SENTRY: Console-sized gaming PC case project

We don't want to ship incomplete set - that's for sure. So sending case without riser and usb cable is no-go for us -it's sending a wrong message. We also don't want to manage additional worldwide shipment of those missing parts later.

As Aibohphobia said, there's a big difference between the poll and the commitment.

There's also the thing about sending the case to LTT and letting them take their time to review the case properly while we manage the payment system and shipping.
 
I totally agree on what SaperPL said. As a consumer, I'd wait on receiving one final product with all the bells and wistle rather than getting it piece by piece. We've waiting this long so whats another couple of weeks? right? :)

Anyhow, This is great news! Things are finally coming together. I'll commit to placing an early bird order anytime! Count me in. Las Vegas, NV USA
 
Heyo: )

Back I am, really its so nice to see the project moved even closer to fruition!
I cant push back the urge to ask..
How much would the custom riser and cables add ? also are there any Black Models with the first batch ?

Anyways glad to see everything found its way, I guess a few weeks longer in the cardbox also wouldnt kill my components :D
 
There's 13 white units and 12 black units in the batch. Up to 5 of them will be send for reviews leaving 10 white and 10 black units.

Problem with usb cables is that we're getting 100pcs somehow custom made for us with proper moulds (same as old reference usb 2.0 baffles) that are uncommon now since it's more common to make bigger spacing between the ports. We've got to buy 100pcs at least which would mean that either we have to drop that ~4x price per cable on you which simply isn't fair or stockpile them out of our pockets. Same thing goes for the power cables which are custom made for us.

The bigger problem here is that we want to keep promise to LTT for them to be the first ones to review the case and we cant sell it out before they do this since we cannot embargo the reviews if you buy the case from us - if you bought it, it's yours, you can do whatever you want with it and we have no right to tell you not to make a review. So that it on the other end.

That said, I'm not rushing things here because I'm a bit overloaded with work at the studio; coding gameplay and handling the game project and there's sometimes just not enough energy after that to sit down and push things for the website to make it as clear as possible to let you make well informed decision on what we're trying to sell (which you've got to say is quite hard considering multiple explanations we've had to give you here).
 
Heyo: )

Back I am, really its so nice to see the project moved even closer to fruition!
I cant push back the urge to ask..
How much would the custom riser and cables add ? also are there any Black Models with the first batch ?


Sorry guys, but i somehow forgot to write about those 25 cases I ordered 2 weeks ago. Now, after a few days of being afk i see we have a party here :)

25th of April is a date when i should go to our manufacturer to pick our order. You have to remember that those cases at this moment are only a test batch. It means, we're making them mostly beause we want to see if we can get better repeatability, than when we were ordering 1 pcs of Sentry. Of course our last white prototype was the best one we received ( www.zaber.com.pl/sentry/ ), but we have to be sure, about the situation with 25+ orders.

As Saper said, Linus will receive our Sentry first. After his review, we will think which way of distribution will be the best.

And one more thing. I read somewhere that "we are starting to sell Sentry in 9 days", and it is a confirmed information. Well... we never said anything about the exact release date, simply because we are also waiting for the prototypes, and there are many things that don't depend on us. But you can be sure that we won't start our case manufacturing, before sending the case to Canada to LTT, and when it will happen, then we will let you know.
Please be patient. 25.04 isn't far from now :)
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: FiDDy
like this
So the test Batch, was it any good ? Are you satisfied ?

Oh and yes, im more than happy with the end of this month! : )
 
It's not 25th yet, FiDDy, so there's no batch yet :)

We'll know then what are we looking at in terms of repeatability and if we're ready to manufacture or not.
 
  • Like
Reactions: FiDDy
like this
aah ok, seems I misunderstood. Was thinking thats when you are or are not going to order the first big big batch:)
 
I only have one question. What's the backpack :D the 340 x 320 x 74 size is very impressive!
 
Last edited:
Nope - Like I've already said - there's a slight functional update in the final design that's quite crucial so we didn't want to send the white prototype to Linus.
 
Sweet mother of goodness...

wow_doge_meets_heavy_breathing-55269c6337338.jpg


Shut up and take all of my money!
 
With Sentry and Dan's A4 looking like they'll both be out at almost the same time :D it looks like I'm going to have to do some overtime this week.
 
Soo.. youre waiting for the Buttons to arive ? :D

Actually, no - we've ordered a batch to figure out how precision looks like on a serie so we can analyse this data and make final adjustments in the designs to be ready for manufacturing.

At the same time we've got to figure out how much time we spend on quality control on each unit to know how the final price should look like.

We're missing a lot of pieces for those units: risers, usb cables, power cables, rubber feet, plugs etc.

For now I'll only say that I'm blown away by how the black units final powder coating look and feel like - they're so close to what you get in hp/ibm server chassis to the point where I can't see any difference.

With Sentry and Dan's A4 looking like they'll both be out at almost the same time :D it looks like I'm going to have to do some overtime this week.

Glad to hear that - does that mean you're getting both? :D

We'll see how Dan's A4 will work out - you've got to remember that he's going with crowdfunding and that's a double sided sword if you've got to manage quite a big minimum order quantity like he's got with expensive niche product. Hopefully he'll get there - it would be a waste to not have such great product on the market.
 
Hi guys, I am a long term member in notebookreview forum. I have been following this thread for a long time. I am from Germany. I want to know some things, what is the final cost of this case with shipping to Germany? You can pm me the price.

Is the Riser cable or adapter included in the case? and also the blue cable? that i saw in the pictures? This is the final dimension correct?

-340 x 310 x 66mm main body - excluding stands, vertical stand and VGA bracket hold
-340 x 320 x 74mm total outline - including stands and VGA bracket hold
 
I probably should update the outline data -
it's actually:
343 ( + 2 x 1.5mm for the sides screw heads) x 322 ( + 10mm of vga bracket piece outside main body + 2mm for the front power button sticking out a little) x 74 (66mm + 6.5mm of rubber feet + 1.5mm of top screw heads)

All required parts will be included. Package will contain:
- lower body
- case cover
- VGA side bracket
- vertical stand
- 2.5" detachable support (new piece, not yet on the photos)
- two 2.5" quad brackets (one set)
- two PCI slot plugs (vented)
- power button with motherboard wires (Power SW/ Power LED)
- IEC C14-C13 power cable
- 50mm shielded pci-e riser
- USB 3.0 baffle type cable as front panel connector.
- USB 3.0 20pin to USB 2.0 internal adapter
- four 6.5mm tall rubber feet
- four plugs in place of rubber feet for configuration with vertical stand
- bag of screws
- some kind of simple instruction

Hopefully I hadn't forgotten anything here.

Shipping to Germany should cost around $13. We're not including the shipping price in the final price tag.

For the final price tag you'll have to wait a bit since we've got to figure out how much time we need to spend on quality control and packaging for each unit to make that properly.
 
Hmm is there still different coloured LED I/O-buttons in discussion, or did you actually already order your parts.
Anyways im really glad how youve come out with this project, congrats again! :)
 
Hmm... button led colours ...

this batch is a test batch for a metal pieces and it doesn't mean we've already gone and ordered all other parts required for them.

While there were others asking about led colors as well, there weren't too many of you and managing this might be quite a pain for us if we let everyone pick the colour while ordering, so for now we'll wait and see if it's really that big of a case when we're live with review from linus. Anyway if you've waited this long then buying a $5 16mm switch and resoldering the wires shouldn't be a big problem for you :)

By the way, we're pretty close to uploading new version of the product website, there's still some stuff to be done with the newsletter subscription before we launch it though - stay tuned.

At this point I'm trying to get ourselves some boxes made so we can properly send this one unit to linus and test packaging etc.
 
Hey!

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I can't find the answer. What sized VGA cards will fit? I can find the max length, but nothing in regards to height/depth.
 
We're targeting reference sized PCB - oversized PCB gpu's will have problems with fitting the power plug inside the case thus will require low profile/modded PEG plugs. Giving you any dimensions for graphics card that will fit is useless because vendors are failing to give those with consistency even among their own products.

You just need to know what a reference PCB looks like and it should fit unless the cooling is more than 2cm oversized further than PCB. We've got a way of showing how fitting components work in our case and it's ready on the website that we're planning to launch soon - stay tuned for that.

In terms of thickness I don't see any problems with fitting any dual-slot gpu thickness if it's really a dual slot, not something using more space than that.

I've shown this here before but as you said, it's hard to find:
FHcdHAr.jpg
 
Last edited:
Sapel: Thanks for your response. You previously tested this card, and it appeared to fit. Is this still accurate?
 
Yes, it is. I'm currently running my rig with this card.

If you check out the PCB of this card it is reference width (dimension from pci-e slot to top of the card/crossfire bridge connector/PEG connectors):
24447_gigabyte_r9_270x_bottom.jpg


There are quite a few photos of this card mounted in both prototype V colour versions that we photographed so you can go there and see for yourself. (SENTRY: Console-sized gaming PC case)

Anyway I hope you're not going to buy this card now since GTX 1070 will blow away current card prices in about two weeks.
 
Perfect, I wanted to compare it to the dimensions of my current GPU: MSI 980TI Gaming. It seems that it is 1mm taller in height so I am assuming it will fit. I do not know if they included the heatpipes in those dimensions though.
 
It's not perfect - 980TI Gaming has waay too much oversized PCB - note how much further from PCI bracket is SLI connector here than crossfire connector in the gigabyte R9-270X I've shown you before:

msi-gtx-980-ti-gaming-6g-backplate.jpg


That's what I've been talking about dimensions from vendors...
 
I agree, dimensions from vendors are a bit off. On MSI's USA site, they advertise the card as having a length of 277mm, yet on their UK site the length is listed as 269mm. Who knows if they included the heatpipes in those numbers. I guess the only way to know for sure is grab a pair of calipers. :/
 
It won't fit. I did check that some time ago trying to figure out its dimensions by projecting the photos to the bracket dimensions. the heatpipes would be outside the case and even without that problem you wouldn't fit the PEG power connectors inside the case.

The length is not a problem - whether it's 269 or 277 (measured with or without the bracket) we've got room for 305mm in length. the width is a bigger problem for such cards like this.

Of course we could've made more space for those cards but it would mean getting bigger in volume and that's not the point of this case.
 
So I'm definitely late to the party, but, when are you expecting your first run to be in and ready to sell? Also, what is the expected price of production units (or even one of your prototypes). Thanks and great work on the computer case :D
 
While there were others asking about led colors as well, there weren't too many of you and managing this might be quite a pain for us if we let everyone pick the colour while ordering, so for now we'll wait and see if it's really that big of a case when we're live with review from linus. Anyway if you've waited this long then buying a $5 16mm switch and resoldering the wires shouldn't be a big problem for you :)

Last time I asked about being able to change the power switch I think you said that you were previously planning to just glue the switch to the case but were considering ways to make the switch replaceable (or something along those lines; I asked about this a while ago). So is the power switch easily replaceable in the current design?
 
Yes, that didn't change - it's still a 16mm hole where we put the same switch that's fastened with a nut from inside. I don't think we'll need to glue it since when nut us fastened properly it doesn't seem to loosen up by itself.
 
I just finished catching up with the thread, now I'm completely torn between this and the A4!
The A4 is slightly larger, but manages to look smaller.
But!
It requires the GPU be exactly 2 slots wide, where it seems that the Sentry is tolerant of GPUs up to 4mm or so past spec based on this picture.
Great job on the design by the way, it looks fantastic!

One question about the power switch though:
Y'all said that while larger switches do exist, they may not fit right.
Would the 22mm anti-vandal switches run into things?
From my not very educated thought, 22mm switches should fit fine?
The hole would need to be enlarged, of course, but I'm not certain if it would run into things, or something?
I'm not sure if 22mm switches have a greater depth than 16mm switches.
Edit:
And just to be a pest, I'm going to ask if you've sent out any sample cases to reviewers yet? ;)
 
Last edited:
We're a bit late with packaging and we're quite busy with other projects currently. I'm pushing the packaging manufacturing as we speak so we can ship the samples for reviews asap.

The thing with power switch size is that if you want bigger radius then the nut on it is also a bit bigger and you would need to move the center of the hole away from the center wall to fasten the nut on it (you need some space for the wrench too). Also that means full length card might be obstructed by this bigger switch and you'd end up with forces applied to the pci-e slot. Enlarging the hole not at it's center is not a great idea anyway :)

I think at this point you should know that we've made the case as tight as possible and placing the switch isn't just random artsy pick :)

If you want switches to pick from then go here: Shop vandal switch 16mm momentary online Gallery - Buy vandal switch 16mm momentary for unbeatable low prices on AliExpress.com

The switch will need to be momentary which means it doesn't lock so your pc won't power down after 3 sec :p
 
Makes sense!
I hadn't considered the nut causing issues, and the full length card thing is definitely important to me (and y'all!)
Definitely understand the design of the case being focused on being as small as possible, and definitely appreciate your dedication.
Thanks for the quick reply and all the work you guys have done so far. (y)
 
Back
Top