SENTRY: Console-sized gaming PC case project

[SaperPL]

Looks okay to me, I'll try to find some time next week to check out new cards. Would be nice if you guys could lend me a hand if you know about other recently released cards. So far I remember there's zotac 1080 Mini to check out.

Anyway at this point you guys know the drill. You should be able to figure out the difference between a reference sized cards and heavily oversized cards by now

 

[Morzy]

*nod* 112mm for general height and 18mm of connector space as possible oversize area.

 

[FiDDy]

Hello there!

Now I havent looked in here for quite some time. So first up congratulations! it seems the campaign is going great so far! Im so glad youre finally doing it. I ordered a Black Sentry in the short run right away. Now ive got a little Problem, Im going to move soon. So I would need to change my shpping adress, right?

 

[SaperPL]

So I would need to change my shpping adress, right?

Because the campaign is close the system is no longer letting you edit your shipping address because for example we could've already be shipping the perks if we had like cups and T-shirts ready right away, so we (the campaigner) have to decide whether we can change the address for you or not (we have this option still available)

You have to contact us through indiegogo from your account or from the e-mail you used for registration on indiegogo and tell us your new address. You have to contact us this way so we are sure it is you who ordered the perk and if anything happens we have the proof you really wanted to change your address and it wasn't someone else

 

[SaperPL]

Small update and call for discussion about build configurations:


Yesterday we've finally got first proper leaks from retailers about pricing on ryzen and I've decided to update the proposed builds list with what changed since the campaign started. I hope you haven't done shopping already since Ryzen pricing looks pretty competitive already with just three 8-core units pricing leaked and there's like dozen of them to be released in total.


Proposed builds can be found here: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/SaperPL/saved/

Important changes:

1) Added two AMD Ryzen builds based on pricing leaks for 1700/1800X - no need for explanation, we're almost there
2) Added two HTPC/NAS builds featuring 3.5" drives in RAID instead of GPU - read the build description for more info!
3) Changed non-reference blower 1080's to founders edition because of vapor chamber since you've talked about this and at this price range you probably want the best anyway
4) Changed i7-7100 to G4560 and 1050 TI to 1060 3GB for entry build - because pentium is not much slower than i3 in games and will be target for upgrade in the future
5) Updated boards from H110/Z170 to H270/Z270 for Kaby Lake features and intel sata raid configurations support
6) Updated V1.0 & V2.0 Silverstone SFX power supplies to V3.0 units with 92mm fans which should be available pretty soon.

Important notes:
1) Prices are US based and do not include your local taxes outside US - take that into account.
2) Build configuration are a bit off from their target pricing because of time limited promotions being included on pcpartpicker while we were initially creating those build proposals
3) While Silverstone SFX-L is modular and has gold certification you don't really need such powerful PSU unless you go for 95W CPU & 180W GPU. Going with SilverStone SST-ST45SF V3.0 450W will be an easier build due to more space in front of PSU and standard braided cables that are more flexible than modular ribbon cables from Silverstone. You will also have the space for another 2.5" drive in front of it.
4) Builds are only proposals and NOT tested configurations. We would need to have all of that hardware and plenty of spare time for testing. Make sure to discuss your build if you're not sure about this.

Let me know what you think and I'll keep improving those.

 

[Ej24]

Small update and call for discussion about build configurations:


Yesterday we've finally got first proper leaks from retailers about pricing on ryzen and I've decided to update the proposed builds list with what changed since the campaign started. I hope you haven't done shopping already since Ryzen pricing looks pretty competitive already with just three 8-core units pricing leaked and there's like dozen of them to be released in total.


Proposed builds can be found here: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/SaperPL/saved/

Important changes:

1) Added two AMD Ryzen builds based on pricing leaks for 1700/1800X - no need for explanation, we're almost there
2) Added two HTPC/NAS builds featuring 3.5" drives in RAID instead of GPU - read the build description for more info!
3) Changed non-reference blower 1080's to founders edition because of vapor chamber since you've talked about this and at this price range you probably want the best anyway
4) Changed i7-7100 to G4560 and 1050 TI to 1060 3GB for entry build - because pentium is not much slower than i3 in games and will be target for upgrade in the future
5) Updated boards from H110/Z170 to H270/Z270 for Kaby Lake features and intel sata raid configurations support
6) Updated V1.0 & V2.0 Silverstone SFX power supplies to V3.0 units with 92mm fans which should be available pretty soon.

Important notes:
1) Prices are US based and do not include your local taxes outside US - take that into account.
2) Build configuration are a bit off from their target pricing because of time limited promotions being included on pcpartpicker while we were initially creating those build proposals
3) While Silverstone SFX-L is modular and has gold certification you don't really need such powerful PSU unless you go for 95W CPU & 180W GPU. Going with SilverStone SST-ST45SF V3.0 450W will be an easier build due to more space in front of PSU and standard braided cables that are more flexible than modular ribbon cables from Silverstone. You will also have the space for another 2.5" drive in front of it.
4) Builds are only proposals and NOT tested configurations. We would need to have all of that hardware and plenty of spare time for testing. Make sure to discuss your build if you're not sure about this.

Let me know what you think and I'll keep improving those.

The Nas configuration is interesting. I was thinking how crazy it'd be if you could have three of the 4x drive mounts in the gpu bay plus the two normal mounts plus an M.2 on the motherboard. If somehow you have a motherboard that could support it you could technically stuff 14x 2.5in storage drives in Sentry with an M.2 for the OS. If you used something like Samsung 850 Evo 4tb ssd you have 56TB in <7L. That has to be some sort of record. Unfortunately I've only ever seen a few server focused itx boards that have more than 6 or 8 sata ports.

 

[SaperPL]

The Nas configuration is interesting. I was thinking how crazy it'd be if you could have three of the 4x drive mounts in the gpu bay plus the two normal mounts plus an M.2 on the motherboard. If somehow you have a motherboard that could support it you could technically stuff 14x 2.5in storage drives in Sentry with an M.2 for the OS. If you used something like Samsung 850 Evo 4tb ssd you have 56TB in <7L. That has to be some sort of record. Unfortunately I've only ever seen a few server focused itx boards that have more than 6 or 8 sata ports.

There is an intel avoton platform that has 12 sata connectors: 8 x SATA3 split throught multiple controllers + 4 x SATA2 on SoC

It has quad or eight core intel atom which perform a bit like i3s/i5s in synthetic tests

Spoiler: asrock rack avoton board

I wanted to buy it at some point, but the platform somehow died, was forgotten by manufacturers and in effect prices never dropped to reasonable range. They still cost like $450+

If I were to do a some kind of extreme NAS or HTPC config, then I'd probably take 2 x 3.5" drives and I would wonder if I can raid a 2.5" 15mm sata-express nvme with M.2 nvme for incredibly fast system storage

2.5" drives are still quite expensive when you want to go above the 1TB...

Things like 4TB SSDs are not yet meant for mortals like us. This stuff can by only owned by divine ones like Linus

 

[RosaJ]

It's been awhile, isn't 1GB per TB of storage still a good rule of thumb for running a NAS? So the 8GB for the NAS builds is the minimum reqs for running, but not recommended. Also I remember looking for those little guys way back, damn shame it's still pricey.

Also thanks for making all those builds with the Sentry price included. Makes me happy now that I don't have to budget the case for Ryzen

Edit: spelling corrections

 

[Rysen]

Small update and call for discussion about build configurations:


Yesterday we've finally got first proper leaks from retailers about pricing on ryzen and I've decided to update the proposed builds list with what changed since the campaign started. I hope you haven't done shopping already since Ryzen pricing looks pretty competitive already with just three 8-core units pricing leaked and there's like dozen of them to be released in total.


Proposed builds can be found here: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/SaperPL/saved/

Important changes:

1) Added two AMD Ryzen builds based on pricing leaks for 1700/1800X - no need for explanation, we're almost there
2) Added two HTPC/NAS builds featuring 3.5" drives in RAID instead of GPU - read the build description for more info!
3) Changed non-reference blower 1080's to founders edition because of vapor chamber since you've talked about this and at this price range you probably want the best anyway
4) Changed i7-7100 to G4560 and 1050 TI to 1060 3GB for entry build - because pentium is not much slower than i3 in games and will be target for upgrade in the future
5) Updated boards from H110/Z170 to H270/Z270 for Kaby Lake features and intel sata raid configurations support
6) Updated V1.0 & V2.0 Silverstone SFX power supplies to V3.0 units with 92mm fans which should be available pretty soon.

Important notes:
1) Prices are US based and do not include your local taxes outside US - take that into account.
2) Build configuration are a bit off from their target pricing because of time limited promotions being included on pcpartpicker while we were initially creating those build proposals
3) While Silverstone SFX-L is modular and has gold certification you don't really need such powerful PSU unless you go for 95W CPU & 180W GPU. Going with SilverStone SST-ST45SF V3.0 450W will be an easier build due to more space in front of PSU and standard braided cables that are more flexible than modular ribbon cables from Silverstone. You will also have the space for another 2.5" drive in front of it.
4) Builds are only proposals and NOT tested configurations. We would need to have all of that hardware and plenty of spare time for testing. Make sure to discuss your build if you're not sure about this.

Let me know what you think and I'll keep improving those.

You should include a build with a regular card that's not blower. That build can be running the 65W i7700 cpu instead of the k version in order to have more reasonable temperatures.

My personal build for example:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-7700 3.6GHz Quad-Core Processor ($314.99 @ Amazon)
Thermal Compound: Thermal Grizzly Hydronaut 3.9g Thermal Paste ($14.69)
Motherboard: Asus ROG STRIX Z270i GAMING Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard ($180.00)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-3333 Memory ($259.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Zotac Premium Edition 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($69.60 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 8GB SC2 Gaming iCX Video Card ($649.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Corsair SF 600W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular SFX Power Supply ($119.99 @ Corsair)
Case Fan: Noctua NF-A9x14 29.7 CFM 92mm Fan ($15.94 @ Amazon)
Other: OOK 50162 20 Gauge, 50ft Copper Hobby Wire ($5.25 @ Amazon)
Other: DR ZABER SENTRY CASE ($222.00)
Other: Thermolab LP53 ($56.33)
Total: $1908.77
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-02-11 13:11 EST-0500

*Hopefully the card will be replaced by the 1080ti

 

[SaperPL]

It's been awhile, isn't 1GB per TB of storage still a good rule of thumb for running a NAS? So the 8GB for the NAS builds is the minimum reqs for running, but not recommended. Also I remember looking for those little guys way back, damn shame it's still pricey.

Good point although that will depend on the usage and the network speed. Nowadays it's more common now to use NAS personally as home storage from various devices so it doesn't necessarily have to handle multiple PC loads like in small office storage. Also note the fact that it will hold only two 3.5" drives and not like 4 or 8 of them that can be placed in common NAS cases.

I can be obviously wrong here, I don't have much experience with this class of servers, but I think that for simple file storage 8 gigs should be more than enough, while advanced users that will run some apps (and transcoding?) on top of this will have to know exactly what they need to run them with reasonable performance.

You should include a build with a regular card that's not blower.

Blower is an optimal choice regardless of your case orientation while open air coolers have advantage only when case is standing vertically.

Those are recommendations and the GPU cooler type is the least important part of it as recommendation, it's rather about balancing the pricing for optimal configuration and reducing potential bottlenecks.

If someone wants to pick another card then he'll just do it. Those recommendations are just starting points for your part list.

*Hopefully the card will be replaced by the 1080ti

I don't recommend waiting for 1080TI to mount it inside Sentry because it'll most likely be a 250W TDP card and we know what happened when Linus put Titan X Pascal inside.

And even if you limit that TDP to run at 180W like 1080 it might be even slower considering the fact that 1080TI will most likely have GDDR5 as cut-down from Titan's GDDR5X memory so you might be better of with GTX1080.

That build can be running the 65W i7700 cpu instead of the k version in order to have more reasonable temperatures.

My personal build for example:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-7700 3.6GHz Quad-Core Processor ($314.99 @ Amazon)
Thermal Compound: Thermal Grizzly Hydronaut 3.9g Thermal Paste ($14.69)
Motherboard: Asus ROG STRIX Z270i GAMING Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard ($180.00)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-3333 Memory ($259.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Zotac Premium Edition 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($69.60 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 8GB SC2 Gaming iCX Video Card ($649.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Corsair SF 600W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular SFX Power Supply ($119.99 @ Corsair)
Case Fan: Noctua NF-A9x14 29.7 CFM 92mm Fan ($15.94 @ Amazon)
Other: OOK 50162 20 Gauge, 50ft Copper Hobby Wire ($5.25 @ Amazon)
Other: DR ZABER SENTRY CASE ($222.00)
Other: Thermolab LP53 ($56.33)
Total: $1908.77
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-02-11 13:11 EST-0500

It's quite interesting now that with your nick you're going for Kaby Lake
I though't you'll be totally dedicated AMD Ryzen fan

3333MHz memory most likely won't run at full speed with i7-7700 unless you overclock it quite a bit because even on this board everything over 2400mhz is supported only through OC.

You should pick a M.2 nvme drive over 2.5" especially when picking such motherboard. M.2 nvme can be 2~3 times faster than SATA3 depending on their corresponding controllers.

What are you planning to do with that Noctua as Case Fan and copper wire ?

 

[Rysen]

Good point although that will depend on the usage and the network speed. Nowadays it's more common now to use NAS personally as home storage from various devices so it doesn't necessarily have to handle multiple PC loads like in small office storage. Also note the fact that it will hold only two 3.5" drives and not like 4 or 8 of them that can be placed in common NAS cases.

I can be obviously wrong here, I don't have much experience with this class of servers, but I think that for simple file storage 8 gigs should be more than enough, while advanced users that will run some apps (and transcoding?) on top of this will have to know exactly what they need to run them with reasonable performance.



Blower is an optimal choice regardless of your case orientation while open air coolers have advantage only when case is standing vertically.

Those are recommendations and the GPU cooler type is the least important part of it as recommendation, it's rather about balancing the pricing for optimal configuration and reducing potential bottlenecks.

If someone wants to pick another card then he'll just do it. Those recommendations are just starting points for your part list.



I don't recommend waiting for 1080TI to mount it inside Sentry because it'll most likely be a 250W TDP card and we know what happened when Linus put Titan X Pascal inside.

And even if you limit that TDP to run at 180W like 1080 it might be even slower considering the fact that 1080TI will most likely have GDDR5 as cut-down from Titan's GDDR5X memory so you might be better of with GTX1080.



It's quite interesting now that with your nick you're going for Kaby Lake
I though't you'll be totally dedicated AMD Ryzen fan

3333MHz memory most likely won't run at full speed with i7-7700 unless you overclock it quite a bit because even on this board everything over 2400mhz is supported only through OC.

You should pick a M.2 nvme drive over 2.5" especially when picking such motherboard. M.2 nvme can be 2~3 times faster than SATA3 depending on their corresponding controllers.

What are you planning to do with that Noctua as Case Fan and copper wire ?

I am a Ryzen fan but I can't make a list of products that don't exist yet. So until Ryzen is actually available for sale I will stick to intel based builds. I wan't to be realistic here. We really don't know what Ryzen will bring and my biggest worry was that in the SFF network forums they said that manufacturers like Asus, Asrock and Gigabyte will not be releasing itx motherboards for Rysen. So far the only itx board is built by Biostar and it's suppose to come out time after the official release.

About the graphic card. I was actually hoping that it would't be that high, but oh well.

Noctua fan and copper wire are for mounting it on the CPU cooler lp53.

I might get a m.2. the ssd is just there temporarily because I wasn't sure if I wanted to get any storage at all (i already own plenty of ssd storage)

About the memory. What do you mean? With XMP profile I should be able to run at that speed even in the locked CPU by overclocking with the motherboard, but even if the temperatures become higher than expected, faster memory will still benefit me with faster response times even while running at 2400mhz. Even with 7700k CPU you are limited to 2400mhz by default.

 

[SaperPL]

I am a Ryzen fan but I can't make a list of products that don't exist yet. So until Ryzen is actually available for sale I will stick to intel based builds. I wan't to be realistic here. We really don't know what Ryzen will bring and my biggest worry was that in the SFF network forums they said that manufacturers like Asus, Asrock and Gigabyte will not be releasing itx motherboards for Rysen. So far the only itx board is built by Biostar and it's suppose to come out time after the official release.

I know I'm going on a stretch here with putting ryzen already in builds but I want people to know it may be an option before we deliver the case. If there are leaks from shop pages already then we should have them as predicted by the end of the month. Those leaks might be controlled obviously by AMD because they want to heat up those news as "leaks" so people will talk about it and they want to see how intel will react without putting final MSRP, so it's a big chance those are real MSRPs at least for now if AMD doesn't counter the intel's reaction with an update to those prices.

As for the boards, I thought that Asrock was still in. Asus and Gigabyte were supposedly not going to release the mITX boards on launch. Bad news if that's really true.

There's still MSI out there and Biostar. Also if AMD doesn't want to screw this up when they already knew that (Asus etc waiting this up) before CES, then they may have plan B for that by pushing the mITX R&D hard at one of the vendors that were still interested. It is very unlikely that AMD representatives would be proudly promoting the X300 chipset in inteviews knowing they won't deliver because the partners are waiting them out.

Finally it might be a marketing method for Asus, Asrock & Gigabyte to push out their kaby lake mini ITX boards that they've already invested in with this limited time window they have now between CES and Ryzen launch so people who want to buy mITX will take those now and not wait for Zen. They cannot state they won't be making AM4 boards at all because noone would believe so they might be hiding what they can only in few segments to cut possible losses that could come from a slow down before the Zen launch.

About the graphic card. I was actually hoping that it would't be that high, but oh well.

You mean the price? Yeah, pricing on Founders Edition 1080 will blow away any wallet...

About the memory. What do you mean? With XMP profile I should be able to run at that speed even in the locked CPU by overclocking with the motherboard, but even if the temperatures become higher than expected, faster memory will still benefit me with faster response times even while running at 2400mhz. Even with 7700k CPU you are limited to 2400mhz by default.

I thought that XMP will give you only more speed up to some point like going from 2133 auto config to 2400 or 2666 XMP and anything above that requires overclock simply so the memory controller in CPU can catch up to this. 3333MHz looks to me like something that won't run straight away from XMP. I'll have to check those clocks on Kaby Lake though...

 

[SaperPL]

More ZEN leaks... Whenever I take a break from them and come back, there's something new...

They just have to be controlled by AMD...

Spoiler: supposedly leaked cooler designs for AM4

I hope those are real because the 65W cooler looks like it should fit without problems in Sentry

Cooler in this photo kind of looks like those in the above render if AMD logo is backlit with inner ring.

 

[zerodeefex]

I'll post a full high end passive linear powered audio build once I receive the case and can validate it. Will be based around a pro Lynx AES interface.

 

[kingtron]

Small update and call for discussion about build configurations:

Proposed builds can be found here: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/SaperPL/saved/

Thanks for the list, a small request if you can:
Whats is the recommended modular PSU cables length for the KabyLake Builds with ASRock Z270M-ITX/ac motherboard
it is useful if someone needs to order a custom PSU cables from Cablemod or any other custom PSU cables providers
mainly for the 24 Pin ATX, 8 Pin EPS and 8 Pin PCI-E cables

 

[SaperPL]

Thanks for the list, a small request if you can:
Whats is the recommended modular PSU cables length for the KabyLake Builds with ASRock Z270M-ITX/ac motherboard
it is useful if someone needs to order a custom PSU cables from Cablemod or any other custom PSU cables providers
mainly for the 24 Pin ATX, 8 Pin EPS and 8 Pin PCI-E cables

There is no such thing and we've talked about this before. The length will depend on the motherboard layout and where those connectors are on the motherboard. If you get too short cables now and after that you end up buying motherboard that has slightly further placed EPS12V connector then you'll need to order them once again. ATX 24 Pin also tends to be placed in multiple ways depending on the motherboard layout.

Also modular cables vary in their stiffness so if we measure optimal lengths for standard braided cables and you take same length for some stiff ribbon type cables then you might not be able to plug ATX 24 Pin at all.

Sentry has a space between the GPU and central wall that you can use to tuck the excess cables away. Just before installing the GPU, zip-tie cables out there to make your build look clean.

 

[Ej24]

I know I'm going on a stretch here with putting ryzen already in builds but I want people to know it may be an option before we deliver the case. If there are leaks from shop pages already then we should have them as predicted by the end of the month. Those leaks might be controlled obviously by AMD because they want to heat up those news as "leaks" so people will talk about it and they want to see how intel will react without putting final MSRP, so it's a big chance those are real MSRPs at least for now if AMD doesn't counter the intel's reaction with an update to those prices.

As for the boards, I thought that Asrock was still in. Asus and Gigabyte were supposedly not going to release the mITX boards on launch. Bad news if that's really true.

There's still MSI out there and Biostar. Also if AMD doesn't want to screw this up when they already knew that (Asus etc waiting this up) before CES, then they may have plan B for that by pushing the mITX R&D hard at one of the vendors that were still interested. It is very unlikely that AMD representatives would be proudly promoting the X300 chipset in inteviews knowing they won't deliver because the partners are waiting them out.

Finally it might be a marketing method for Asus, Asrock & Gigabyte to push out their kaby lake mini ITX boards that they've already invested in with this limited time window they have now between CES and Ryzen launch so people who want to buy mITX will take those now and not wait for Zen. They cannot state they won't be making AM4 boards at all because noone would believe so they might be hiding what they can only in few segments to cut possible losses that could come from a slow down before the Zen launch.



You mean the price? Yeah, pricing on Founders Edition 1080 will blow away any wallet...



I thought that XMP will give you only more speed up to some point like going from 2133 auto config to 2400 or 2666 XMP and anything above that requires overclock simply so the memory controller in CPU can catch up to this. 3333MHz looks to me like something that won't run straight away from XMP. I'll have to check those clocks on Kaby Lake though...

I've got numerous locked cpu's on Z boards with significant memory OC and get noticeable gains in performance. There's no difference in the memory controller. It operates at the speed of the base clock if I'm not mistaken. Bclk is 100mhz on almost all Intel cpu's, thus why you cannot do too much bclk overclocking because you end up with memory, sata and pci errors.

 

[pendragon1]

More ZEN leaks... Whenever I take a break from them and come back, there's something new...

They just have to be controlled by AMD...

Spoiler: supposedly leaked cooler designs for AM4

I hope those are real because the 65W cooler looks like it should fit without problems in Sentry

Cooler in this photo kind of looks like those in the above render if AMD logo is backlit with inner ring.

well the "leaks" are mentioning a wraith like cooler and that raja pic looks like the one on the right. so those could be bang on...

 

[SaperPL]

I've got numerous locked cpu's on Z boards with significant memory OC and get noticeable gains in performance. There's no difference in the memory controller. It operates at the speed of the base clock if I'm not mistaken. Bclk is 100mhz on almost all Intel cpu's, thus why you cannot do too much bclk overclocking because you end up with memory, sata and pci errors.

I might be rusty here since I'm still on DDR3 and as far as I remember clocks this far away from default memory clocks were achieved by overclocking the CPU and the ram had to be able to keep up with it and survive, so they kept releasing the ram that supported such speeds. If XMP 2.0 is doing this out of the box without need of rising the FSB or whatever this is now called, then there shouldn't be any problems here.

 

[Ej24]

I might be rusty here since I'm still on DDR3 and as far as I remember clocks this far away from default memory clocks were achieved by overclocking the CPU and the ram had to be able to keep up with it and survive, so they kept releasing the ram that supported such speeds. If XMP 2.0 is doing this out of the box without need of rising the FSB or whatever this is now called, then there shouldn't be any problems here.

Still on ddr3 here too. 2133mhz with latency of 10 10 10 32. Way better than Ddr4 which is usually latencies of 15 or 16. I get bandwidth of 32GB/s with my ddr3 2133 which is identical to Ddr4 2133 but with lower latency. No issues on locked cpu's. I've gone up to 2400 and 2600mhz but I don't want to overvolt my memory long term. Cpu never seemed to mind it and the ram seemed to keep clocking higher if I keep feeding it voltage.

Maybe we'll have to start a special Sentry owners OC'ing thread!

 

[darkd]

Maybe we'll have to start a special Sentry owners OC'ing thread!

:+1:

 

[SaperPL]

I think you should wait at least till we start shipping because just the topic could make people impatient...

 

[Ej24]

I think you should wait at least till we start shipping because just the topic could make people impatient...

I probably already qualify as impatient. I can't wait!

 

[Morzy]

Eh. If people get impatient, they're unrealistic. Shipping two months after the fund raising part is over.. That's.. pretty good imo.

 

[Ej24]

Not sure if anyone has seen these but there's a few slightly more credible performance leaks on Ryzen.

Benchmarks

Definitely looks promising. We'll see if it ends up being worth ditching my i7-4790K. I'm not exactly limited by my cpu yet, but it'll be nice if it drives competition and innovation.

 

[Rysen]

Not sure if anyone has seen these but there's a few slightly more credible performance leaks on Ryzen.

Benchmarks

Definitely looks promising. We'll see if it ends up being worth ditching my i7-4790K. I'm not exactly limited by my cpu yet, but it'll be nice if it drives competition and innovation.

I really want to go for the 65w Ryzen 7 1800 (hopefully the price will be under $450.) The 1800x version is too expensive and 95w. Hopefully the 1800 can beat the locked 7700 from intel.

About the memory I read some official Intel information and some unofficial discussion from overclocker forum. They all suggested that you can run the OC memory that you want and it is possible to run any memory that you want even with your locked CPU but that the only problem is that the memory might not be stable and might cause errors. However they also suggest that the same thing is likely to happen with an unlocked CPU and that in reality the only thing that makes a difference is whether your cpu can keep up with the velocity of the memory. The memory I chose was 3300mhz which = 3.3Ghz which is slower than the speed of my CPU so theoretically I should be able to run it.

I am just going to get the high speed memory because I can't find an official argument against it other than everything overclocked is not supported. I might contact Asus and ask.

Eh. If people get impatient, they're unrealistic. Shipping two months after the fund raising part is over.. That's.. pretty good imo.

I WANT IT NOW! ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ GIVE SENTRY

 

[Morzy]

I WANT IT NOW! ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ GIVE SENTRY

<_<


Also. Do you think it will be safe to lay the Sentry horizontally and slap a monitor on top? My Acer monitor has that X shaped stand they use, if that helps. It's not completely flat, there are some tiny feet(like 1-2mm?), but it's not much.

 

[Rysen]

<_<


Also. Do you think it will be safe to lay the Sentry horizontally and slap a monitor on top? My Acer monitor has that X shaped stand they use, if that helps. It's not completely flat, there are some tiny feet(like 1-2mm?), but it's not much.

What would be your build?

 

[Morzy]

What would be your build?

Nothing too fancy.
i5-7600, 8gb RAM, 275gb M.2 SATA SSD, 2tb 2.5" firecuda, 1tb 2.5". Maybe a 1060 later down the line(blower). Intel stock cooler(may get upgraded? if need be for performance/less noise), 600w corsair SFF psu(for 4 sata powers <.<)

 

[Rysen]

Nothing too fancy.
i5-7600, 8gb RAM, 275gb M.2 SATA SSD, 2tb 2.5" firecuda, 1tb 2.5". Maybe a 1060 later down the line(blower). Intel stock cooler(may get upgraded? if need be for performance/less noise), 600w corsair SFF psu(for 4 sata powers <.<)

Then with a solid steel case and good horizontal temperatures I don't see any problems with putting a monitor on to of it. I mean a regular plastic plate case can hold 8 lbs no problem. I highly doubt your monitor a lot more than 8lbs.

 

[Ej24]

Then with a solid steel case and good horizontal temperatures I don't see any problems with putting a monitor on to of it. I mean a regular plastic plate case can hold 8 lbs no problem. I highly doubt your monitor a lot more than 8lbs.

I don't think it matters at all unless it covers the ventilation. I was thinking of doing the same for one of my sentry builds.

 

[Johnny Halfmoon]

Another question on ventilation: I've got a build planned with a Zotac 1060 AMP, which is 210mm in length, according to the manual. With a max card length of 305 for the Sentry, that leaves 95mm of empty space behind the card. I've got a 92x92x25 mm Noctua PWM case fan planned for that location. I'll tune it to run really quite and I'm expecting the extra static pressure / flow to improve the heat convection quite a bit. As for mounting, I'm aiming for two small DIY metal brackets for holding the fan in place. One bracket mounted with a screw used by the SSD bracket in the middle and the other using the screw on the back/left corner of the case, behind the GPU. There may be a much better way to mount the fan, but without a case to try it out on, I can't tell. Does anybody see any issues and/or have any clever comments on this solution?

BTW: I've considered using a smaller 1060 card, so I have more space and can maybe even use a 120mm fan, but the only GPU small enough, that I know that doesn't have any coil whine for sure AND has fanless mode during idle, is the EVGA 1060 SC. Unfortunately these EVGA cards (ACX 2.0 and 3.0) have a tendency to run really hot and to blow smoke / sparks in some cases, because the VRM is not heatsinked and also because the heat sink design prevents proper ventilation of the PCB. On a side note: Interesting to see that during benchmarks that the EVGA seems to run much cooler than the Zotac. But what is not mentioned and/or know in these benchmarks, is the VRM cooling issue. On current and older EVGA cards, the GPU IC does not share any cooling with the VRM, so logically the temperature measurements are way down. Meanwhile the VRM is frying away at near 120degrees Celcius during furmark.

 

[SaperPL]

Another question on ventilation: I've got a build planned with a Zotac 1060 AMP, which is 210mm in length, according to the manual. With a max card length of 305 for the Sentry, that leaves 95mm of empty space behind the card. I've got a 92x92x25 mm Noctua PWM case fan planned for that location. I'll tune it to run really quite and I'm expecting the extra static pressure / flow to improve the heat convection quite a bit. As for mounting, I'm aiming for two small DIY metal brackets for holding the fan in place. One bracket mounted with a screw used by the SSD bracket in the middle and the other using the screw on the back/left corner of the case, behind the GPU. There may be a much better way to mount the fan, but without a case to try it out on, I can't tell. Does anybody see any issues and/or have any clever comments on this solution?

There is 95mm like you said but note the fact that vents aren't exactly covering the full 305mm of case depth because it wouldn't look good and also there are holes for plastic feet or plugs there.
If you put the fan at most up front there you'll have to figure out what to attach it to. Also the GPU air inlets aren't designed for fan mounting and they are optimised to hide 2.5" drive mounting holes within the aesthetic.

If you want to put a fan in there, then you could either zip-tie it with some rubber pads to slightly distance the fan from inlet or use long and thin screws with nuts so you won't need the perfect fitting of holes with the fan. We may have to think about it for future revisions since the 2.5" aren't must have anymore thanks to M.2, but at this point we cannot change the design anymore for the campaign cases.

You could try fitting 80mm fan as well, some kind of thick one with low RPM.

BTW: I've considered using a smaller 1060 card, so I have more space and can maybe even use a 120mm fan, but the only GPU small enough, that I know that doesn't have any coil whine for sure AND has fanless mode during idle, is the EVGA 1060 SC. Unfortunately these EVGA cards (ACX 2.0 and 3.0) have a tendency to run really hot and to blow smoke / sparks in some cases, because the VRM is not heatsinked and also because the heat sink design prevents proper ventilation of the PCB. On a side note: Interesting to see that during benchmarks that the EVGA seems to run much cooler than the Zotac. But what is not mentioned and/or know in these benchmarks, is the VRM cooling issue. On current and older EVGA cards, the GPU IC does not share any cooling with the VRM, so logically the temperature measurements are way down. Meanwhile the VRM is frying away at near 120degrees Celcius during furmark.

I've got 1060 6GB SC with 120mm fan mounted below it with GPU shroud and fan removed and I believe I should be able to put two 120mm fans tightly on the gpu compartment floor with it.

I've got the fixed version, maybe I'll show you how the fix looks when I'm rebuilding with Ryzen.

The fix EVGA did is quite simple and even if you'll somehow get the card without fix you could be able to do this yourself, but EVGA will do it for you through warranty support without a doubt.

The problem was that the hottest air coming directly from the chip was blown on these capacitors and some VRMs here. What EVGA did is kind of weird - they blocked this angled surface of the radiator with some kind of heat resistant adhesive tape so the air isn't getting though here, but the card somehow still manages to cool itself properly by pushing the hot air around.

 

[Morzy]

I don't think it matters at all unless it covers the ventilation. I was thinking of doing the same for one of my sentry builds.

Exactly. It's a perfect candidate for a little workstation o.o. Kind of like that table top case thing Cryoig are developing... which i also wouldn't mind getting.

 

[Morzy]

Some of you probably heard, but EVGA just released their ICX cards which run cooler than their ACX counterparts, dubbed "FTW2"

They are providing a step up program: http://www.evga.com/icxupgrade/ for those wishing to trade in various models of 1060/1070 and 1080 at the cost on $99.

$99 is a lot for less temps and more peace of mind but if you're planning to throw a 1080 FTW in your sentry, this may not be a bad idea if you also notice it getting hotter than you are comfortable with.

 

[dam_j]

Sorry but in the first YouTube-Reviews is the new version 2 Celsius hotter than the "old" one... And for that "only" 99$ more ?!

 

[illram]

Wasn't there some big overheating defect with the ACX coolers? Looks like this is just an attempt to fix that with a rebranding.

 

[SaperPL]

From what I can see, the ACX 3.0 had this simple sheet of metal that was just dissipating the heat from memory/mosfet across the radiator:

Now the iCX has a cast piece of metal precisely shaped to dissipate the heat from various components that may be affected by heat:

+2 degrees on GPU at the same noise level isn't really much and it is reasonable if the heat is dissipated from all components and not only the GPU.

 

[pendragon1]

jayztwocents and gamersnexus have good vids on the differences...

 

[Johnny Halfmoon]

If you put the fan at most up front there you'll have to figure out what to attach it to. Also the GPU air inlets aren't designed for fan mounting and they are optimized to hide 2.5" drive mounting holes within the aesthetic.

Thanks for the suggestion. The 2.5" drive mounting holes are indeed far from optimal, but it may just work, if I can make two separate adapters/mounts for the fan to fit those holes, with some extra perforations so as not to mess up the aesthetics. Another option is a single long L-shaped mount, fixing the fan to the center of the case through the two holes in the fan, that are closest to the center, with maybe some rubber spacers on the opposite/outer holes, too stabilize the fan.

We may have to think about it for future revisions since the 2.5" aren't must have anymore thanks to M.2, but at this point we cannot change the design anymore for the campaign cases.

Hey, that's what living on the bleeding edge is like ;-) But yes, there is so much space there, that it would be a good thing to maybe use it for ventilation options.

You could try fitting 80mm fan as well, some kind of thick one with low RPM.

I really like that idea as an alternative and I just found a really interesting contender: The Arctic F8 Pro 80x80x34mm 2000 U/min . The CFM on these fans is relatively a bit on the low side; about 25% less than those of competitors, but they're also about 4dBA more silent when tested at 7V and 12V, which is huge. According to the reviews the build quality is good and they are very, very silent indeed and they're dirt-cheap; about 5 euros. The only not-so-good is the wiring, which seems to look a bit messy. Search for "Testresultaten: 80mm - Alle remmen los" to find the review. (I'm not allowed to post links, because this is my 2nd post, sorry.) The review I've found is for the 25mm thick version and I'm assuming/hoping the measured values scale to the 34mm version. And if the motherboard's PWM control still spins the fan too fast, I'll stick a resistor in the wiring to trim it down. I'm still going to try and get the Noctua mounted too though, because I'm very curious which of the two fans is better and/or easier to mount.

I've got 1060 6GB SC with 120mm fan mounted below it with GPU shroud and fan removed and I believe I should be able to put two 120mm fans tightly on the gpu compartment floor with it.
...
The problem was that the hottest air coming directly from the chip was blown on these capacitors and some VRMs here. What EVGA did is kind of weird - they blocked this angled surface of the radiator with some kind of heat resistant adhesive tape so the air isn't getting though here, but the card somehow still manages to cool itself properly by pushing the hot air around.

I'm tempted to go for the EVGA and fix it myself, i.e. place the tape above the caps and also place a 2mm conductive patch between the sink and the VRM. Search for "[NEU] EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 Superclocked" to find the article where I got the info on the conductive patch. But... My gut feeling tells me the Zotac will perform just as well, without needing a patch. Word has is that the EVGA card can be overclocked more easily and higher, but I wouldn't mind not gaining those potential 2 to 3 fps for not having to dismantle and reassemble the GPU. And even then, removing the shroud and replacing the fans is still an option for the Zotac too.

Anyway; Great information. Fun fact: I really like the vibe that this project has. It's full of positive energy and I like the way everyone is so excited about what is happening here. All of us 922 backers, giddy and jumpy, like little kids that already know what they're getting for their birthday Thank you very much!