, and we are sending them to you guys in [H]ard forum to get the most objective answers... from the real users. We don't see a point making claims which aren't true and can be quickly verified.

We will wait for some objective tests to make our judgement for this cpu-cooler. If it will be so great and it will fit in Sentry, we will will be recommending it to our pc-cases users. But if it will be as good as "A4 is the smallest gaming pc case in the world", well....:)
 
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CableMod cables arrived! It probably helps that I live in Japan and they shipped from Hong Kong... I installed the cables in my dying RVZ02 (dying from lack of travel compatibility, front plastic snapped right off). I'm pleased with the lengths I ordered (See here).

250mm 24 pin and 300mm 8 pin EPS seem about perfect lengths. SATA power should be right on the money in the Sentry as well. See pic:
IMG_8071 (2).jpg


GPU power cable at 200mm barely fit (Sentry is a little smaller than the RVZ02 so I should be perfect here):
IMG_8074 (2).jpg


Overall I'm liking the purchase, and the cables are MUCH more flexible than the stock stiff Silverstone ribbons.

EDIT: I noticed that in the Sentry the PSU is more offset (power further away from the 24 pin and EPS), I wouldn't want to go any shorter on cables with my setup. See here:
DSC_1306zzz.JPG

IMG_8075 (1).jpg
 
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CableMod cables arrived! It probably helps that I live in Japan and they shipped from Hong Kong... I installed the cables in my dying RVZ02 (dying from lack of travel compatibility, front plastic snapped right off). I'm pleased with the lengths I ordered (See here).

250mm 24 pin and 300mm 8 pin EPS seem about perfect lengths. SATA power should be right on the money in the Sentry as well. See pic:


GPU power cable at 200mm barely fit (Sentry is a little smaller than the RVZ02 so I should be perfect here):


Overall I'm liking the purchase, and the cables are MUCH more flexible than the stock stiff Silverstone ribbons.

EDIT: I noticed that in the Sentry the PSU is more offset (power further away from the 24 pin and EPS), I wouldn't want to go any shorter on cables with my setup. See here:

Looking good! (I love those white SATA cables.)

That's the MSI z270i Gaming Pro Carbon, right?

For those of us with different plans, I did a (very rough) visual estimate comparing the locations of power connectors on that board vs. the two other likely contenders, the Asus ROG Striz z270i gaming and the AsRock z270M-itx/ac.

The Strix has the 24-pin in the exact same place as the MSI board, but it's CPU power is on the other side of the heatsink there, so anybody ordering cables should probably allow another 50mm at the minimum.

For those of us going with the AsRock option, it's pretty much the same story - the 24-pin is at the fairly-well standard location on the edge of the board by the RAM, but the 8-pin CPU header is even closer to the I/0 - I would probably order a 400mm EPS cable just for safety's sake.
 
missing components like cover for "GPU hole"

questions from A4 users about how to drill a big hole because their high-end CPU's are boiling in the case or fans are extremely loud

please elaborate these 2 comments more simply, so i know which case to buy
 
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We are always waiting for an independent, objective judgement from final users. Life tought us to not believe in all such marketing talking. When "the smallest gaming case in the world" isn't the smallest, "perfect product" isn't perfect (f.e. missing components like cover for "GPU hole", questions from A4 users about how to drill a big hole because their high-end CPU's are boiling in the case or fans are extremely loud) you should ask yourself if you also should believe in such "big" words. "Best performing cpu cooler" is a slogan probably written (in this or similar form) on almost all cpu-coolers boxes we tested for you in Sentry and most of them were performing badly. It would be great if such cpu cooler would be as good as advertised, but you should wait until other people will get it and test it. This is also why we stopped answering people how this, that and that CPU or GPU will perform in Sentry, and we are sending them to you guys in [H]ard forum to get the most objective answers... from the real users. We don't see a point making claims which aren't true and can be quickly verified.

We will wait for some objective tests to make our judgement for this cpu-cooler. If it will be so great and it will fit in Sentry, we will will be recommending it to our pc-cases users. But if it will be as good as "A4 is the smallest gaming pc case in the world", well....:)


Sorry ZombiPL I don't know what your problem is.... I try to develop the best heatsink in never said it is the best because I have to test it. This is the first sentence of the thread "This time I try to develop the best CPU heatsink under 50mm." and for the thread name I choose "A powerful sub 50mm heatsink" so where is your problem? At the end not I will give this trophy the reviewers will do it if the product is as good as expected.


And also I don't get your problem with my slogan "the smallest gaming case in the world". Yes it isn't the smallest from all cases, but in the class full size gpu + internal PSU it is the smallest. A little example: If you try to buy the smallest car and one car is only smaller if you remove the tire do you really think this car is the smallest?


I never said that the A4 is perfect, I only said: "This case is perfect for SFF (Small Form Factor) enthusiasts, those who need..." Also the GPU cover was not missing on the first version because I missed to add it. I made my decision against it because I don't saw the benefit.


ZombiPL said:
questions from A4 users about how to drill a big hole because their high-end CPU's are boiling in the case or fans are extremely loud)

Please take a look at the temp results, this means you have to drill a much bigger hole in the Sentry ;)

 
Sorry ZombiPL I don't know what your problem is.... I try to develop the best heatsink in never said it is the best because I have to test it. This is the first sentence of the thread "This time I try to develop the best CPU heatsink under 50mm." and for the thread name I choose "A powerful sub 50mm heatsink" so where is your problem? At the end not I will give this trophy the reviewers will do it if the product is as good as expected.


And also I don't get your problem with my slogan "the smallest gaming case in the world". Yes it isn't the smallest from all cases, but in the class full size gpu + internal PSU it is the smallest. A little example: If you try to buy the smallest car and one car is only smaller if you remove the tire do you really think this car is the smallest?


I never said that the A4 is perfect, I only said: "This case is perfect for SFF (Small Form Factor) enthusiasts, those who need..." Also the GPU cover was not missing on the first version because I missed to add it. I made my decision against it because I don't saw the benefit.




Please take a look at the temp results, this means you have to drill a much bigger hole in the Sentry ;)


Go away. Complain about them in your own thread, that you already have going. We have enough clutter here with people begging for cases most of us don't even have yet.

I couldn't careless if you think under a technicality your case is smaller. Woo hoo. Take it somewhere else please....
 
missing components like cover for "GPU hole"

questions from A4 users about how to drill a big hole because their high-end CPU's are boiling in the case or fans are extremely loud

dondan

please elaborate these 2 comments more simply, so i know which case to buy
 
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please elaborate these 2 comments more simply, so i know which case to buy

i'm not a tech, and its confusing

please use a simpler explanation

Zombi is quite far away from being online so I'll respond to that. Zombi is teasing dondan about using big quantifiers (best, fastest, smallest, maximum etc) in his marketing :)

dondan is talking about perfection being what they do at dancases in thread about his custom cooling while at the same time he has to make some improvements to make the V2 campaign on kickstarter, therefore the V1 wasn't perfect, at least about some basic stuff like the cover on the GPU mounting :)

The philosophy of DAN Cases is to offer perfect products

What zombi is mostly picking on is the slogan "world's smallest gaming case" that dondan uses which is a big quantifier that makes the whole sentence not entirely true. There's a reason why carlsberg uses "probably best beer in the world" in their slogan to soften the big quantifier. If you look at A4-SFX from this perspective and analyse if it's really true:

1) the size itself will depend on how you are calculating volume. With precise volume calculated, Sentry will be smaller, because the feet aren't adding too much volume and there's calculating the outline box that doesn't really represent the case size in terms of aesthetic feel of the case, where A4-SFX is slightly smaller.

2) there are smaller cases that are "gaming cases" - NFC S4-Mini is significantly smaller, BUT it requires external laptop psu, but it's still a gaming case. You can also take into account some prebuilt pcs that have custom motherboards that are smaller than both sentry and A4-SFX. You can also play some e-sport titles or indie games quite well on intel's integrated iris pro, so there's also that you might not need a dGPU to have a "gaming" pc :)

If this sentence were to be true, it would be something like: "smallest gaming case in the world with internal PSU and dedicated graphics support that lets you play most recent AAA titles on high details in 1080p, by calculating the volume of box made by max dimensions" etc.


As for the part about people talking about modding their A4-SFX to cool it off - we'd have to backtrack the precise talk in those hundreds of posts, but the whole situation with making a custom low-profile cooler for the users of A4-SFX has its source in either bad design or bad advertising of the case. Such small cases have their limits and dondan promoted (didn't properly warn about consequences) it as it works properly with anything that fits which isn't really true.

Apart from that, there is IMO a big flaw in the design of A4-SFX, regardless of how beautiful it is, which is the area between the motherboard and GPU where also long riser resides. First of all both motherboard and GPU radiate some of the heat through their backs. Motherboard less, but centred around the socket, GPU more, but in standard case there's always some airflow at the back of the card either from the fans moving air front to back or the cpu fan itself. We will see how long those risers will survive there without problems.

If I understand correctly, the pci-e bus is heavily error-resistant, but at the same time errors in transmission mean re-sending the packets over the buss thus dropping the performance. Riser such long when heated from the two sides may increase the error rate in the transmission and to know whether it's really safe we should run tests with pci-e bus error logging low (if somehow possible) and fps 0.1 percent that are becoming popular now...

Please take a look at the temp results, this means you have to drill a much bigger hole in the Sentry ;)

As for this test, there's no info about methodology or clocks/throttling and the temperature was measured at "exhaust" instead of logging from the system. GPUs should heat up to their target temperature with turbo boost and getting lower temps means there's a bottleneck somewhere, either power limit or CPU is bottlenecking the GPU and once again we don't know the clocks from this test.

Don't get me wrong - we love LTT videos, but recently as they keep growing, their content gets less and less precise and feel "more mass produced".

At the same time I can understand the fact that Linus may be "biased" towards A4-SFX as it is indeed something that feels closer to being mass produced case than Sentry as it uses mostly standard solutions that are common in case manufacturing. I'd love to see A4-SFX as mass produced case branded by LianLi because that would mean it is indeed good design chosen by experienced chassis manufacturer :)
 
Zombi is quite far away from being online so I'll respond to that.

also, question - is there any size fan that will fit in Sentry, above its motherboard ??

the reason i'm asking is that 1 of the main differences, between a NFC Systems S4 Mini and Sentry, is that the S4 Mini can fit 120mm fans above its motherboard
 
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i'm not a tech, so you're confusing me

please elaborate the above more simply

what in the form of an extremely simple explanation, does this " GPU hole " and/or " GPU cover " refer to ???

"GPU hole cover" is the piece that closes the hole above the pci bracket at the back of the case. A4-SFX V1 didn't have that:

C4TuQoDWIAAl6iW.jpg


note the hole in the back of the case above the screws keeping the pci slot covers.

It's nothing crucial, but Zombi teases dondan about his "perfectionism" vs reality :)

also, question - is there any size fan that will fit in Sentry, above its motherboard ??

the reason i'm asking is that 1 of the main differences, between a NFC Systems S4 Mini and Sentry, is that the S4 Mini can fit 120mm fans above its motherboard

You could fit some slim fans above the motherboard if you use low profile cpu cooler, but there are no dedicated mounting holes for that. S4 Mini REQUIRES some kind of induced airflow because you have to cool down the HD-PLEX.
 
There's a google spreadsheet with quite a lot of temps from A4-SFX and people were talking about multiple solutions between frankensteining parts of multiple coolers together, deliding the cpu and drilling holes to mount additional fans, I believe.

For Sentry we've made recommendations of wattage and we've tested according to those, but for the wide spread of test results in different configs you'll have to wait until more people get the cases delivered.
 
There's a google spreadsheet with quite a lot of temps from A4-SFX and people were talking about multiple solutions between frankensteining parts of multiple coolers together, deliding the cpu and drilling holes to mount additional fans
weblink ??
 
weblink ??
Looks like the spreadsheet made by A4-SFX user was removed... maybe dondan has a copy.

what in the form of an extremely simple explanation, does the above refer to ??
I think you could get it from the context... It's not that technical

People are looking for proper solution for CPU cooling in A4-SFX therefore it's either bad design making the CPUs run really hot or bad advertising meaning people think (were led to believe) they can safely put inside everything that fits which is not true.
 
Elitist1 SaperPL think I develope a own heatsink (Link to topic) because I designed the A4-SFX bad or a advertise it stronger in cooling performance than it is.

But this is wrong I do it because there is room of improvements (better temps or same temps with less noise) in the ITX heatsink market. So if I succeed also Sentry user will have benefit of it, because i designed it to fit in both cases.
 
Elitist1 SaperPL think I develope a own heatsink (Link to topic) because I designed the A4-SFX bad or a advertise it stronger in cooling performance than it is.

But this is wrong I do it because there is room of improvements (better temps or same temps with less noise) in the ITX heatsink market. So if I succeed also Sentry user will have benefit of it, because i designed it to fit in both cases.

so you're saying in its most basic form, that A4-SFX's cooling was already good, but that your new heatsink tries to make it " EVEN BETTER " ???
 
Elitist1 SaperPL think I develope a own heatsink (Link to topic) because I designed the A4-SFX bad or a advertise it stronger in cooling performance than it is.

But this is wrong I do it because there is room of improvements (better temps or same temps with less noise) in the ITX heatsink market. So if I succeed also Sentry user will have benefit of it, because i designed it to fit in both cases.

I agree there's always place for improvements in terms of cooling, but better tell the man what happened to the spreadsheet that Shaav made in your topic with 90+ degrees Celsius temps that users gathered on CPU at load (if you know). I haven't read everything there, nor I had the reason to make a backup of that sheet :)
 
Maybe Shaav got a very bad 7700k with bad attached TIM also the list includes Prime95 temps that are much higher as normal usage. If i read through the comments the most users are happy with the results. As for myself i run a six core i7 and I never see temps over 70°C on it while gaming. As I know there was some users that ecpected more oc room but this case wasn't designed for oc.
 
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Good grief, you guys. Chill.

There's not been a heatsink made for a 48mm height that takes good advantage of all that height. There are now two successful cases that have that height limitation, and for whatever reason, dondan is making a cooler designed for that exact limitation.

Let's just be happy a hole is being covered, and focus on the strengths of two nice SFF cases that cover different scenarios, eh? We're dealing with cases that are pushing the limits of size - of course there are gonna be a couple hitches with cooling. It's part of the reason I went with a 60w chip.
 
Looking good! (I love those white SATA cables.)

That's the MSI z270i Gaming Pro Carbon, right?
Thanks, yeah I think the white cables will really look good in my white Sentry too. And yes that's the MSI z270i Gaming Pro Carbon.
 
Unfortunately i do not have much time to keep up with this thread...but how do we know our order was shipped, do we get an email notification?
 
Unfortunately i do not have much time to keep up with this thread...but how do we know our order was shipped, do we get an email notification?
Yep, exactly. It'll be either from your local courier or from the Dr. Zaber team, depending on your country; if you think you should have it but don't, there's a small chance it's in your spam box.
 
As a backer of both cases, I'm not really a fan of the last few pages. Or the weird witch-hunt that killed Hahutzy (or whatever happened).

I didn't seem to get through to dondan so I don't think his need to pound his chest in a thread about a different case will end. His childish need to defend his projects at every turn is exceptionally annoying.

I don't want to see any more completed builds, give me more semantics Dondan!
 
As a backer of both cases, I'm not really a fan of the last few pages. Or the weird witch-hunt that killed Hahutzy (or whatever happened).

Yeah, things have been a little weird all around. Don't forget Ncere and Wahaha at each other's throats and then brushing it aside as butting heads, everybody leaping on the Ghost team (which I was part of, I admit, though I maintain my criticism was valid), or that post (I believe from a non-native speaker?) who wanted a million dollars to build a factory and start manufacturing sff graphics cards...

Seems like everybody's been going slightly crazy recently.
 
I think all this back and forth criticism is actually constructive. There are certain limitations that people need to be aware of for all small cases and I do feel that some of the A4 advertisement was and still is a bit flashy unlike the Sentry team method which were a bit more cautious and rational. For example the discussion of size is not very factual and takes into account variables that are not actually relevant. Like SaperPL said you can't include the legs and measure them as a box because the legs are not shaped as a box and actually occupy very little physical volume and counting air space as part of the case is ridiculous because if the A4 had walls blocking any of its vents it will also perform poorly. However, dondan testing work has been impressive specially for the SFF community. In fact when I started looking into how I would go about building on the Sentry and what parts I needed the best results and through testing came from forum posts of dondan testing and his customer's results. He has put a lot of effort into his work and I believe that this new cooler he is building will be the best cooler for the Sentry. Notice that this is my own personal belief and in no way was that endorsed by dondan in the cooler's thread. I think that might have caused confusion from my comment quoting dondan's images. He did not state it would be the best CPU cooler under 48mm, in fact he clearly states his goal is to have a difference of 15 degrees in temperature over the other widely available solutions (lp53 ect.) Regardless what is certain is that the new cooler dondan is building might open new possibilities for the Sentry in terms of performance. I will back dondan's effort as much as I can and I hope that other Sentry enthusiast will do the same.
 
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