SENTRY: Console-sized gaming PC case project

Love the new dedicated website! Only noticed a few minor things with the grammar.

(Added an a)
Sentry is designed as a self-supporting enclosure which means there's no division between the frame and covers like in classic cases.

(Added a comma, an a, and changed use to usage)
This way, it can ensure maximum space usage within such a small form factor while maintaining high durability.

(Replaced valor for two optional choices, your pick. Also made noise plural and removed the a after)
An additional advantage/benefit of this feature is the damping of vibrations, which would usually occur causing irritating noises in frame based cases.

(This was a run-on sentence so I created another sentence. Stared it with the, added an a and the. Also replaced limits with Limiting, capitalized GPU, and added a comma before thus)
The case cover is equipped with a special insertion that creates a small air pocket and partitions the space above the graphics card. Limiting recirculation of hot air in the GPU chamber, thus reducing the cover temperature and increasing thermal performance.

Super stoked about this case! I already have all the componets residing in my current oversized space wasting mid-tower case. It's only saving grace is the blue LED lights:)

Edit: Removed some redundant spacing.

Thanks mate! :)
We will fix all of those things as soon as possible (probably in the evening but surely today).
 
I just checked, and Your subscription for gmail account is active. Only Your hotmail account is waiting for Your confirmation. Please check Your spam folder or please just wait a little bit. It should be just fine.
yes gmail is active. Hotmail i didn't find mail in spam folder. the most important thing is that now i had the possibility to subscribe with gmail...so i attend and zero problem
 
yes gmail is active. Hotmail i didn't find mail in spam folder. the most important thing is that now i had the possibility to subscribe with gmail...so i attend and zero problem

I looked through the subscribed accounts and it seems our newsletter provider has some problems with microsoft e-mail accounts (hotmail.com, hotmail.it, live.com, outlook.com, etc.). Maybe Microsoft has some additional white-lists to prevent spamming. Other email accounts didn't have such problems. Only those from Microsoft. I reported it to our admins, and we're waiting for reaction.

Sorry for problems.
 
im also using outlook, so far i havent got anything. thanks for looking into the problem! :)
 
Don't worry, it's just a problem on our newsletter service provider's side, it doesn't have anything to do with whether you'll be able to pay through your paypal account or not - that's a different service. Hope they can figure out this thing soon.
 
It looks like the last digit on the unit number on the case badge on the back gets cut off a little by the rivet (it's more noticeable with unit 2 than 1). Will the unit number text (and the version number to keep things correctly aligned) be moved slightly to the left in the final version to eliminate that cutoff?
 
We know about that - we've fixed that already and the final version without "proto" will have those middle texts closer to the center.
 
im also using outlook, so far i havent got anything. thanks for looking into the problem! :)

As Saper said, we thought this problem with microsoft e-mail accounts was on our side (our newsletter provider side). Almost all hotmail, outlook, live.com email addresses weren't activated.... Almost, because today we saw one person with @outlook.com email address who activated his subscription without problems. So we digged deeper. I made my own outlook e-mail account, without changing spam filters, adding addresses to whitelists or even without changing any of settings. Just new, clean outlook account. I subscribed to SENTRY newsletter and guess what? I did recive an activation email without any problems. After clicking activation link i received a confirmation email. Both of those emails were in my standard "Received box", not in a SPAM folder.

To sum up: everyone who signed to our newsletter (www.zaber.com.pl/sentry) or who wants to do it and has microsoft email account (outlook.com, hotmail.com, live.com, hotmail.it, hotmail.de and similar) should check his spam filter options. Accounts with unchanged (set by Microsoft) security options works fine with our newsletter. Our newsletter service provider will try to add us to microsoft whitelist, but as we checked, it shouldn't be required.
 
Little project update:

Stocking up bit by bit for prototypes...

vurC7Zo.jpg


Risers, USB cables, plugs and screws for prototype batch. Customs fee was a bit overkill for these small amounts.

Rubber feet aren't here yet because of small parcel free shipping :D

I'll be ordering the boxes soon - today maybe but more likely Friday since I'm still waiting for the invoice for that order and tomorrow is a holiday.
 
To sum up: everyone who signed to our newsletter (www.zaber.com.pl/sentry) or who wants to do it and has microsoft email account (outlook.com, hotmail.com, live.com, hotmail.it, hotmail.de and similar) should check his spam filter options. Accounts with unchanged (set by Microsoft) security options works fine with our newsletter. Our newsletter service provider will try to add us to microsoft whitelist, but as we checked, it shouldn't be required.

So i just played around with the settings for a little, i couldnt find any options where anything was prohibited. As i never changed anything i should be at standard anyway. However the account is 2 years old, maybe its a different standard.
My problem is its not like a blacklist where mails get moved to spam, for example advertising mails . Instead I dont get the mail in the first place. im going to look into this again later on, for now im confused enough :D
 
So i just played around with the settings for a little, i couldnt find any options where anything was prohibited. As i never changed anything i should be at standard anyway. However the account is 2 years old, maybe its a different standard.
My problem is its not like a blacklist where mails get moved to spam, for example advertising mails . Instead I dont get the mail in the first place. im going to look into this again later on, for now im confused enough :D

Hi Fiddy,

At this moment we're getting more and more hotmail, live or outlook accounts activated without problems. If we're sending emails everytime in the same way, and 4/10 people with microsoft emails are getting newsletter properly, then we're not sure if we should search the solution on our side. We're still waiting for the end of investigation made by our newsletter provider, but we think we know how it will end: "please check Your security properties", or something like that.

I have an idea from my side. Can You make a new microsoft email account, and try to subscribe? Maybe i did or didn't do/set something while installing it, and it just worked? Can You double-check me? Maybe if Your new microsoft account will work with our newsletter, You could check the differences in settings of both of them.
 
Perhaps the Microsoft mail services use a (bad) spam learning algorithm, and with time, depending on what the user has manually flagged as spam, it has built up a suboptimal classifying experience, flagging your mail as spam? If so, it would work just fine with a new mail account, but maybe not after a while.

Considering how utterly useless the spam management is in Outlook, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft's online mail spam management sucks ass as well. ;)
 
i guess it must be something like that, ill try another time with the settings and maybe i can get it then. So the amail i got is probably tagged as bad somewhere. if i changed something, it would be nice if i could get another one especially after those 7 days.
Im not really eager to make a new account, i guess it would work. but then again i could just make some other email account, however i wouldnt really check both of them so its useless.

ill just tag along in the forum, the news will be published here to right? :)
 
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now i've checkd all settings and options, and deactivated everything remotely related to filtering. maybe you can send another activation mail, i cant subscribe again ;)
 
Okay, I'm seriously frothing at the mouth with this case, especially the white one. This is exactly what I've been looking for and this is literally the only case of its kind that can house the types of components I want to use. And being able to slide it into a 17" laptop bag? Really? That's so many different levels of bad ass. I'm not planning on building my next PC for at least a few months. Is there an ETA on the case yet? Or is that impossible to estimate with all the last minute things happening? I've been looking at mini ITX cases the last few weeks with OCD-like fervor and I came across one of your posts on NeoGAF and I've been looking at your website ever since like some kind of crackhead. Seriously, fantastic work here.

Aside from the ETA question, I have one last question. Will this be able to house the MSI Aero GTX 1080? The dimensions are 269 mm x 111 mm x 35 mm (10.59 inches x 4.37 inches x 1.37 inches). If it can house this GPU I'm completely sold.

LhfhBSH.png
 
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This case looks awesome, especially in white! What a beautiful and streamlined design, inside and out! I've subscribed to emails.

My one and only design suggestion on the white case is that the black power button looks (in my own opinion) a bit out of place on the clean white chassis. Looks like there are lots of brushed silver anti-vandal 16mm switches per your link to Ali Express (like this one) that would look much better on the white case color. I'd pair that with silver screws on the white case. Maybe that's just my own design preference, and it looks great as-is, but eliminating the black notes would make it look perfect. I'd also be in favor of LED color preference. I'm partial to a neutral white (or blue, if it has to be a color) myself.

As it stands I'd probably get the black. It probably matches other stuff easier anyway.

Very much looking forward to this project becoming a purchasable reality. Thanks for all of your hard work on it! It's the kind of design I've been wishing for since the Node 202 and Silverstone ML08/RVZ02 came out last year.
 
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My one and only design suggestion on the white case is that the black power button looks (in my own opinion) a bit out of place on the clean white chassis. Looks like there are lots of brushed silver anti-vandal 16mm switches per your link to Ali Express (like this one) that would look much better on the white case color. I'd pair that with silver screws on the white case. Maybe that's just my own design preference, and it looks great as-is, but eliminating the black notes would make it look perfect. I'd also be in favor of LED color preference. I'm partial to a neutral white (or blue, if it has to be a color) myself.

The cool thing is that you can easily get the required screws and power button to do that. I have seen some white electronics enclosures with silver screws and that does indeed look quite a bit better.
 
The thing is - we want to use same accessories for both colour schemes and only switch the paint on the body. We thought that black-and-white contrast would be the best here. Also while getting standard silver screws and ant-vandal switch is quite easy and cheap, getting those in black gets tricky, so we'd rather handle that for you and you can switch easier to your silver accents, rather than someone wanting black accents would have to order the black switches overseas that out of batch tend to be quite expensive.
 
I have a question about the rubber that's on the bottom of the foot. How is it attached? Just by force, or is it actually adhered?

The reason I ask is because my current case, the Raven RVZ01, has only 3 out of 4 feet on it. During transport, they like to fall off and get lost; I now remove them whenever I bring my computer somewhere.
 
So I've been trying to figure out what 1070 AIB version that I want to buy for this case. I know the general rule is that if the width of the card is wider than reference, it won't fit because of the power connectors for the card. But, I noticed that the Asus 1080 strix has the power connectors recessed to be roughly at the same width as a reference card. Would this card end up fitting? It seems like it should since the fan shroud doesn't go out further than the board.
ASUS-STRIX-GTX-1080-PCB-900x600.jpg
 
Hello I just made an account after hearing about this case through a random forum! I've been following cases like the ncase and dan a4 for a couple of years and can't believe I haven't heard about this case for so long. I can't wait for this case to be released. Will we be able to customize the color of the power led light or have other color options for the case?
Thank you!
 
darksable - rubber feet on the vertical stand will be adhered, don't worry. The round rubber feet for horizontal position are fastened with their inner pins and those aren't problem in transport.

octagoncow - it looks like something that might be able to fit. According to specs it's 134mm wide so it looks like it's only 10mm wider in that area. Looks like I'll need to get in touch with asus and gigabyte to build a list of fitting gpus somehow.

FrozenSpaghettiYeti - That will depend on how big is the interest in our case - paint customisation would cost us a lot to add meaningful variety of different colours so it would require us to get a proper amount of orders to do that.

Power switch led colour is more likely to being customizable but I'm trying to find a new source of those switches in EU so we won't need to pay too much customs fees and in the end it will depend on what our final source will have.
 
I would totally buy this case as is ... but isn't it possible to move the video card a little towards the bottom and then put hard disks on top of the video card? Or, of course you wouldn't want such a drastic change but even in the current situation isn't there 7mm or 9.5mm above the video card left? The current mount ideas all interfere with something... while mine goes into an empty area.
 
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I would totally buy this case as is ... but isn't it possible to move the video card a little towards the bottom and then put hard disks on top of the video card? Or, of course you wouldn't want such a drastic change but even in the current situation isn't there 7mm or 9.5mm above the video card left? The current mount ideas all interfere with something... while mine goes into an empty area.

I'm assuming you mean moving the GPU "towards the bottom" closer to the motherboard to give extra head room for placing 2.5" SSD/HDD on the top of the GPU, the top being the side with power connectors and opposite of the PCI-E connection? If that's the case then the drive would not fit as the normal width of a 2.5" drive is 70mm and this case is only 66mm tall. Please correct me if I am wrong, it's late and I had to think this one through for a hot sec;)

I apologize for the long descriptions, I'm a very visual person when I need to write things in perspective.
 
I would totally buy this case as is ... but isn't it possible to move the video card a little towards the bottom and then put hard disks on top of the video card? Or, of course you wouldn't want such a drastic change but even in the current situation isn't there 7mm or 9.5mm above the video card left? The current mount ideas all interfere with something... while mine goes into an empty area.

That's a really bad idea.

Yes, it fits; but hard drives, even SSDs, even though they don't put out a lot of heat, are sensitive to it.

Putting it next to the hottest component in the case, particularly when it will result in blocking all the airflow to the back of the GPU...

That leads to data corruption, worse graphics card performance, and early deaths for all components involved.


EDIT: unless Rosaj had what you meant; I presumed you meant putting the drives above the back of the GPU.
 
You can fit drives UNDER the gpu IF the gpu cooling isn't too thick. With blower card it's quite okay to run it this way, It might be even possible to put two of 2.5" drives down there. With open air cooler it gets complicated because it blocks some of the airflow for the cooler. Blower cooler can make up for it by sucking air from the sides as well but open-air isn't such a good idea.

DSC_0971.JPG

I've been running my GTX 970 blower with the 2.5" hdd below it in front slot so pretty close to blower inlet and it's the coolest place the drive can be. With R9-270X it's quite the opposite :)
 
It might be a really cool idea to do this - just make sure to use some distance when attaching the case so you won't block off the air inlet for your gpu. I don't know though how will that affect the heat around the motherboard area.
 
I've got some news about our SENTRY newsletter:

After analysing hundreds of subscribers, we saw that more and more Microsoft e-mail accounts are being activated to our newsletter. Actually only 7,5% of all subscribers didn't activate their accounts, and almost all of them are people with MS mail. At this point we think that everything is OK with our provider's e-mail sending system. If someone is having problems with getting activation e-mail within 24hours, then he should check his e-mail filtering options, because in some cases our activation e-mail won't be even in a SPAM folder.

We are talking with our newsletter provider about an option of sending again activation e-mails to people who did subscribe, but had problems with spam filtering in their email accounts (at this moment you have to wait 7 days, after your e-mail address will be deleted from our database, and you can register it once again). We'll see how it goes.
 
nice! many thanks, I will do so:)

So is there any news apart from the from the newsletter ? ;)
 
Hmm, I've placed the order on the boxes, those should be ready around 2~3 weeks from. I'll try to order batch of power cables tommorow and we should be somehow stocked up for the review batch.

Also we've noticed that most of you are super stoked about white version and not so much about the black one - I think we're at fault here since we should've re-made the photo shoot of black unit with final version of the paint - the same type that's visible on the white unit at home page. The black unit is painted using the same paint that's visible on white unit's vertical stand. The images of black unit on the main page are from prototype black unit and should be replaced as soon as we can get some time to shoot photos again.
 
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