SENTRY: Console-sized gaming PC case project

ZombiPL said:
:)

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 :D

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.
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Haha, well I'll definitely see how temps are normally and see if there's room. Best play it safe by starting out at normal nominal temps. The good news is that I live in the northern half of the United States (flip flop between New York and Indiana for home and college) and shouldn't see extraordinary hot ambient temps except during the summer time. Good news is that in both scenarios my build will be put in, I have access to AC and usually like to keep my room nice and cold, which should help to allow the computer to breath easily.

Thanks for being so responsive guys, and like FiDDy said:

FiDDy said:
you guys are awesome!
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Edit: Seriously... the fact that this makes an xbox one look like a toaster (performance wise) makes me explode with happiness. Finally a mobile, customizable, and beautiful mini-itx case... one that puts consoles to shame.
 
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AstroWan said:
Man, thank god we don't have a count down clock or all of us would go bonkers. XD
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Hey guys, i think we need Your help again,

Many of You are asking us to make comparison photos side-by-side with PS4 and XBOX ONE. So we will try to make You happy. And this is the place where we have a problem. We don't know if it will be legal to make such side-by-side photos of our SENTRY and those console boxes. In Poland we have a very strict law, which of course allows such "advertising", but if You do something wrong and You get sued, then You could pay a lot. That is why "comparative advertising" isn't so popular here.

We would be very grateful if You could write how is it in your countries. What kind of photos, which compares SENTRY to consoles can we post. Or maybe we shouldn't post such photos?

Thanks.
 
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It's not about this being illegal in general but it's a specific case of side by side comparison. The law states (not only in Poland) it should be apples-to-apples comparison without hiding/omitting competitive product features, while we'd only be using it to compare the size of our product and we don't want to make the performance comparison. It's also quite vague whether they're our competition or not.

What I'm afraid is that M$ can get an idea to slap us with lawsuit in US just because they can...
 
Damn while I like the idea of a real size comparison between your case and the case of current gen consoles. I think the original comparison you did a while back is still great, even though it's not "real".

ZombiPL said:
Of course we can:)



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ZombiPL said:
hmmm, in some dimmensions it is smaller.

As i remember, Saper made those models according to the official dimmensions. I think this is some kind of perspective view problem.
Here You have those 2 models next to each other:



And here You have a comparison of those 2 consoles from some other website.

PS4 vs. Xbox One Console Size Comparison | GamingReality

And also one more photo:

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I think what you could do is just make a few cellphone pictures of the three devices next to each other, PM them to some member and then just let them post them in the thread here. As long as you don't link to them from your website, it's not advertising.

If you want to make good-looking side-by-side shots and put them on your website, you'll have to consult a lawyer, there's no way around that.
 
SaperPL said:
It's not about this being illegal in general but it's a specific case of side by side comparison. The law states (not only in Poland) it should be apples-to-apples comparison without hiding/omitting competitive product features, while we'd only be using it to compare the size of our product and we don't want to make the performance comparison. It's also quite vague whether they're our competition or not.

What I'm afraid is that M$ can get an idea to slap us with lawsuit in US just because they can...
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Like iFreilicht said, maybe consult a lawyer. I see other companies doing this a LOT here. It's not some uncommon thing. Companies are always comparing themselves to each other and their products quite frequently, even if those comparisons are sometimes ridiculous ... like the Microsoft/Apple commercials with their Surface Pro compared to the iPad or MacBook Pro. Saying it's the size of the Xbox or PS4 is one thing. But using the Xbox name or PlayStation name would be definitely grounds for suing. If a simple size comparison is illegal, then Poland is crazy strict. But I don't know anything about your laws there.
 
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yeah people do size comparisons all the lime. you just CANNOT show the label/logo. but I'm no lawyer, so if using them on your website, check first! on a forum I don't think it would be an issue.
 
I'm not a lawyer, but I think you're going to sell an "empty shell" to fill with pc parts, and not a console as a direct competitor of PS4 and XBox.
You're just comparing size, NOT the products, nor the technical contents or performances.
I see lots of reviews by people comparing monitors of different brands and same size, side by side, to show luminance and saturation differences.
IMHO that could be a problem, not just the size comparison.
 
Corummo said:
I'm not a lawyer, but I think you're going to sell an "empty shell" to fill with pc parts, and not a console as a direct competitor of PS4 and XBox.
You're just comparing size, NOT the products, nor the technical contents or performances.
I see lots of reviews by people comparing monitors of different brands and same size, side by side, to show luminance and saturation differences.
IMHO that could be a problem, not just the size comparison.
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Exactly. But even then it shouldn't be an issue. Companies compares all those things to each other all the time. It's common practice.
 
The Fragile said:
Exactly. But even then it shouldn't be an issue. Companies compares all those things to each other all the time. It's common practice.
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Depends on the country. In Germany I rarely see comparison ads. Recently there was a little bit of bashing ads between three major internet providers, but that was the first time I've EVER seen one company mention another in an ad. Maybe the law around that topic was loosened up a bit.
 
Couldn't someone in another country do it and just upload it to imgur or something?
 
It's not about the country but the specific context of comparing consoles to our case, that may be the enclosure itself, but tries to promote living room pc styled gaming that in the end is a competition for consoles and thus if we were to compare it and put those images as official promo materials then we have to know how to handle that. I just think that it might end up being that kind of stupid situation when we'd have to put that star and complex explanation under each photo using a console just to be legally safe...
 
I'm sorry, this is a foreign concept to me, honestly. Companies compare shapes, sizes, specs, and everything else under the sun all the time. The only time there's an issue is when one company is blatantly ripping off another company, which you aren't doing. I mean here's a page in the UK directly comparing a case to a PlayStation 3: Benefits and Features of HTPC's | Media Master HTPC

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I mean if that's the law in Poland, then you have to roll with it. I've just never heard of such a thing.



Edit: I honestly don't care what you do. You do whatever you feel is right. I just want the case. :p
 
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If you can't legally use the name or image of other company's property (especially litigious companies *cough* MS *cough*) you could always use a blacked out silhouette of the console for comparison and refer to it simply as "typical home video game console". You see that all the time in TV commercials, we all know what the silhouette is but they never explicitly say what it is, so legally the advertiser is fine.
 
The Fragile - that's good example for a company in EU that did it with a console - thanks for that, it looks like they explicitly stated it as just size comparison - that might be the way to do it properly.

Once again - We're not talking about the law in Poland being bad, but that the courts in US take their company sides and some companies tend to overuse it. IF that happend we could've been blocked in the US or at least we would have a mayor pain to deal with.
 
hehe.. of course you could send me a prototype, and then I would do the comparing for you ;) Videos, pictures, everything! :D


seriously though, if you honestly worry then just dont do it at all. Just wait for Linus, or some customer to do it when the case is out.

ps. I find your marketing on the website quite compelling already!
 
Today we've made a video showing the assembling process of the pc components inside our SENTRY. We're going to put it somewhere on our website, but we wanted to know what do you think about it.

We hope you'll like it :D


 
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I want! Is there space for two 2.5" drives in there?


I love the video, but I would probably use something more modern/electronic for the music track. The song you're using sounds like a commercial for a John Deere Tractor.


Seriously though, this case is awesome. That's actually pretty clean cable management.
 
Oh wow. I didn't realize you updated how the 2.5mm drives attach. That's super good news since I won't have any in my case. It looks WAY better now when the areas for the drives aren't populated. Overall I found the video to be good.

I don't edit videos at all, so I'm not really one to critique music or editing, so I'll leave that to other people. I did think that the speed of assembly was good though. Fast enough to not drag on, but slow enough to understand everything that you're doing.
 
The Fragile said:
I want! Is there space for two 2.5" drives in there?
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You can put the second 2.5" under the blower gpu or install it on the center mount when using short SFX power supply, in front of it. You can check that out on the website.

We've just made the optimal configuration video - note the mSATA SSD already installed into the motherboard. I didn't want to make more complex configurations in this video to make it short and keep the case in place while capturing (I'd have to turn the vertically to screw the drive to the bottom of vga bay).

The Fragile said:
I love the video, but I would probably use something more modern/electronic for the music track. The song you're using sounds like a commercial for a John Deere Tractor.
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Music is a freebie from youtube that we just chose last minute to be there. It doesn't require putting credit to the author in a video and I think this is quite crucial when you don't want to re-upload the video when changing it. The audio is not embedded into the video so we should be able to edit it anytime.

The Fragile said:
Seriously though, this case is awesome. That's actually pretty clean cable management.
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It's a bit tricky cable management on the gpu side but when it's done it looks pretty clean from the outside. I wanted to show you that in this video as well.

octagoncow said:
Oh wow. I didn't realize you updated how the 2.5mm drives attach. That's super good news since I won't have any in my case. It looks WAY better now when the areas for the drives aren't populated. Overall I found the video to be good.
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That's the part I've been banging my head over for ages while assembling the earlier prototypes. When it was hard attached to the case the cable management was possible but quite hard and I had to go around it with everything down there. We've figured it out at last before ordering a prototype batch to make it look properly and to be detachable.

octagoncow said:
I don't edit videos at all, so I'm not really one to critique music or editing, so I'll leave that to other people. I did think that the speed of assembly was good though. Fast enough to not drag on, but slow enough to understand everything that you're doing.
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We were playing it over and over with different speeds to check out the best possible speed. We have also cleared out the idle periods to make it progress without stops. Finally we wanted to fit in under two minutes.



We'll make some photos of the black case today to update the website which has pre-final paint shown on the black unit photos so stay tuned for that this week. Also we should be getting the boxes this week so the following week after that will probably be the "d-day" for our reviews being sent to linustechtips :)
 
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SaperPL said:
We'll make some photos of the black case today to update the website which has pre-final paint shown on the black unit photos so stay tuned for that this week. Also we should be getting the boxes this week so the following week after that will probably be the "d-day" for our reviews being sent to linustechtips :)
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Cooleo! Keep us posted. I personally can't stand Linus, but he has several million subscribers, so yeah. HardwareCanucks is a quality channel as well: HardwareCanucks

He does very professional video editing, so might be a good idea to send him one as well to really show off your case, and he's got about a half million subscribers. Linus clearly isn't much of a videographer. The videos are just kind of thrown together.
 
I don't know when did you last see a video review from Linus but currently he's got quite a lot of people doing filming and editing so it's better than it was like three years ago. Yes, there are some videos that are just put together to fill the window since they want to upload a video once a day but the reviews tend to be more specific and detailed. We'll probably hand out few units to other youtubers later after linus reviews it.
 
I'm not bashing the channel in general, just their video editing could use some work. I watch his channel all the time. The video editing has definitely improved greatly over the years. I'm not saying it's terrible by any means, was just giving an example of a YouTuber with really nice video editing skills with lots of followers. He uses much higher quality video equipment.

Anyway yes, Linus gives very detailed and specific reviews, that's kind of why I subscribed. LinusTechTips is definitely a great place to send your case to for review.
 
The Fragile said:
Cooleo! Keep us posted. I personally can't stand Linus, but he has several million subscribers, so yeah. HardwareCanucks is a quality channel as well: HardwareCanucks
He does very professional video editing, so might be a good idea to send him one as well to really show off your case, and he's got about a half million subscribers. Linus clearly isn't much of a videographer. The videos are just kind of thrown together.
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eheheh exactly what I wrote in a direct email to you guys. (Yes, I'm the one who bothered you with the Pcie riser question) :D
And btw, nothing personal, but the tone of Linus' voice hits hard on my nerves. After 2 minutes I feel the urge to kill someone. :D
 
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Corummo said:
eheheh exactly what I wrote in a direct email to you guys. (Yes, I'm the one who bothered you with the Pcie riser question) :D
And btw, nothing personal, but the tone of Linus' voice hits hard on my nerves. After 2 minutes I feel the urge to kill someone. :D
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He has a voice only a mother could love.

Regardless, it's still a great channel to promote the case.
 
The Fragile said:
He has a voice only a mother could love.

Regardless, it's still a great channel to promote the case.
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Surprisingly, I like the reviews because it can be pretty informative, especially because he's capable of completely dismantling some of the products and showing everything that's going on. It really helps to allow me to judge flexibility in editing or changing parts in computers, or seeing how much room they have for improvement.
 
Sorry if it has been asked before, but was it ever considered in the design process to flip the GPU in order to have the intake holes on the same side (top) as the cpu and psu? I'm curious, what are the disadvantages if doing this?
 
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DG25 said:
I'm not familiar with every post on every page on this thread, but was it ever considered in the design process to flip the GPU in order to have the intake holes on the same side (top)? What are the disadvantages if doing this?
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Yeah, we've been there, done that :)

Disadvantages:
- Completely perforated top of the case which doesn't look good nor is rigid enough
- Completely blank bottom of the case which doesn't look good in vertical position
- Very long pci-e riser going either under motherboard or gpu meaning it must resist high temperature from bottom the of chips
- more space required under the motherboard or in case width to fit the riser/its bending

Advantages:
- a bit easier drives placement and riser pci-e slot mounting point
- possibly better thermals in horizontal position
- possibility of symmetrical external design in horizontal position including perforation
 
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