SENTRY 2.0: Evolution of console-sized gaming PC case

They used to support it on lower end gpu and apu back during the HD7xxx days. Idk about Polaris and Vega though. Honestly anything more than an RX560 and the integrated graphics would just slow down the dedicated graphics card. Especially a Vega 56 or something like that. Maybe if you have a 2400G and an rx550. That's about the only amd gpu that needs a boost.

 

No crossfire at all. I just happen to come up with a NANO 56 with no where else to mount it but in the sentry

I use mine as an HTPC Kodi also. Hows the ambient temp in the GPU area with just the drives? Mine get fairly toasty. Before adding the GPU i had my M.2 mounted inside a PCIe heatsink and added a PCIe blower to cool that section down.

https://imgur.com/a/ng4ozmp

After adding the Nano 56

https://i.imgur.com/JIKU1Sm.jpg?1

 

I am really really interested in getting this case when the new 2.0 version is released. I've even already started purchasing parts to convert my setup into a SFF build.

I just wanted to see if anyone who already has this case has similar components as I do and could confirm that the system temps are O.K.?

I have:
Intel i5 7600K (stock speed)
Noctua L9i CPU Cooler
GeForce G1 Gaming GTX 1080 (stock speed)

I don't plan on overclocking anything. Can anyone please advise on what I can expect in terms of temps?

Thanks!

 

Did you paint it white yourself?

 

It should all fit. According to gigabyte the g1 gaming is 114mm tall. You may have a little difficulty squeezing the 8pin power connector in but you should be good.

Temps should be alright. I have a 4790k and previously a 1080FE (sold it to miners for profit). My 4790k is delidded with liquid metal and I used the Thermolab LP53 cpu cooler which is definitely better than the nh-l9i. If you stick with the Noctua you'll want high end thermal paste like Cryonaut (non conductive) and potentially and slight undervolt. But it should be perfectly manageable.

 

I actually have the LP53 cooler and the Noctua L9i FAN, which I plan on jerryrigging together. Forgot to mention that. Thanks for the peace of mind. Now I just need to get my hands on one of these...

 

It's worth noting gpu manufacturers measure their cards in different ways so I could be wrong on the g1 gaming being able to fit. But you can go to the original sentry website where they have a gpu diagram of limitations. You can measure your card and compare. I assume v2.0 will have almost identical gpu limitations.

 

No this is version 1.1 which came white.

 

Can I still purchase it anywhere?

 

Ebay if someone is selling theirs.

 

Mine is still available.

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dr-Zaber-S...ber+Sentry&_from=R40&rt=nc&_trksid=m570.l1313

I wanted a white one sir.

 

You can always get a black one, strip it and then paint it. Or pay a professional to do that for you.

 

We have been stuck on trying to figure out whether we should try to support 52 mm AIO package (27 mm radiator with 25 mm fan) and how to do it for a bit.

The problem with that is, we would have to move the center rail up above the radiator and fan while making sure the screws holding the riser and 2.5" hdd bracket will not go up as well, because that would limit 2.5" compatibility significantly.

We have spent significant amount of time this year simplifying the center rail to make it easier to manufacture and lighter (as visible in the photo galleries) and modifying it to support 52 mm AIO package would make it over complicated once again.

We also do not want one configuration that is not necessarily going to be a mainstream one to affect whole construction in such significant way. Most likely mainstream configurations will have a full length GPU instead of AIO + itx-sized one.

Because of that, we have decided to figure out first if that 50 mm AIO limit is actually a problem and if using slim fan with 27 mm radiator (which is most common among 120 mm AIOs) will be terrible or not.

We have done series of tests this week with Corsair Hydro H75 paired up with 20 mm thick DEEPCOOL GS120 SLIM adding up to a 47 mm package. We have tested three AM4 CPUs with different TDPs: R7 1700/R5 2600X/R7 2700X. Tests were done during two cloudy/overcast days with 25~27°C ambient temperature.

We have decided to compile captured footage with temps and clocks tracking instead of compiling data into charts because we feel like it will give you a better understanding how components behave while playing games rather than when looking at raw data.

Here's the video:



General outcome of those tests is that making support for 52 mm is NOT necessary.

Additional notes on such configuration with 120 mm AIO liquid cooling:

- Using standard profile memory sticks is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED. It is really tight with two RipJaws sticks, USB 3.0 cables, 24-pin connector and the tubes at the same spot.

- It gets really messy with cables between the PSU, radiator and power switch. It is not a configuration recommended to everyone.

- Modular PSUs have stiff ribbon cables out of the box and those make it really hard to handle around the power switch.

- 2700X with its 105W TDP works okay in games but when fully loaded with video or 3d rendering it gets hot really quick. I think it is not something that should be cooled off with a single slim fan.

 

I know probably answered somewhere but you guys try the 92mm AIO?

 

Asetec 545LC has a 35 mm thick radiator according to Necere's measurements on SFF: https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/asetek-92mm-aio-measurements-needed.2693/#post-54302

It is already tight for tube bending between the 27 mm thick radiator and the cover and going higher by 8 mm wouldn't really help. Note that there are connectors for the tubes sticking out of the radiator that are inside the tube ends.

Also I think that a 92 mm LQ radiator with a single slim fan is a bit counter productive if you can do the same size of radiator directly on the CPU - you're just delaying the heating up of the CPU by water volume in the tubes. You have to have thick 92 mm fans for it to make more sense.

 

Here's another update on the performance with additional configurations - with AIO in horizontal orientation and with NH-L9i in vertical orientation. Horizontal orientation on the latter will be made as soon as possible, I didn't have enough time to capture all footage for it. First video also here to simplify things. EDIT: Added last video






I have to explain my reasoning behind giving you this test data as captured footage rather than combining them into charts with idle/avg/max temps. I know this is boring as hell to watch all of this and I know comparing one to another (AIO vs air, vertical vs horizontal) will not be perfectly easy.

First of all compiled data doesn't show exactly how the hardware behaves. If I were to record max temps reached, those will show the spikes when cooling didn't catch up to the increase load yet.

Second thing is the fact that charts don't show how temperatures correlate to the load and clocks. This is especially important in terms of GPU because a lot of people don't get how turbo boost works and will take a single number from all of the data without understanding the correlation and base their opinion on that single number, and what can be even worse will pick their hardware based on that.

So this way, by having all the footage with all required data shown on top of it, almost "frame by frame" you can run the same benchmark on your own system and see how it correlates to that. It also helps us do the same thing - we can get back to this captured footage and see how it behaves in specific workload etc.

Finally compiled performance data will definitely come with reviews anyway, but those won't show you this kind footage like we are releasing here.

I hope that's fair enough explanation for this way of doing it.


Getting to some basic analysis of the tests and what you can and should take a note of:

1) Ryzen 7 2700X shows temp 10°C higher to shift fan curve up and speed up the fan. I only realised this after capturing the footage and it seems to be riva tuner statistic server not handling this exception. Core Temp shows 10 degree lower temp that is usually matching what 2600X has at the same desktop workload. If you take that 10 degree difference into account, it actually shows that 2700X is often slightly cooler than 2600X on the same workload because the fan is spinning faster at this point.

2) There are timestamps in each video description. Ashes of Singularity is a good test to see how CPU intensive workloads perform.

3) Take note of GPU load and temperature when seeing turbo clocks of 1800+ MHz and when seeing base 1607 MHz clock.

4) All tests were made without VSync meaning there was no FPS limitation on the workload. If you are using a 60 Hz 1080p panel to play games with VSync then your load will be limited and you will get lower temps.

5) In horizontal position limited access to fresh air for both GPU and AIO will heat up the GPU faster to target temperature of 80 degrees and it will really quick drop down clock to base 1607 MHz.

6) With 105W TDP CPU AIO may bleed hot air to GPU in horizontal position with CPU intensive workloads.

7) Youtube annotations are not supported anymore and therefore there's a note in form of poll attached to each video.

 

Just wanted to chime in and say I'm really excited for this, love all the changes and enhancements you guys are doing and how you're interacting so much with the community. You guys rock.

Will certainly be buying V2.0 (and then will have a white V1.1 to sell if anyone wants it!)

 

A little update: We have finalised documentation for prototype 2 this week. It took so much time because of two things:

I needed to thoroughly test the prototype 1 and figure out what needs to be fixed/reworked for prototype 2. Apart from obvious precision/manufacturing issues that were visible right away on first checkups and we knew what to do with them, there were few design decisions that we've debated over and over for some time before we came to final conclusions on how to approach them.

Secondly our company had quite a few big projects piled up whole summer to the point where Zombi was hardly at home for quite long and didn't have time to get through all changes in cad files and update documentation for next prototype until this week.

With updated designs it seems like we should done with redesigns if one of the manufacturing issues is resolved and if this second prototype doesn't show new unexpected issues/challanges (it shouldn't though, changes weren't that significant). At this point we are really satisfied with what we have in terms of design for chassis body and what's left is to finish prototyping, do a prototype batch to make sure we have repeatability and to make some review samples. Meanwhile we will also have to finalise designs for the boxes so we can pack review samples and prepare some tooling required for full scale production.

We'll place order for prototype 2 this week and we hope to get it done by the end of the month (low priority for single unit once again), but if we get that and it'll be final without issues, we'll order batch of 25~50 bodies and it should have higher priority than a single prototype, but we'll have to go through all of them to check quality and this takes time as well. So hopefully we'll be shipping review samples at the end of the year.

By the way: I have compiled and uploaded remaining tests - Cryorig C7 and Wraith Stealth:

Spoiler: Corsair H75

Spoiler: Noctua NH-L9i

Spoiler: Cryorig C7

Spoiler: Wraith Stealth

 

Almost cannot wait for the finished product. But I have a question regarding CPU-Cooling. According to your website the Sentry will support coolers up to 47mm (Intel Stock cooler).
What is the absolute maximum cooler height? I mean the height so the cooler barely touches the cover.

I'm asking because you posted some interesting Pictures in the older Sentry Thread.

According to the old thread, even a modified ThermalRight AXP-100RH will fit and can get good results.

 

It is still 47 mm, it might be close to 48 mm depending on the CPU height etc (not all sockets are made equal height, not all boards have the same PCB thickness/height).

The modded AXP-100RH is modded in a way it's lower - the fin stack is pushed down from original design and heat pipes are bent to do this.

This 47 mm limit won't change for Sentry 2.0

For power hungry CPUs you should use water cooling if you really have CPU intensive workloads, otherwise we recommend going with 65W TDP CPUs for now or waiting for DAN's cooler to be released.

 

We have received the second prototype last week, we had to make few small updates in the designs and after that we have ordered sample batch (finally).

At this point we're really happy with what we have and we feel that the sample batch should be in manufacturing ready state.
Looking back at Sentry 1.1, what we have now is more refined version of it, which is slightly more versatile, significantly more user friendly and is performing slightly better.
While all that might look like a small incremental update, it's still a great step ahead in terms of being able to manufacture this long term and hopefully get into retail at some point.

Finally, as some of you probably noticed, I was occupied last weekend with testing of Black Ridge cooler. The unit we've got had few fitting issues and it's not compatible with Sentry. The biggest problem is that fin stack is going over the PCI-E slot which in Sentry means it poses a risk of breaking the riser by pressing down on it with the fin stack (I actually broke mine while testing). I have forwarded this info among other issues both to the manufacturer directly and through CaseKing and It would be nice if they were to solve this issue. Note however that even if this is fixed, the Black ridge will block both 2.5" slots in Sentry so you'll end up with possibility of installing just one drive freely in front of PSU without attachment.

 

SaperPL, Any ETA on when we'll be able to order it?

 

I'll quote myself on SFF:

We realise that it takes so long for us to get there, but we want to make it the best we can with what we've learned from first version and campaign, so we don't want to rush things. We also don't want to state specific dates until we are sure we are ready.

 

Small update:

Manual for Sentry 2.0 is available on our website.

It would be nice if you could check it out and tell us if there's anything you don't understand or maybe you will find something that we wrote improperly in English.

 

Really looking forward to March!

 

Great !!! , Can we see more photos for the packaging box from inside ?

 

Wow that's a lot more ventilation! The picture with the case lid standing up really demonstrates it. That's crazy! No wonder 2.0 lost so much weight. Looks good!

 

There's ~60% more total perforation area in 2.0 by tighter hole spacing and few additional spots. This does not mean it's going to scale linearly to ~60% better cooling though - your mileage will vary based on how much your card actually can use this additional vent area.

For 150W TDP GPUs this difference may not change much versus 1.1, because it was already optimised and tested with such cards in mind, but this should give more breathing room for cards that pull 180W and 250W like 1080TI you were putting inside anyway.


As for the weight loss, there's more to it than just more ventilation. We've slimmed down quite a lot of non-structural areas of the internal structure of case to do this as well.

 

I am really looking forward to seeing reviewer with your case.

 

I finally got around to reading the online manual and have some grammar/wording suggestions. I couldn't determine a good way to show what the original text was, but in general the red text is an inserted word/letter with multiple red words replacing several words. Overall the manual seems easy to understand with only a few word choice issues. I'll also state that although English is my first language my grammar isn't always perfect so feel free to disagree with my suggestions. I'll hide my suggestions in a spoiler so I don't create a huge wall of text that most people won't care about.

Spoiler: super fun and interesting grammar suggestions

Note: I found 3 pages (5, 20, and 24) where you spell, 'organize' as 'organise'. After looking on the internet it looks like organise is the preferred spelling outside of North America. There are two pages (25 and 26) where you write, 'organization' so I would just make all places be consistent with spelling; I don't think it matters which spelling you choose as long as it's consistent (either changing 'organization' to organisation or 'organise' to 'organize'.

Page 9
Getting close to 50 mm of total package thickness will limit airflow between the fan and chassis cover

AIO Packaging Compatibility

Page 10
Use washers if your M3.5 screws have an uneven bottom to prevent them from scratching powder coating surface on the outside of chassis.

Page 12
Make sure to attach all required cables if you are using modular PSU before installing it inside.

Page 16
Riser is held tightly by its plastic slot body rather than screwing the PCB to the chassis. This way the delicate connection between the slot and the pcb is safe even when mounting big and heavy open air cooled cards.

Screws are used to apply pressure to the metal on the riser’s pci slot body and do not go through the holes in the pcb but lock its movement in front of it. This way multiple models of risers may be used regardless of the screw location.

Page 20
Plug in and organize motherboard and CPU power cables and route the SATA cables for 2.5” hard drive.

Handle the USB 3.0 20-pin connector with care.
The plug is bulky, but header pins are fragile.

Page 23
Connect SATA cables to 3.5” HDD before putting it inside the case. Use washers if your M3.5 screws have an uneven bottom to protect powder coating surface on the outside of chassis from being scratched by those screws.

page 24
Be careful about the USB 3.0 20-pin connector.
Make sure hoses aren’t pushing memory modules.

page 38
(The final notes section is blank. I don't know if that's intentional or not.)

 

Thanks for the feedback. I fixed those.

As for the final notes section - yeah, it's still empty as the manual is still not 100% done, there are going to be some updates and maybe some added things at the end about recommended hardware.

As for this page, we should probably have some 'thank you note' there, it's that the manual probably shouldn't just end with some random photo of the compatible part like a specific cooler or a card.

 

I feel like this thread is not getting enough love. Only page 4? what is wrong with everyone?

My Sentry 1.0 is still going strong, have no need for Sentry 2.0, but thinking about buying another one just to support Saper and Zombi.

 

Thanks. Glad you are satisfied with your case

I think the issue may be the fact that what had to be said has been said and people are just waiting for the availability. Also quite a lot of people moved to sff forum and are asking their questions there.

It should get more lively once reviewers get the samples and tease on incoming reviews in social media.