SENTRY: Console-sized gaming PC case project

[ZombiPL]

Nooice! Well i'm super stoked for both versions!! I originally was going to be getting the black case; however, i've been looking into the white case now. I recently upgraded my temp case from my Antec Nine Hundered Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Case to a Thermaltake Core V1 Snow Edition to get a rough feel of how a white case would be. Still not sure what to pick

We'll make better photos of black SENTRY with structural powder painting, and it will be even harder to choose

 

[The Fragile]

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.

Yeah ... better pics of the black case would be helpful. Just ... that white looks so classy. Black would look a lot better next to my theater equipment though.

 

[RosaJ]

Just ... that white looks so classy.

It does and it still reminds me of the turrets in portal! Ever since that was mentioned in this thread it stuck. Also black does have the tendency to fit in many different settings

 

[The Fragile]

It does and it still reminds me of the turrets in portal! Ever since that was mentioned in this thread it stuck. Also black does have the tendency to fit in many different settings

Yeah I think the Portal thing is what's drawing me to it.

 

[RosaJ]

Fudge it, I'm down for both at this point. Not getting the 1080 this round in lieu of the 1070 so I wont feel as guilty buying two cases. Genius logic right?!

 

[The Fragile]

Fudge it, I'm down for both at this point. Not getting the 1080 this round in lieu of the 1070 so I wont feel as guilty buying two cases. Genius logic right?!

Well ... you have some time to decide. I really wish this case was out already. >_>

Seriously though, I already have all the parts picked out. This is the last thing to get, lol.

 

[bircht]

do you see any chance that this will be shipped to consumers by late july/early august?

 

[RosaJ]

do you see any chance that this will be shipped to consumers by late july/early august?

As of now, the next step of the process is waiting on custom boxes/packaging for the next 2~3 weeks. From there I'm sure they'll want to make sure everything thing looks good before putting together samples, especially the one in white for Linus that is triple boxed. Which paired with his ever busy schedule I'm sure that will entail a month total for a full review. From there I imagine final logistics will roll into play, making sure all avenues are covered, a campaign will be put together, looked over and then launched. Considering all of the above, we at late August/early September campaign start with shipments rolling out within a couple months?

Note, I'm oversimplified in all basis and am only taking my bust guess. These two amazing guys who are attempting to move mountains for us have my full support. Love there case and love the updates that get more and more exciting!

 

[The Fragile]

I honestly haven't been this excited about a case in um ... well ... let's see. Oh yeah! Ever.

I feel like a kid at Christmas time, honestly.

 

[ZombiPL]

do you see any chance that this will be shipped to consumers by late july/early august?

We predict, that August is a realistic date. Maybe i will write below what will take us so long:


1) We've just ordered a 1st batch of the carton, transport boxes for Sentry. We never saw any sample of this box, so in a 2-3 weeks we can get 200 cartons which won't be as good as we wish to. If so, we'll get another delay.

2) We've ordered metal (anodized aluminium), laser-cut badges with the Sentry name and your case individual number. Of course it would be faster if we just print them as a stickers like in every cheap pc case, but we want to keep everything in an industrial quality, so You won't see cheap stickers here.

3) We've ordered plastic feet for our case, which also will be attached without any glue or adhesive, but mechanically by central pin. We were thinking about adding some feet which will be attached by adhesive (like in many pc cases), but we give you 2 options of working positions (horizontal/vertical), and we think that such feet also would be bad, cheap looking idea. So we stayed with mechanically fastened feet, and we're waiting for package. Maybe they arrived, but at this moment neither me nor Saper is at our family house, so we can't check it at this moment.

4) We have to order power extension cables, which we hope won't take long.

5) We have to order many things for transport purposes, like for example plastic safety bags for small components like screws, cables, etc. We didn't choose those yet and it should take long, but it still takes some time.

6) I just finished making another 2D DXF files for laser-cutting. I'm never happy with what i get, so i'm always improving something. Today I'll make an order for one main cover + one side holder, because we've made some 0,5 mm improvements, and we have to check if they are really needed.

7) We have to send SENTRY to Linus to Canada. I don't know when he will make a review, and if he will be happy with what he will get or if we will have to improve something. You all have to remember we are sending those pc cases to media, not only for marketing purposes, but mostly because we want to know if we should improve something. If reviewers will say that we have to fix something, then we will try to do it (if it will be possible of course). We won't release the case which will have errors, so in such situation everything could be again delayed.

8) We have to start some marketing actions. We're only writing here and in LinusTechTips forum, so noone outside this community never heard about the Sentry. We have to change that. At this moment, after releasing our newsletter, we predict we will have to limit our first selling batch to something like 1000 pc cases. We have so many subscribed users in a very short time (without any marketing mooves), that it could be problematic for us to check every sentry in a reasonable time (yes, we will be checking every pc case by ourselves).

9) We probably won't use a crowdfounding. We were using every penny from our salaries for the last 2 years to order another prototypes or buy some other parts to check if everything is ok, so we think we can handle everything without Kickstarter or similar sites. We're not saying deffinatelly "no" to crowdfunding, but at this moment we think we can handle the selling without it. We will only have to workout the deal with Paypal, so both sides will be safe during the transactions.

10) We are still gathering information about prices of each component. Firstly this project was ment to be a simple, $99 case, but people decided, they don't want to get only steel box, but also usb-cable, pci-e riser, vandal-switch, etc. etc. Now we have a SENTRY which is made with more than 100 pcs, and we still can't say if it will be $189, or $179, or maybe $169. We're still calculating everything to keep the price as low as possible. Many components price grew up in last couple of monts so we're also checking if we can find some other sellers who can offer us better price for the same quality.

11) Packaging and delivery: After ordering first test batch of 25 Sentry cases, it took us something like 12 hours to unpack every pc case from safety foil, collect every part of the sentry, check dimmensions, screw everything together, check if everything fits, attach an aluminium badge with Sentry individual number and pack it again into a transport foil. With final version of sentry it will take even more time, because we will also have to check every carton box, check if every screw and cable is included and properly fastened, and finally pack everything in a bigger, transport box and address it. We're only 2, and we're working with Sentry in the evening, after our daytime jobs. We will see how long will it take to check everything, when we'll get all components we've ordered. And i know we're not the only ones with such issues. For example dondan started his kickstarter campaign in May, and some of the cases will be sent in December, which is more than half of the year. We hope we can do faster (1 to 2 months after order should be enough, but we have to verify it). Of course if you place order faster, than you will get your pc case faster. Our manufacturer's minimal batch is 25 pcs, but to keep the price low for other components, the minimal batch will be 100 pcs. As i wrote in some point above, i hope a 1st batch of 1000 pcs will be ok, as a first run. Even the proper verification of such a large batch by only 2 people will be a challenge, and we also have families who likes to know we're still alive, so you know... Everything needs time.


I hope this "short" information will show you what we are fighting with. And that's not all. There are many things i didn't mention, which also takes time. Plus of course we have to find time for all of this between designing wind turbines and making computer games
So please be patient (but we know you won't be )

 

[The Fragile]

It's really great that you're keeping everyone in the loop ... and your commitment to the project is astounding.

Having said that, I don't understand why you wouldn't want to try crowdfunding. It's yet another way to market yourself. I mean look at how well the Dan case project is doing on Kickstarter: Clickety Click And that case is freaking expensive. Maybe after marketing yourself a bit more in the coming months you can throw up a nice Kickstarter page. Believe me, the moment I saw your gallery on your site (which one of you guys put a link to on NeoGAF) I was drooling. And I am certain others will feel the same way if you get a nice page up. I know there's a sense of pride having funded all of this yourself, but don't be afraid to look for other avenues that could help you get this amazing little case out into the world. I mean honestly ... you have the potential of having a HUGE Kickstarter going (yes I know you mentioned Dan already, but just emphasizing the impact it can have). You're right though, some people will not get their cases until December, which is crazy ... but understandable when resources are limited. I mean I wouldn't mind giving you extra money on the page as well to help you guys out. There's an option to do that as well. You are truly doing the world of SFF cases a favor with this project of yours.

I literally spent the last two months looking for the perfect SFF case ... and I found nothing. When I happened across your website, it was everything I envisioned but couldn't find. It's literally the case of my dreams.

Anyway, I wish you the best of luck with all this. I can't wait to finally get my hands on this case. My credit card is here patiently waiting for you guys. I will probably just get a Silverstone RVZ02 in the meantime as a placeholder until this thing is ready. I thought the Silverstone was small, then laughed hysterically when I discovered your case.

 

[ZombiPL]

It's really great that you're keeping everyone in the loop ... and your commitment to the project is astounding.

Having said that, I don't understand why you wouldn't want to try crowdfunding. It's yet another way to market yourself. [...]

There are 5 main reasons why we think "kickstarter" is at this moment not for us:

1. Kickstarter is not available in Poland:

Anyone, anywhere can pledge to a project with a major credit or debit card. Anyone in Austria,
Australia, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Spain, France, the UK, Ireland,
Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, or the US can start a project.
link

2. If we really want to make a campaign on a kickstarter, than we need to pay to some "external" company from USA, UK, Germany or some other country from the list above for making a campaign for us (because according to the point 1, we can't do it by ourselves in Poland). It means additional cost to Sentry price.

3. Kickstarter takes additional fee, so Sentry would be more expensive.

4. For the last two years we spent so much money and time on prototyping, that we think we don't have to wait until Kickstarter visits Poland.

5. In our situation we can start our production as soon as we get the minimal order quantity (MOQ). It means, we don't have to wait till the end of the Kickstarter. If we plan to make 1st batch of 1000 Sentry cases, we don't need to wait until we will get all of those 1000 pcs. When we'll get 100 orders, we can start production, another 100 orders, another small batch, etc. When we'll be doing things in that way, we will have more time to make QC (quality control), because we will be doing it not after full batch (1000-1500pcs), but after every small batch (100pcs).



There are also other crowdfunding sites like indiegogo, but we still think we don't need it. We also don't know the final price of the case, because we didn't finish our calculations... and crowdfunding would increase it meaningly.

We're not saying definitely YES or NO, but we're very sceptical about it.

 

[The Fragile]

Ahh okay. Yeah that makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up. Sounds like more hassle than it's worth for your situation.

 

[Krixon]

I've been following this one for a while now - before I even made an account here. You can definitely count on me to be one of those first orders. As soon as my 1080 comes in, I'll have a spare 980 ready to go in this case.

 

[The Fragile]

I've been following this one for a while now - before I even made an account here. You can definitely count on me to be one of those first orders. As soon as my 1080 comes in, I'll have a spare 980 ready to go in this case.

Same. I'm going to be using the Silverstone RVZ02 until this thing is available. Still waiting for the MSI Aero OC to be released as well.

 

[AstroWan]

Question, can you confirm for me whether the be quiet! Shadow Rock LP cooler will work in the sentry (I think it should but I just wanna double check).

 

[The Fragile]

Question, can you confirm for me whether the be quiet! Shadow Rock LP cooler will work in the sentry (I think it should but I just wanna double check).

No. That's about a half inch too tall to work in this case. The max height for this case for a CPU cooler is 66 mm. The Shadow Rock LP is 76.2 mm. I'm personally going with a CRYORIG for this case: Clickety Click

 

[SaperPL]

Max Cooler height is 47mm like the Cryorig C7 and intel box cooler. The inner space is 65mm defined by SFX's 64.5mm specs and you have to subtract 7mm standoffs, 1.65mm of motherboard pcb thickness and also socket height/cpu shield distance from pcb.

That info - 47mm is in the configuration tool, but I can see now it's not in the specs as well as the max gpu length. I'll have to update this.

 

[AstroWan]

Max Cooler height is 47mm like the Cryorig C7 and intel box cooler. The inner space is 65mm defined by SFX's 64.5mm specs and you have to subtract 7mm standoffs, 1.65mm of motherboard pcb thickness and also socket height/cpu shield distance from pcb.

That info - 47mm is in the configuration tool, but I can see now it's not in the specs as well as the max gpu length. I'll have to update this.

No worries and thanks for the info

No. That's about a half inch too tall to work in this case. The max height for this case for a CPU cooler is 66 mm. The Shadow Rock LP is 76.2 mm. I'm personally going with a CRYORIG for this case: Clickety Click

Haha ya, that's what I was planning to go with but someone recommended the be quiet! Shadow Rock LP (although I don't think they did enough research on the size constraint).


In any case, are there any other options out there that you guys would recommend? (I have a 6700k planned out for this build, so I may toy around and OC it's 4.0GHz to 4.2 or a bit higher, definitely still have to be leary about temps tho)

 

[SaperPL]

I'd recommend not going for the K models with high TDP. non-K 65W sku's shouldn't bottleneck 1070's and 1080's, I think and I don't really think there's a real reason to overclock something like current i7's unless you're going 4K or some kind of supersampling. Go for more gpu horsepower rather than overclocking already rocking standard i7.

Note that there's not really too much space to cram up the cpu cooling so even if you fit something in there there's still have to be some space to move the air around. I can't think about anything else than Cryorig C7 as a high end solution for such cpu and even that isn't something outstanding when going for OC.

You also have to remember that depending on how much wattage your components draw, will affect how loud the whole system be. OC'ing a K sku may end up in running full RPM's while on load.

Wait for LTT review, I hope they'll do extensive testing on that matter as well. Until that, keep in mind that there's no dedicated room for water cooling in our case so overclocking in general might not give you the best effects.

 

[Corummo]

Max Cooler height is 47mm like the Cryorig C7 and intel box cooler. The inner space is 65mm defined by SFX's 64.5mm specs and you have to subtract 7mm standoffs, 1.65mm of motherboard pcb thickness and also socket height/cpu shield distance from pcb.

That info - 47mm is in the configuration tool, but I can see now it's not in the specs as well as the max gpu length. I'll have to update this.

Hello, I'm an usual reader of these boards, and joined this community just to comment on this thread.
I'm very interested in this project and I'm going to purchase one of your cases, as soon as they'll be available.

You guys made an awesome job, and I know your design is actually definitive, but I think the lack of a slot-in optical drive option is just a missed chance for this kind of form factor (living room oriented) and its intrinsic constraint to a range of low heat components, because with just 47mm to cool the cpu, I guess any route to hi-end cpu/OC rig is pratically out of question.

You opted for a sort of inner pocket extrusion in the side panel to minimize warm air ricirculation into the GPU chamber. OK, that's fine.
Well, by adding 5-7mm to width, you could have a Silverstone's RVZ02 alike solution, for both the disk drives and the optical reader, sorting out the drives space, totally sealing the GPU chamber and, not so bad, gaining a little more heigth for the cpu cooler.

It's just my opinion, from a simple enthusiast perspective and, as I said earlier, I'm just going to join your buyers queue anyway.
Cannot wait to throw my money at you.

 

[The Fragile]

Haha ya, that's what I was planning to go with but someone recommended the be quiet! Shadow Rock LP (although I don't think they did enough research on the size constraint).


In any case, are there any other options out there that you guys would recommend? (I have a 6700k planned out for this build, so I may toy around and OC it's 4.0GHz to 4.2 or a bit higher, definitely still have to be leary about temps tho)

You're going to have a hard time finding a cooler for overclocking the i7 6700K with the size constraints of this case. The CRYORIG fan I picked has been shown to be great for cooling it off, but not so much once it's overclocked. And this is the same story for most other low-profile coolers. There is really no room for customized airflow in this case. According to the website, this case is 2.5" wide. Pretty much every component goes exactly where it's supposed to and no more.

Hello, I'm an usual reader of these boards, and joined this community just to comment on this thread.
I'm very interested in this project and I'm going to purchase one of your cases, as soon as they'll be available.

You guys made an awesome job, and I know your design is actually definitive, but I think the lack of a slot-in optical drive option is just a missed chance for this kind of form factor (living room oriented) and its intrinsic constraint to a range of low heat components, because with just 47mm to cool the cpu, I guess any route to hi-end cpu/OC rig is pratically out of question.

You opted for a sort of inner pocket extrusion in the side panel to minimize warm air ricirculation into the GPU chamber. OK, that's fine.
Well, by adding 5-7mm to width, you could have a Silverstone's RVZ02 alike solution, for both the disk drives and the optical reader, sorting out the drives space, totally sealing the GPU chamber and, not so bad, gaining a little more heigth for the cpu cooler.

It's just my opinion, from a simple enthusiast perspective and, as I said earlier, I'm just going to join your buyers queue anyway.
Cannot wait to throw my money at you.

Although I get where you're coming from, the entire point of this case is to be as small as humanly possible while still housing a full size reference GPU. I mean the thing slides into a 17" laptop bag. Wider is not really an option for the vision of this case from what I can tell. It would literally defeat the entire purpose. Most other SFF cases that are this size do not have an option for any sort of optical drive either. If you truly want an optical drive, I would recommend the NCASE M1: NCASE | M1

 

[SaperPL]

@Corumno

The thing is - we wanted to make it smallest possible to fit SFX and nothing more. Thanks to that our PSU mount is quite simple and works well. If we were to add additional few mm then the construction that holds the PSU would make the whole thing complicated from the motherboard side. Note the fact that the motherboard and PSU side is quite 'open'. If we were to add those few millimetres, then the power supply would have to be fully screwed to some kind of rail, which would end up blocking off the access to the motherboard. That kind of things stack up in standard skeletal construction, making the case bigger, so you have more room inside to even install components. If it weren't for that then I'd love to add those few millimetres just to have 70mm of height to simply fit the 2.5" drives vertically instead of doing this weird multi-configuration layout we've got.


From another perspective you could've compare our project to ncase LRPC - they tried to do that, get some additional space for better cooling, filters, maybe even optical drive. LRPC went from close to original steam machine size to ~50% bigger unit and then similar cases in volume started appearing so it looks like they lost their motivation. You can always put more space so you can fit a bit bigger cpu cooling, a bit bigger gpu etc. That's a never ending transition until you decide to stop. That's the difference between our project and mass produced cases - we've drawn the line on reference gpu and boxed cooler dimensions.


Also if you've noticed, intel stated recently that they're going to stop stepping up the performance on consumer grade processors and focus on power efficiency so in the future we should see lower TDP's rather than higher performance in this segment. That's unless you're going for an extreme edition cpu or a xeon. Nvidia is also fitting more and more horsepower into 150W gpu segment, so it looks like the case might be more future oriented than you think.


Finally the target of the project from my perspective is not to make an ultimate small form factor case that can fit every cpu and gpu from the store. Target is to prove that we can have the real steam machine class computers that can be built with off-shelf components, have small, console-like form factor and have original interesting and elegant look.

 

[octagoncow]

I think the C7 does a pretty decent job with cooling a 6700k as long as you're minimal with the overclock. I have mine overclocked to 4.2GHz with an undervolt of -.13V and I had a max temperature of 72C at 100% load. I just delided my CPU yesterday and now I'm getting about 63C at 100% load. I'm sure that I could go up to 4.3 or 4.4 if I wanted to push the thermal limits a little more but I would imagine that anything over 4.3 or 4.4 would be a little too much. I won't bother with trying that until a game comes out that actually requires more of an overclock though. (Also, the case I'm currently using is a Cooler master 361 with no case fans so it's not like I have some crazy airflow in my case, and no gpu since I'm waiting for both the Sentry and the GTX 1070 to come out.)

 

[SaperPL]

Does that TDP difference and minimal OC give it any advantage over non-K 65W i7-6700 in such hot environment?

Running without gpu isn't a proper benchmark for the temps - gaming is a bit different than simply running cpu benchmark

 

[octagoncow]

Does that TDP difference and minimal OC give it any advantage over non-K 65W i7-6700 in such hot environment?

Running without gpu isn't a proper benchmark for the temps - gaming is a bit different than simply running cpu benchmark

Haha, yeah I admit that an overclock of .2 won't really do much. The hope is that there will be some better cooling options available once I actually need to overclock some more. It just felt wrong to not get a K series cpu since I've never bought a locked down cpu.

A GPU wouldn't add much/any of a temperature difference in the Sentry though because of the isolated areas though, right?

 

[Corummo]

Although I get where you're coming from, the entire point of this case is to be as small as humanly possible while still housing a full size reference GPU. I mean the thing slides into a 17" laptop bag. Wider is not really an option for the vision of this case from what I can tell. It would literally defeat the entire purpose. Most other SFF cases that are this size do not have an option for any sort of optical drive either. If you truly want an optical drive, I would recommend the NCASE M1: NCASE | M1

I like that case too, but I'm more for slim vertical designs, rather than shoebox/cubic ones.

@Corumno
The thing is - we wanted to make it smallest possible to fit SFX and nothing more. Thanks to that our PSU mount is quite simple and works well. If we were to add additional few mm then the construction that holds the PSU would make the whole thing complicated from the motherboard side. Note the fact that the motherboard and PSU side is quite 'open'. If we were to add those few millimetres, then the power supply would have to be fully screwed to some kind of rail, which would end up blocking off the access to the motherboard. That kind of things stack up in standard skeletal construction, making the case bigger, so you have more room inside to even install components. If it weren't for that then I'd love to add those few millimetres just to have 70mm of height to simply fit the 2.5" drives vertically instead of doing this weird multi-configuration layout we've got.

Oh, sorry. I believed it was easy to 360° Y-rotate it, to intake air from the left wall, the same of the GPU, without touching the rails in the current design.
Did not imagine it was so complicated.

From another perspective you could've compare our project to ncase LRPC - they tried to do that, get some additional space for better cooling, filters, maybe even optical drive. LRPC went from close to original steam machine size to ~50% bigger unit and then similar cases in volume started appearing so it looks like they lost their motivation. You can always put more space so you can fit a bit bigger cpu cooling, a bit bigger gpu etc. That's a never ending transition until you decide to stop. That's the difference between our project and mass produced cases - we've drawn the line on reference gpu and boxed cooler dimensions.

And you achieved the goal super-nicely.

Also if you've noticed, intel stated recently that they're going to stop stepping up the performance on consumer grade processors and focus on power efficiency so in the future we should see lower TDP's rather than higher performance in this segment. That's unless you're going for an extreme edition cpu or a xeon. Nvidia is also fitting more and more horsepower into 150W gpu segment, so it looks like the case might be more future oriented than you think.

I totally agree on this point. I never said your Sentry isn't future-proof. And I'm not planning to game on 4k displays, as I still cannot see the point/need to do this, so a standard non-OC'd equipment for me is a perfect fit.
Just a matter of personal preferences. I believe that RVZ02 has anything I need, except for its crappy-plastic look.
Sentry is elegant and stylish, and it's totally worth a spot near my tv panel. But cannot put my LOTR-Hobbit BDs in it, so cannot HTPC with style.

Finally the target of the project from my perspective is not to make an ultimate small form factor case that can fit every cpu and gpu from the store. Target is to prove that we can have the real steam machine class computers that can be built with off-shelf components, have small, console-like form factor and have original interesting and elegant look.

I know. And cannot wait to put my hands on it.

 

[Corummo]

Dear SaperPL,
Maybe you already have the needed space to fit a tray onto the graphics card, in which to place 2 SSDs and a slim slot-in optical drive, RVZ02 alike.
Probably you don't even need to thicken your design. Just rework the side panel to cut off the extrusion used to limit the airflow into the GPU chamber, and turn it into a tray to place on the GPU backplate.
Just dreaming? ^_^

 

[SaperPL]

That's not going to happen. This would end up both in frying the hard drives and becoming safety hazard.


In horizontal position a lot of heat goes upwards heating up the cover anyway. The cover extrusion transfers the heat to the cover in smaller lines instead of whole surface area. This makes it safe to touch because there's limited area of heat transfer between the cover and your hand so you won't get burned like it would happen if you'd touch a whole surface of same high temperature.


Putting hard drives over it is another thing since there's a lot of heat going from the gpu and the drives themselves. It's the same thing that made LRPC not so ideal to begin with - ncase team did just what you want me to do and that's partially the reason they've put the project on hold. Note the fact that most of the cases with drives over the gpu have both bigger distances from the gpu and a lot of enforced airflow from the bottom fans.

A GPU wouldn't add much/any of a temperature difference in the Sentry though because of the isolated areas though, right?

While the airflow is quite isolated those parts are still connected - you're putting a load on more cpu die areas then when not using the gpu since the cpu will handle the pci-e and dedicated gpu.

Note the fact that modern cpu's are made as a superscalar processor which means there's a ton of duplicated computing elements in it and simply putting 100% of load in some benchmarks isn't necessarily going to create the same workload as if you were playing the game. And not every game has equal workload for those units. Synthetic benchmark might load up 100% of units used in floating point operations while gaming might load up all units dedicated to memory transfers and pci handling etc and this difference might mean a lot.

 

[Corummo]

SaperPL
Got it. Many thanks for the clear explanations.

 

[AstroWan]

Haha, yeah I admit that an overclock of .2 won't really do much. The hope is that there will be some better cooling options available once I actually need to overclock some more. It just felt wrong to not get a K series cpu since I've never bought a locked down cpu.

A GPU wouldn't add much/any of a temperature difference in the Sentry though because of the isolated areas though, right?

I felt the same, I rather have unlocked just for the potential, then to be locked down with no room to crank up.

I'd recommend not going for the K models with high TDP. non-K 65W sku's shouldn't bottleneck 1070's and 1080's, I think and I don't really think there's a real reason to overclock something like current i7's unless you're going 4K or some kind of supersampling. Go for more gpu horsepower rather than overclocking already rocking standard i7.

Note that there's not really too much space to cram up the cpu cooling so even if you fit something in there there's still have to be some space to move the air around. I can't think about anything else than Cryorig C7 as a high end solution for such cpu and even that isn't something outstanding when going for OC.

You also have to remember that depending on how much wattage your components draw, will affect how loud the whole system be. OC'ing a K sku may end up in running full RPM's while on load.

Wait for LTT review, I hope they'll do extensive testing on that matter as well. Until that, keep in mind that there's no dedicated room for water cooling in our case so overclocking in general might not give you the best effects.

Thanks for the response, definitely awaiting LTT's review. As for cpu, I think I'll still stick with 6700k and just not toy with OC too much.

Answering back about the 4k question, I'm running a 3440x1440p resolution ultrawide monitor, and although that technically means demands should be more around 1440p gaming needs, it pushes my gpu harder than just normal 2.5k res. Although it's technically not 4k, it sure pushes the boundary enough to make me treat it as such.

 

[ZombiPL]

Answering back about the 4k question, I'm running a 3440x1440p resolution ultrawide monitor, and although that technically means demands should be more around 1440p gaming needs, it pushes my gpu harder than just normal 2.5k res. Although it's technically not 4k, it sure pushes the boundary enough to make me treat it as such.

It is only Your choice what You will put inside our pc case. You can have several LCD's if You want and if Your components allows it. 4K, 8K, etc. No problem. The only thing what we say is that, You should have in mind the TDP of all of Your pc parts. If You want to go for overkill and You will have poor cooling on cpu or gpu, then for example, You can get throttling on Your GPU. Remember this case is 6.9 L, and this is not an amount of free air inside. We have tested this case with gpu's with high TDP, but we can't say You can't use something more powerfull. If You want, OK, but remember You need to cool down the temperature of those components, and going for high TDP+OC+4K needs good cooling solutions.

 

[AstroWan]

It is only Your choice what You will put inside our pc case. You can have several LCD's if You want and if Your components allows it. 4K, 8K, etc. No problem. The only thing what we say is that, You should have in mind the TDP of all of Your pc parts. If You want to go for overkill and You will have poor cooling on cpu or gpu, then for example, You can get throttling on Your GPU. Remember this case is 6.9 L, and this is not an amount of free air inside. We have tested this case with gpu's with high TDP, but we can't say You can't use something more powerfull. If You want, OK, but remember You need to cool down the temperature of those components, and going for high TDP+OC+4K needs good cooling solutions.

Hmm point taken, well I'll run cpu non-overclocked then. Thanks for the info and I'll definitely take more care to look into TDP so my parts.

 

[ZombiPL]

Hello, excuse my language but I do not know.
Much like the Silverstone ML09 as volume, but as a project similar to the Raven RVZ02, pity that the latter are 5 liters more, and that has the plastic.
RAVEN by SilverStone - RVZ02

I found another one called! Nverse (464x309x72) on 10.3 liters, of this you can mount a single kit liquid or double.
!nverse Case Discussion Thread
SPECIFICATIONS

Nice project but little supported, a message in a blue moon on the developments, and the last in March.

We wouldn't design such pc case if there is no need for similar one on the market. We wanted to have a case which will be stiff, allows to use high-end components and would allow to transport in many laptop bags. We know there are some similar pc cases out there, but as You may noticed, there are one or two people who like our case, so we didn't leave the project.

You do the tests in Poland, but there are room temperature?
I ask because I should carry between two countries, Italy and South America (at least 25 degrees at night and maximum of 30/40 days).

Thanks for pointing out the fact we didn't write in our first post the ambient temperature during our benchmarks. We'll add it. We had like 22-24 deg C inside our room, but maybe my bro will remember the exact number. But if You have 40 deg C in Your room, then even with high-end cooling components You can get throttling. In Poland we try to keep our ambient room temperature in the summer not higher than 25-27 deg and 20-21 deg in the winter. If You have twice as hot in Your room, then Your components will also feel it.

We've tested 180W and 150W TDP cards in our case, and there was no problems with them. Saper is currently working with one of them (970GTX), and he's very happy with the temps.
We will send our case to reviewers in different countries, so You'll get a neutral information about our pc case cooling efficiency in different ambient temperatures. Just wait for the first external reviews.

As video card Polaris AMD.
SFX power supplies / SFX-L are dual voltage?

I'm not sure if i understand right, but yes. SFX and SFX-L power supplies support power cables for GPU's which need dual power connectors. At this moment both new AMD and NVIDIA cards needs only 1 additional power cable: Polaris one 6-pin connector and Pascal one 8-pin connector.

Putting a short GPU you could put a liquid kit for the CPU?

It could be somehow possible, but in the past we were searching for some AIO cooling kit, and we couldn't find the proper one. Maybe since then something new came up on the market.

 

[ZombiPL]

Hmm point taken, well I'll run cpu non-overclocked then. Thanks for the info and I'll definitely take more care to look into TDP so my parts.

I didn't say "do not use overclocking or non-overclockable parts". I'm only saying that, putting 2x, 4x or maybe more times faster and TDP-hungry components than XBOX ONE has, into pc case with internal size of XBOX ONE would need a good cooling solutions. If You will go for OC overkill + poor cooling + maybe high ambient temperatures (f.e. 40 deg like Tallando has), then i wish You good luck in fight with throttling

In other words: you all can use OC with Sentry as long as you can properly cool your components. It's a standard rule for all pc cases.

 

[The Fragile]

There's honestly nothing similar out there. That's why we're here.

 

[FiDDy]

you guys are awesome!

 

[Corummo]

I'm not sure if i understand right, but yes. SFX and SFX-L power supplies support power cables for GPU's which need dual power connectors. At this moment both new AMD and NVIDIA cards needs only 1 additional power cable: Polaris one 6-pin connector and Pascal one 8-pin connector.

As he moves from Europe (220-240V) to South America (110-120V), I suspect he was referring to the wall AC voltages.

 

[ZombiPL]

As he moves from Europe (220-240V) to South America (110-120V), I suspect he was referring to the wall AC voltages.

I'm not sure about that, because most of South American countries have voltage 220-240V (link). But he also didn't specify where is he going, so i may be wrong

And YES, most of SFX/SFX-L power supplies are working in a wide range of voltages, for example 90V ~ 260V.

 

[Corummo]

I'm not sure about that, because most of South American countries have voltage 220-240V (link). But he also didn't specify where is he going, so i may be wrong

Several years ago I worked at Rio De Janeiro for two months, and our hotel had the 120V supply. I had to trim my beard using a razor, instead of using my electric trimmer.