SENTRY: Console-sized gaming PC case project

Just LOL... We just lost best ITX CASE 2016 at HardwareCanucks to this:

2.jpg





And while it looks like we were fairly disqualified for not releasing the case yet, it still is kind of huge WTF for me because the winning case is as big as one of my ATX builds from ages ago - Some of you might remember that one of the ATX specs has a reference design with PSU over the motherboard like this:

99017918_1.jpg


I've literally ran double dual core opteron x64 (on brink of quad core era) setup with dual GTX6600 running in SLI with both processors water cooled by something that had a tank-radiator combo with fans and whole thing taking two of the three 5" drive bays.

With that said, You could do literally the same thing with current tech, the difference would be 48 cores and 96 threads and water cooling looking and performing better...


Wasn't there any better real sff ITX out there this year?
 
SaperPL said:
Just LOL... We just lost best ITX CASE 2016 at HardwareCanucks to this:

2.jpg





And while it looks like we were fairly disqualified for not releasing the case yet, it still is kind of huge WTF for me because the winning case is as big as one of my ATX builds from ages ago - Some of you might remember that one of the ATX specs has a reference design with PSU over the motherboard like this:

99017918_1.jpg


I've literally ran double dual core opteron x64 (on brink of quad core era) setup with dual GTX6600 running in SLI with both processors water cooled by something that had a tank-radiator combo with fans and whole thing taking two of the three 5" drive bays.

With that said, You could do literally the same thing with current tech, the difference would be 48 cores and 96 threads and water cooling looking and performing better...


Wasn't there any better real sff ITX out there this year?
Click to expand...


My only thought was: where is Dan's case in this competition? He did release his pc-case, right?

My 2 cents about this video:
Both SENTRY and DAN A4-SFX are almost 4 times smaller than this Fractal Design Define Nano S. Even Ncase M1 is more than 2 times smaller than this case. It's like putting Mercedes Smart engine into Range Rover. You can, but why? :)
I think the contest was made not from the cases that are released, but from the cases HardwareCanucks got for reviews. That could explain why Dondan's case did not get into this competition.
 
Honourable mentions though eh? You guys beat out other cases even though you are technically disqualified.
 
My point is - what the hell happened to SFF market just a when we are getting more and more affordable mITX boards?

It simply means that big manufacturers are trying to shape the market into thinking this is what clients want by pushing such stuff for the reviews instead of thinking out of the box.
 
ZombiPL said:
My only thought was: where is Dan's case in this competition? He did release his pc-case, right?

My 2 cents about this video:
Both SENTRY and DAN A4-SFX are almost 4 times smaller than this Fractal Design Define Nano S. Even Ncase M1 is more than 2 times smaller than this case. It's like putting Mercedes Smart engine into Range Rover. You can, but why? :)
I think the contest was made not from the cases that are released, but from the cases HardwareCanucks got for reviews. That could explain why Dondan's case did not get into this competition.
Click to expand...

Only cases they reviewed are considered. They didn't get a dondan sample.
 
I think that dondan didn't want to repeat the mistake of nova/cerberus that was shipped last minute to hardwarecanucks and in effect this rushed review was mediocre and wasn't showing off any hardware inside the case. Anyway I'm not sure if A4-SFX wouldn't be disqualified as well since it wasn't delivered to the backers yet, or was it?

By the way: After checking out R9 Nano, I've installed the EVGA 1060 6GB SuperClocked inside with the CPU AIO Water Cooler.
It didn't fit out of the box - I had to remove the plastic shroud and replaced the small fan with Raijintek Aeolus Beta - I've asked EVGA to know if it voids the warranty before suggesting such config to you.

I wouldn't call this config silent/inaudible, but it's quiet like standard pc fans hum and it doesn't really go much louder under normal gaming load, but does go really loud when pushed to the limits at full synthetic load. I run quick Heaven test for 10 minutes and it stabilised at target 84 degrees with 1898MHz so it's kind of what we expected.

I'll try to find some time for photos and explanation of this build maybe after I finish up with the campaign content :)
 
SaperPL said:
Just LOL... We just lost best ITX CASE 2016 at HardwareCanucks to this:

2.jpg





And while it looks like we were fairly disqualified for not releasing the case yet, it still is kind of huge WTF for me because the winning case is as big as one of my ATX builds from ages ago - Some of you might remember that one of the ATX specs has a reference design with PSU over the motherboard like this:

99017918_1.jpg


I've literally ran double dual core opteron x64 (on brink of quad core era) setup with dual GTX6600 running in SLI with both processors water cooled by something that had a tank-radiator combo with fans and whole thing taking two of the three 5" drive bays.

With that said, You could do literally the same thing with current tech, the difference would be 48 cores and 96 threads and water cooling looking and performing better...


Wasn't there any better real sff ITX out there this year?
Click to expand...


Hardwarecanucks have no bias towards tiny systems which means that they analyze stuff from a general consumer's point of view. To be honest, we are a niche within a niche market, which means that though some of us can fork out $300 for an enclosure that can accommodate less things than a typical system a standard reviewer will criticize that part. Which is to be expected.

So, from a general pov a Fractal Nano is much better than your own design. For obvious reasons. In any case, I think that his photography and video-making are second to none. They made justice to your product, though their opinion about the screws is a bit "strange".

ZombiPL said:
My only thought was: where is Dan's case in this competition? He did release his pc-case, right?

My 2 cents about this video:
Both SENTRY and DAN A4-SFX are almost 4 times smaller than this Fractal Design Define Nano S. Even Ncase M1 is more than 2 times smaller than this case. It's like putting Mercedes Smart engine into Range Rover. You can, but why? :)
I think the contest was made not from the cases that are released, but from the cases HardwareCanucks got for reviews. That could explain why Dondan's case did not get into this competition.
Click to expand...

Dan didn't show his A4 to Dmitry (hardwarecanucks) because he was afraid that the same thing that happened with the Nova would happen to them. So they played the safe route, nothing else.

Also, they tell in the video that they are making tier based on their reviews of 2016. They do not consider products that haven't been reviewed.

SaperPL said:
My point is - what the hell happened to SFF market just a when we are getting more and more affordable mITX boards?

It simply means that big manufacturers are trying to shape the market into thinking this is what clients want by pushing such stuff for the reviews instead of thinking out of the box.
Click to expand...

Manufacturers do not try to shape anything. They simply play it safe. You, Dondan and NCASE makes the cases after getting paid. This is not what happens with retail brands. They have to put money first then wait for months until getting the returns. It is risky.

SaperPL said:
I think that dondan didn't want to repeat the mistake of nova/cerberus that was shipped last minute to hardwarecanucks and in effect this rushed review was mediocre and wasn't showing off any hardware inside the case. Anyway I'm not sure if A4-SFX wouldn't be disqualified as well since it wasn't delivered to the backers yet, or was it?

By the way: After checking out R9 Nano, I've installed the EVGA 1060 6GB SuperClocked inside with the CPU AIO Water Cooler.
It didn't fit out of the box - I had to remove the plastic shroud and replaced the small fan with Raijintek Aeolus Beta - I've asked EVGA to know if it voids the warranty before suggesting such config to you.

I wouldn't call this config silent/inaudible, but it's quiet like standard pc fans hum and it doesn't really go much louder under normal gaming load, but does go really loud when pushed to the limits at full synthetic load. I run quick Heaven test for 10 minutes and it stabilised at target 84 degrees with 1898MHz so it's kind of what we expected.

I'll try to find some time for photos and explanation of this build maybe after I finish up with the campaign content :)
Click to expand...

I must admit that the AIO inside the case looks VERY, VERY neat!
 
I have nothing against how HardwareCanucks reviewed our case or how it landed in the 'top 2016'. My point was that I couldn't believe there wasn't anything worth noting more than those two shrunk mainstream towers this year.

About shaping the market - most of clients will know if they want something AFTER you show it to them. And the thing is, big retail brands turn this peculiarity around to innovate in smaller, easier steps, like you said, for their safety and in this way they are trying to shape the market.

And I'm not sure if this is a bad thing for us either - If they push such products that could eventually let ITX overthrow ATX (because of SLI not being properly supported in games, universality of USB, integrated wireless, M.2 etc) then it's easier for other itx based form factors to expand.
 
SaperPL said:
I have nothing against how HardwareCanucks reviewed our case or how it landed in the 'top 2016'. My point was that I couldn't believe there wasn't anything worth noting more than those two shrunk mainstream towers this year.

About shaping the market - most of clients will know if they want something AFTER you show it to them. And the thing is, big retail brands turn this peculiarity around to innovate in smaller, easier steps, like you said, for their safety and in this way they are trying to shape the market.

And I'm not sure if this is a bad thing for us either - If they push such products that could eventually let ITX overthrow ATX (because of SLI not being properly supported in games, universality of USB, integrated wireless, M.2 etc) then it's easier for other itx based form factors to expand.
Click to expand...

They reviewed the Node 202 this year, i'm 99% sure. From a retail ITX case perspective, I would have thought that would win ITX case of the year easily. Weird that they would give best ITX case to something the size of a freaking VW microbus. lol
 
I was pretty sure as well, but I checked and... woah both node 202 and rvz02 released over year ago...
 
There are quite a few small ITX cases available that were released before 2016 and there are also upcoming cases like the Sentry and Dancases that should be released next year, but there doesn't seem to be any good sff case released in 2016.
 
SaperPL said:
I have nothing against how HardwareCanucks reviewed our case or how it landed in the 'top 2016'. My point was that I couldn't believe there wasn't anything worth noting more than those two shrunk mainstream towers this year.

About shaping the market - most of clients will know if they want something AFTER you show it to them. And the thing is, big retail brands turn this peculiarity around to innovate in smaller, easier steps, like you said, for their safety and in this way they are trying to shape the market.

And I'm not sure if this is a bad thing for us either - If they push such products that could eventually let ITX overthrow ATX (because of SLI not being properly supported in games, universality of USB, integrated wireless, M.2 etc) then it's easier for other itx based form factors to expand.
Click to expand...

That ain't shaping the market ;) To put it bluntly, maybe a % of the community has an itch for small systems but nobody releases anything worthwhile and, thus, nobody buys anything. But then, a product like yours appears and BINGO! Many people want it. Was that "market shaping"? No. You simply realised (by accident, or actual research) that people had several needs that weren't being fulfilled and you took advantatge.

Shaping the market, for instance, is what Apple is doing in its products that do not feature a 3,5mm jack. Why? Because you are supressing something that many people uses for no reason at all. You are forcing the market into that idea. You are shaping it. If anything because if you like Apple products you have no other choice than to buy stuff without the 3,5mm jack. There is no way around it.
 
I think you're both right.

So onto my little experiment with a LGA 2011 80mm x 80mm vapor chamber cooler on an LGA 1155 CPU socket.

Well the wooden version fit in terms of spacing from the CPU to the ram and CPU to the GPU connections just barely as well as the screws being a little slanted with plastic washers. However, when I tried to install the actual cooler it would not make a full connection due to the capacitors surrounding the CPU socket! Which further caused problems when I re-installed my cryorig C7 "incorrectly" those same capacitors would not allow a perfect seal so I was getting temps in the 60's at idle and 85's in light gaming. (I quickly re-installed it and am back to 32C and 60'ish C temps)

MB97bqnl.jpg

Bottom of cryorig C7, notice the middle is thicker/extends further to allow room for the capacitors.

R15_ISO_Bottom.jpg

Bottom of the Dynatron R15, it's one single flat base that does not allow room for the capacitors.


Zotac-H67ITX-U3-WiFi-Sandy-Bridge-Mini-ITX-Motherboard-Pixellized-3.jpg

Picture of my particular motherboard that has 3 capacitors near the socket that are a bit to tall for the Dynatron R15.

Next plan of action is to replace the capacitors with new ones! The old are 8mm x 8mm and the new will be 8mm x 6mm (diameter x length). So I will re-measure the space required under the cooler to see if a 6mm tall capacitor will fit, if not I plan to install them under the motherboard as there should be enough space with the motherboard standoffs.

I'm out on holiday so when I get back I'll provide pictures. Boy am I excited to see if the works and Merry Christmas everyone!

Edit: Added some photos from the Internet
 
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RosaJ said:
I think you're both right.

So onto my little experiment with a LGA 2011 80mm x 80mm vapor chamber cooler on an LGA 1155 CPU socket.

Well the wooden version fit in terms of spacing from the CPU to the ram and CPU to the GPU connections just barely as well as the screws being a little slanted with plastic washers. However, when I tried to install the actual cooler it would not make a full connection due to the capacitors surrounding the CPU socket! Which further caused problems when I re-installed my cryorig C7 "incorrectly" those same capacitors would not allow a perfect seal so I was getting temps in the 60's at idle and 85's in light gaming. (I quickly re-installed it and am back to 32C and 60'ish C temps)

MB97bqnl.jpg

Bottom of cryorig C7, notice the middle is thicker/extends further to allow room for the capacitors.

R15_ISO_Bottom.jpg

Bottom of the Dynatron R15, it's one single flat base that does not allow room for the capacitors.


Zotac-H67ITX-U3-WiFi-Sandy-Bridge-Mini-ITX-Motherboard-Pixellized-3.jpg

Picture of my particular motherboard that has 3 capacitors near the socket that are a bit to tall for the Dynatron R15.

Next plan of action is to replace the capacitors with new ones! The old are 8mm x 8mm and the new will be 8mm x 6mm (diameter x length). So I will re-measure the space required under the cooler to see if a 6mm tall capacitor will fit, if not I plan to install them under the motherboard as there should be enough space with the motherboard standoffs.

I'm out on holiday so when I get back I'll provide pictures. Boy am I excited to see if the works and Merry Christmas everyone!

Edit: Added some photos from the Internet
Click to expand...

If you want significantly reduce height you should use tantalum capacitors instead. However it will be a little bit tricky to mount them without smd soldering station.
Something like this one:
vishay0.png vishay1.png
 
prava - I have no idea how you linked our case with market shaping in my previous posts. I was talking about market shaping in context of releasing those mini towers...

RosaJ - nice job checking that out. Although before you go in and void the warranty of your board I would suggest to try some methods that others would be willing to use as well.
That'd be great for all of us :)

1) instead of replacing the capacitors I'd try going for some thick thermal pad

2) maybe you could get yourself a 2mm thick copper sheet and attach it to the radiator with some thermal glue - those are supposed to work better than normal compound, I think.

3) you could also try some Peltier/TEC between the cpu and radiator?
 
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SaperPL said:
3) you could also try some Peltier/TEC between the cpu and radiator?
Click to expand...

That's actually a really intriguing idea, especially because, from what I know about them, the hot side of Peltier coolers doesn't want to be super well cooled - the hotter it gets, the colder the other side can become.

The only thing that would concern me is that peltier coolers require their own power supply, don't they? Where would it fit?
 
darksable said:
That's actually a really intriguing idea, especially because, from what I know about them, the hot side of Peltier coolers doesn't want to be super well cooled - the hotter it gets, the colder the other side can become.

The only thing that would concern me is that peltier coolers require their own power supply, don't they? Where would it fit?
Click to expand...

your statement about peltiers is not entirely incorrect, but a key point is missing. As the hot sides gets warmer the cold side does as a well. The benefit you're talking about is the Delta in temperature between hot and cold. it does increase but not equally to the the increase in overall temperature.

If you increase the temperature of the hot side by say 10C, then the cold side incease by maybe 9C so overall you will be 9C warmer.
 
While tying loose ends (like with the AIO Water Cooling) I went through ALL CURRENT GENERATION GPUs and made a COMPATIBILITY SPREAD SHEET to simplify checking whether something may fit.

Spreadsheet is linked in the OP. Please comment here if you find any errors or you are unsure if something will really fit.
 
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QinX said:
your statement about peltiers is not entirely incorrect, but a key point is missing. As the hot sides gets warmer the cold side does as a well. The benefit you're talking about is the Delta in temperature between hot and cold. it does increase but not equally to the the increase in overall temperature.

If you increase the temperature of the hot side by say 10C, then the cold side incease by maybe 9C so overall you will be 9C warmer.
Click to expand...

Ahhh, okay. I was wondering how that worked; I haven't investigated peltier cooling all that much, and my notion probably shouldn't have made much sense to me. :p

I'd still be very interested in seeing if it would have any benefit here... Especially one that can run off of molex like SaperPL pointed out.

(EDIT: that spreadsheet is awesome and you should plaster it everywhere so there are fewer "will this fit" questions.)
 
SaperPL said:
1) instead of replacing the capacitors I'd try going for some thick thermal pad

2) maybe you could get yourself a 2mm thick copper sheet and attach it to the radiator with some thermal glue - those are supposed to work better than normal compound, I think.
Click to expand...

I've found both thermal pads (2mm thick) as well as copper "shinms" (little copper squares) what would be better? One thermal pad or one shim with a little thermal grease between the CPU and shim and between shim and cooler? I'd like to buy both but would have to purchase multiple pads if I'm to do a comparison test as I believe they're a one time use pad.



SaperPL said:
3) you could also try some Peltier/TEC between the cpu and radiator?
Click to expand...

Would this method cause any condensation?
I did some looking and some are only rated to certain temps so I'd have to be careful picking one.
 
That's cool tech! Though sadly nothing seems to have came about it as it's not for sale 4 years later.
 
CPU%20motherbord%20RAM%20meas_zpsr6fey734.png


So I found this gem that doyll posted a while back that shows the height of a CPU in a motherboard is about 8mm tall.

I measured my capacitors at 8mm tall and with the cooler not fitting leads me to believe that my seated CPU is a little under 8mm tall.

I'll have to wait till I get back and measure how tall the CPU actually is before buying pads and shims.
 
RosaJ said:
I've found both thermal pads (2mm thick) as well as copper "shinms" (little copper squares) what would be better? One thermal pad or one shim with a little thermal grease between the CPU and shim and between shim and cooler? I'd like to buy both but would have to purchase multiple pads if I'm to do a comparison test as I believe they're a one time use pad.
Click to expand...

I think that thermal pad will be worse than copper piece. What I meant earlier is that you could use thermal adhesive, not thermal grease. The thing that you buy when you want to attach radiators to GPU memory for example.

Those would be in this order:

radiator
thermal adhesive
copper square
thermal grease
CPU IHS

This could make copper square be a part of the radiator itself and you couldn't detach it afterwards. I think that thermal adhesive will work better than using thermal pad or grease because those two are temporary solutions and do not have the advantage of adhesive becoming really solid, but at the same time you would use grease when mounting on CPU anyway so adhesive might be better by itself but this cascade could end up being limited to performance of the grease below.

I'd wonder though if the thermal pad wasn't a good enough solution and it's worth trying before using adhesive.
 
SaperPL said:
While tying loose ends (like with the AIO Water Cooling) I went through ALL CURRENT GENERATION GPUs and made a COMPATIBILITY SPREAD SHEET to simplify checking whether something may fit.

Spreadsheet is linked in the OP. Please comment here if you find any errors or you are unsure if something will really fit.
Click to expand...

Good job on that! You keep making life easier for your future clientes, that is the way to go (y)

darksable said:
Ahhh, okay. I was wondering how that worked; I haven't investigated peltier cooling all that much, and my notion probably shouldn't have made much sense to me. :p

I'd still be very interested in seeing if it would have any benefit here... Especially one that can run off of molex like SaperPL pointed out.

(EDIT: that spreadsheet is awesome and you should plaster it everywhere so there are fewer "will this fit" questions.)
Click to expand...

You shouldn't consider a peltier at all. What it does, basically, is use electricity to move heat from one side of the thing to the other, but in the end you need to mechanically (with a fan) remove the heat anyway from the heatspreader or radiator, when talking about a computer aplication. So, they would only be useful if the thermal contact between the cpu and the heatspreader or radiator was bad, as in cpu-like scenarios a peltier basically acts as a conveyor belt. But one that uses a heck of a lot of power. Which is why for computers they are worst in 99% of the cases as not using one, because you end up with 100W of the cpu + 50W of the peltier to cool.

On the other hand, peltiers are good when you don't want to have moving parts and you want to create heat. But for heat-removing on components that have moving stuff they really make no sense. Which is why they aren't in use at all, even for high-performing systems.
 
Hey Saper and Zombie hope your holiday is going good, I saw the GPU compatibility table you added but I am still unsure if a blower or an open air is better in vertical position since no review I have seen compared the two options on the same card?

Is the 195$ price still on target and does that include the PCIe Riser?

How much would shipping to U.K. be?

I saw one of your posts where you said that you carry the Sentry with you in a bag as a daily driver what so the total weight with a system installed
 
Sasha Kiselev said:
Hey Saper and Zombie hope your holiday is going good, I saw the GPU compatibility table you added but I am still unsure if a blower or an open air is better in vertical position since no review I have seen compared the two options on the same card?
Click to expand...

Have you not seen YetAnotherTechChannel review? 1060 was tested in both versions - blower and open air in both configurations.

6HIG0KTl.png


In short - open air cooler may take advantage of being able pull a lot of fresh air when used on vertical stand.


Sasha Kiselev said:
Is the 195$ price still on target and does that include the PCIe Riser?
Click to expand...
Yeah, it is still on. And the riser is of course included as well.

Sasha Kiselev said:
How much would shipping to U.K. be?
Click to expand...

It looks like it might be something around $20 for UK, but we're still checking our options on shipping, so we can't say anything for sure now.

Sasha Kiselev said:
I saw one of your posts where you said that you carry the Sentry with you in a bag as a daily driver what so the total weight with a system installed
Click to expand...
It's something around 6 kilos depending on the hardware inside.
 
SaperPL said:
It's something around 6 kilos depending on the hardware inside.
Click to expand...

Thanks, that is very optimistic for my plans with the sentry. No I have not seen YetAnotherTechChannel, I think you added him to the front page recently. I only saw the LTT and Hardware Cannucs ones. What do you think on the subject of 2 vs 3 fans if it is an open GPU

If anyone is interested I modified the GPU compatibility spreadsheet for my own use and want to share it as well:

It Only has GTX 1070s and 1080s since that is what I assume most people would put in. I removed all incompatible ones. Removed identical ones, ie ones in different colour like EVGA ACX 3.0 SC Black Edition and factory OC ones like the MSI Aero. Also added a brief description of the cooler they use. And removed all Founders' Edition ones because they are identical and made by all companies.
 
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Nice way of embedding the spreadsheet - didn't know about that before.

As for your changes - making a list of only compatible cards misses the point because people will come and ask about those incompatible if those were checked if they won't see them on the list because, for example card might be newer then the list.

As for duplicate removal - we have to keep track of each unit because sometimes one sign in unit model id may mean different cooling and some vendors are even making two cards with same name while giving them two different coolers.
 
I am not offering for this to be the main list or even endorsed by you, I made it for my personal use but felt that if I shared it I could help some people out. The main sheet exists for such people and does contain incompatible ones. I only removed two duplicates which were the examples but you make a very fair point. EVGA probably has the biggest problem with this. GTX 1070 Gaming/ Gaming ACX 3.0/ SC Gaming ACX 3.0/Black Edition SC Gaming ACX 3.0 and Black Edition Gaming ACX 3.0. I don't know how I embedded it, I just copied the shareable link from Google Sheets, I think it is the forum formatting doing it's magic
 
SaperPL said:
Have you not seen YetAnotherTechChannel review? 1060 was tested in both versions - blower and open air in both configurations.

6HIG0KTl.png


In short - open air cooler may take advantage of being able pull a lot of fresh air when used on vertical stand.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry but your analysis misses the point.

In short - stick to blower-styled coolers in cases with no forced ventilation. With prolonged gaming sessions anything non-blower will make the case temperatures far worse than if it were a blower. You can test it yourself by playing for 4 hours or the like. And compare the temperatures of the case, cpu and hdd.
 
prava said:
I'm sorry but your analysis misses the point.

In short - stick to blower-styled coolers in cases with no forced ventilation. With prolonged gaming sessions anything non-blower will make the case temperatures far worse than if it were a blower. You can test it yourself by playing for 4 hours or the like. And compare the temperatures of the case, cpu and hdd.
Click to expand...
Thanks, do you have any input on which blower GPU is best or are they all the same? Also did anything come out of the discussions about CPU fans. I see a few option L9i with 12mm fan with 25mm fan, the C7, and the Scythe Kozuti
 
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Sasha Kiselev said:
Thanks, do you have any input on which blower GPU is best or are they all the same?
Click to expand...

The NVIDIA Founders edition blowers are, by far, the best ones in the market. The others... no idea, I'd wager they are more or less the same. I'd suggest you forget AMD this time because they aren't as efficient (regarding performance/wattage) nor they have such a good blower as NVIDIA has.

What should be noted is that the higher-end the gpu, the more power consumption it has, and the more heat it dumps. And the more heat it dumps, the more you want that heat out of the case, and thus the more you want to have a blower card. People buying a $200 case won't be putting low-end systems inside. Most people that spend lots of money on a case (and $200 is a big sum) will spend an appropriate amount on hardware. And the more expensive the hardware the more power hungry it is. And so on.

In the end, a fan in a case forces air in and out of said case, and thus it forces temperatures to equalise. On very tiny cases you have no such fans, so you rely on other means of ventilating the case. A blower card helps you three-fold:

a) Because it dumps most of its own heat out of the case.

b) Because it takes air from inside the case and forces it out. Air inside the case is always warmer than it is outside. So, it also helps other components by exhausting heat from the system outside.

c) Because, based on b, it forces fresh air inside the case by creating negative pressure.

On the other hand, non-blower cards simply take air from their surroundings, heat it up, and let it go inside the case again. Yes, a non-blower gpu will always be cooler than a blower one because its heatsink is more efficient. On the other hand, they require you to ventilate the case by other means, and if you do not do that 'cause you lack fans then they are much, much worse.

So, for standard systems I'd take non-blower unless aiming at 2 or 3 gpus. But for tiny systems like this I'd always go for reference, blower cards.
 
Asus blowers on their turbo line are very bad. Generally if you care about noise more than you care about temps, I recommend against blowers even for the most compact of cases.
 
RosaJ said:
That's cool tech! Though sadly nothing seems to have came about it as it's not for sale 4 years later.
Click to expand...
If you want a flat air-blower, then the Murata Microblower line may be suitable (though it emits axially rather than radially). If you want a radial piezoelectric blower and can tolerate bit being a bit thicker, there's the Synjet blowers
 
danger said:
Asus blowers on their turbo line are very bad. Generally if you care about noise more than you care about temps, I recommend against blowers even for the most compact of cases.
Click to expand...
I do not care about noise that much and I want to do a small BCLK OC on my 6400 so I think my CPU being cooler is a worthwhile trade off for a bit more noise
 
New here, plan to make my first build in the Sentry! Luckily I only found out about it recently, so I don't have to endure the huge wait :D.

Regarding GPU cooler styles, these videos are very interesting:





Both seem to support the blowers in both overall system temps and noise at the cost of slightly higher GPU temps. Obviously, neither of these cases are very similar to the Sentry, but their results are interesting nonetheless. It would be interesting to hear the Zaber guys' input on this--maybe blower is better for the vertical configuration as well as horizontal?
 
lhindir said:
New here, plan to make my first build in the Sentry! Luckily I only found out about it recently, so I don't have to endure the huge wait :D.

Regarding GPU cooler styles, these videos are very interesting:





Both seem to support the blowers in both overall system temps and noise at the cost of slightly higher GPU temps. Obviously, neither of these cases are very similar to the Sentry, but their results are interesting nonetheless. It would be interesting to hear the Zaber guys' input on this--maybe blower is better for the vertical configuration as well as horizontal?
Click to expand...



I heard an interesting analysis based on the Node 202 so I would assume it would apply here. AT default fan curve they both perform around equal in temp but air is quieter but further increases in fan speed help the blower much more than the air because at high fan speeds more air will travel through the blower but the open air will recycle more and more air at faster fan speeds
 
Saper, what is the approximate time frame after the campaign starts, ie how long will the campaign go on for, how long for manufacturing, how long for shipping and handling. Also are you planning to have a campaign be limited in the total of Sentrys sold or not?
 
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