SENTRY: Console-sized gaming PC case project

No. Normal is that the ship can be delayed or few packages from the whole transport could be stopped for customs additional check. We sent packages and also tracking numbers we received. When you ask, we are reporting problems with delivery to our transport companies and with questions why some of the packages (10-20%) aren't still in our backers hands. I phoned them many times this week. I wrote a big report with tracking numbers for packages which aren't still delivered. I also personally drove there to talk with someone to get some more information. I'm contacting with those people so many times, that when they hear my voice i don't have to introduce myself, because they know why I'm calling. At this moment the only information we received about those packages from 1st transport is that, some of them at the beginning of the journey were stopped by customs services for the additional check and those cases "might" miss the same ship as other packages. I still didn't get detailed official answer, but only some phone calls. Right now, almost every answer we get is like "You understand it is a ship... right?". We are checking your tracking numbers everyday. At the start of the week there were like 30 packages from 1st transport which weren't delivered. Now there are something like 20 packages left. If you have some ideas what more can we do to get information on which stage is your package, please let us know. We will try it and share this information with others. Thanks.

This is a lesson for us, that trying to make transport as cheap as possible isn't always the best decision. Maybe ~$70-100 USD 10-days shipment instead $27 economic transport wasn't such a bad idea...

p.s. Answering your possible question: Yes, I tried to get ship's/ships GPS tracking information, but i didn't received it.

I am one of the 20 left. I guess if they delivered 10 packages of the remaining 30 in a week, and they continue at that rate, I should see mine in 2 weeks.
 
Some crappy cellphone potato pics of the Sentry in my tv cabinet. I can't get over how tiny it is compared to the cable box and my Marantz receiver! It looks so sleek and sexy.

Gotta say thanks again to Saper and Zombie for all their hard work, it's been a long wait, but totally worth it.


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No. Normal is that the ship can be delayed or few packages from the whole transport could be stopped for customs additional check. We sent packages and also tracking numbers we received. When you ask, we are reporting problems with delivery to our transport companies and with questions why some of the packages (10-20%) aren't still in our backers hands. I phoned them many times this week. I wrote a big report with tracking numbers for packages which aren't still delivered. I also personally drove there to talk with someone to get some more information. I'm contacting with those people so many times, that when they hear my voice i don't have to introduce myself, because they know why I'm calling. At this moment the only information we received about those packages from 1st transport is that, some of them at the beginning of the journey were stopped by customs services for the additional check and those cases "might" miss the same ship as other packages. I still didn't get detailed official answer, but only some phone calls. Right now, almost every answer we get is like "You understand it is a ship... right?". We are checking your tracking numbers everyday. At the start of the week there were like 30 packages from 1st transport which weren't delivered. Now there are something like 20 packages left. If you have some ideas what more can we do to get information on which stage is your package, please let us know. We will try it and share this information with others. Thanks.

This is a lesson for us, that trying to make transport as cheap as possible isn't always the best decision. Maybe ~$70-100 USD 10-days shipment instead $27 economic transport wasn't such a bad idea...

p.s. Answering your possible question: Yes, I tried to get ship's/ships GPS tracking information, but i didn't received it.

I'm sure you have your hands full. I don't think you didn't send them. I want to know at what point you think you/we should consider these shipments lost. What do you consider reasonable? Three month delivery time? Six? What do you consider the customer's liability here? If it doesn't show up in whatever window you consider valid, do we just eat the loss? I don't think it's strange to be frustrated after a large delay, and no real information other than: you called a guy, and he didn't know what was going on.

And yes, you absolutely should have included a shipping option for double the cost, at six times the speed on a boutique item.
 
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I'm sure you have your hands full. I don't think you didn't send them. I want to know at what point you think you/we should consider these shipments lost. What do you consider reasonable? Three month delivery time? Six? What do you consider the customer's liability here? If it doesn't show up in whatever window you consider valid, do we just eat the loss? I don't think it's strange to be frustrated after a large delay, and no real information other than: you called a guy, and he didn't know what was going on.

And yes, you absolutely should have included a shipping option for double the cost, at six times the speed on a boutique item.

I have to say you have a very reasonable point, I paid $45 for air shipping on my Ncase and it was worth every penny.
 
I just bought the Biostar X370GTN yesterday from Newegg and I should have it on Friday. The Gigabyte board is now in stock on Newegg. My question is should I return the Biostar board and buy the Gigabyte, or stick with Biostar?
 
Gigabyte w/ USB 3.1 Gen 2 or ASRock w/ Intel NIC? What do y'all think?
I'm going for Asrock :)
I don't need as much USB Ports, won't buy something with Realtek NIC anyways and I just love some of Asrocks features.
 
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I just bought the Biostar X370GTN yesterday from Newegg and I should have it on Friday. The Gigabyte board is now in stock on Newegg. My question is should I return the Biostar board and buy the Gigabyte, or stick with Biostar?
If it were me I would return it immediately. How can you be okay having a portable case with no wifi card?

Gigabyte w/ USB 3.1 Gen 2 or ASRock w/ Intel NIC? What do y'all think?

Here I compared the negatives of both boards based on what is on the manufacture's website specifications page. Please if I missed anything or anything is wrong tell me. Notice that this comparison is assuming that the motherboard will only be used in a Sentry case.

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Cons of Gigabyte board in comparison with Asrock board:

-It doesn't specify in the manufacturers website whether it supports Wake-On-LAN

-Support for 11ac wireless standard and up to 433 Mbps data rate while the Asrock board Supports high speed wireless connections up to 867Mbps. (For home use, if you live in the U.S. in most states you can't get more than 433Mbs if you are not on a business plan unless you have google fiber but could be a major disadvantage when taking it to places with business speed internet of 1Gbit/s or more) However, you can always replace the WIFI card.

-The wifi card is a horizontal position relative to the rest of the rear I/O on the Gigabyte board while on the Asrock is in the normal vertical position. This a matter of preference and in no way will affect the board's performance.

Cons of Asrock board in comparison with Gigabyte board:

-1 x USB 3.0 Header (Supports 2 USB 3.0 ports) (Supports ESD Protection) connector while the Gigabyte board support 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 header connector. (For the two usb ports in front of the Sentry 3.1 is way better than 3.0 why would Asrock go for 3.0? I don't know!)

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-ASROCK REAR I/O
1 x USB 3.0 Type-A Port (Supports ESD Protection)
1 x USB 3.0 Type-C Port (Supports ESD Protection)
2 x USB 3.0 Ports (Supports ESD Protection)

vs

-GIGABYTE REAR I/O
2 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A ports (red)
4 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports

(Personally I prefer having 6 USB 3 over 3xUSB 3 Type-C which is the only relevant usb port (In comparison with gigabyte 2 USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports) in Asrocks's usb I/O)
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-Counting the total USB ports Asrocks amount of USB ports it is 6 vs Gygabyte total of 8 ports

-There is no information on Asrock's BIOS while Gygabyte's BIOS was last updated 2017/06/22 after it's original release on 2017/06/01 already showcasing support on Gigabytes side.

-Gigabyte board is way cheaper (IN FACT 45$ CHEAPER).

-Big red heat sink near the PCI Express I/O while on the Gigabyte board this area is clear of any tall parts (which could be extremely useful for some CPU coolers.)

-No displayport (The Gigabyte board features one displayport and one HDMI while Asrock only 2 HDMI)

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Notice I did not include the location of the pins on the Gygabyte because it has no disadvantage on a sentry case. As the Sentry has gap between the motherboard and the bottom of the case as you can see in this image.

For me the choice is Gigabyte. Having plenty of USB ports is essential if it will be in my main computer. HDMI and no display-port for the age we live in is unacceptable. Asrock x370 chipset has no practical advantages over the B350 for SFF cases like the sentry where you can only fit one GPU. The only thing that I see could be a major problem on the Gigabyte board is the speeds on the wifi cards for people with Gigabit speed internet.

The wifi difference can easily be fixed. Here is a link the intel wifi card so you can replace it for the one on the Gigabyte motherboard. (867 Mbit/s - 2.40 GHz ISM - 5 GHz UNII - Internal same speed as Asrock's wifi card)
 
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I'm going for Asrock :)
I don't need as much USB Ports, won't buy something with Realtek NIC anyways and I just love some of Asrocks features.
What's the problem with Realtek NIC ? Realtek doesn't have as much advertisment as intel has on its products but its actually a pretty well established very old company with plenty of reliable products of all sorts. The company built the audio technologies that are almost in every modern motherboard today. Including the Asrock Fatality.

Here is some real life testing of intel NIC vs Realtek NIC:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/intel-nic-vs-realtek-nic-performance-testing.10325/

TLDR:
Conclusion
My system does not benefit much from the addition of the Intel NIC’s over the internal RealTek NIC’s and was not worth the additional cost of $60.00 for two NICs. Maybe it’s because my CPUs are fast, I’m not sure but these are the facts of my system. Also I was unable to do any testing using NFS becasuse Windoze 7 Professional and below does not have NFS client included and I didn't find a free NSF client to add to Windoze 7 that wasn't just terribly slow, I mean crawling slow.

I'm not sure where everybody is getting that Intel NIC is so much better than Realtek NIC. Some source would be nice.

And the wifi card is cheap and easily replaceable you can read that in my previous post.

Also the only problem is not the amount of ports but also the speed. Excluding the type-c Gigabytes parts are all faster.

Can you be more specific on which Asrock features you love?

If I'm missing something please inform me.
 
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I'm sure you have your hands full. I don't think you didn't send them. I want to know at what point you think you/we should consider these shipments lost. What do you consider reasonable? Three month delivery time? Six? What do you consider the customer's liability here? If it doesn't show up in whatever window you consider valid, do we just eat the loss? I don't think it's strange to be frustrated after a large delay, and no real information other than: you called a guy, and he didn't know what was going on.

There is no option like "we have to eat the loss". We have to wait just a little bit more until we will be able to claim a refund from transport company. What is more, everyday someone from our list from 1st transport is getting his package, so we see a progress in the delivery.
I predict, that the moment when we will be able to do it is something like "2x the estimated delivery time". It means we are not there yet.

And yes, you absolutely should have included a shipping option for double the cost, at six times the speed on a boutique item.

There is a difference between "we should" and "we could". Indiegogo didn't allow us to give an option to choose alternative shipping companies, so we had to pick only one for each country. What is more there wasn't a "double cost" option but it was 3 to 4 times higher then you paid in the indiegogo campaign. For US it was something like from $70-80 to even over $110, and 90% of people wouldn't agree on that. What is more, people who we asked what option they prefer, they answered they waited almost 3 years for Sentry, so they don't mind waiting few weeks more. That is why we stayed with those cheap, economic packages. Now we know the possible quantities of packages and we have "hard data" for those numbers, so next time we will be treated differently by big courier companies and we should get better offers for shipment.
 
Cons of Asrock board in comparison with Gigabyte board:

-1 x USB 3.0 Header (Supports 2 USB 3.0 ports) (Supports ESD Protection) connector while the Gigabyte board support 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 header connector. (For the two usb ports in front of the Sentry 3.1 is way better than 3.0 why would Asrock go for 3.0? I don't know!)
They have the same headers. USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 Gen 1 are the same connector. USB 3.0 was just rebranded as USB 3.1 Gen 1 (both are 5Gbps). I think you may be confusing 3.1 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) vs Gen 2 (10 Gbps).
 
What's the problem with Realtek NIC ? Realtek doesn't have as much advertisment as intel has on its products but its actually a pretty well established very old company with plenty of reliable products of all sorts. The company built the audio technologies that are almost in every modern motherboard today. Including the Asrock Fatality.

Here is some real life testing of intel NIC vs Realtek NIC:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/intel-nic-vs-realtek-nic-performance-testing.10325/

TLDR:


I'm not sure where everybody is getting that Intel NIC is so much better than Realtek NIC. Some source would be nice.

And the wifi card is cheap and easily replaceable you can read that in my previous post.

Also the only problem is not the amount of ports but also the speed. Excluding the type-c Gigabytes parts are all faster.

Can you be more specific on which Asrock features you love?

If I'm missing something please inform me.
I have had some REALLY bad experiences with Realtek NICs.
They might be better now, but i still fear them :/

The features are especially the BIOS/UEFI and functions like Ultra Fast Boot.
 
White Sentry is here!!! (1 day after my birthday) :) Poland to Romania ~ 3 days. Order number is #868 (palindrome lol).

I now need to decide which route to go.... Intel or AMD Ryzen. I kinda like the fact that Intel has support for Thunderbolt 3 (external displays and a little more future proof) but on the other hand I really dig AMD's Ryzen line (eyeing the 1700 or 1700X).

Gonna wait it out a little bit until summer settles down, might put a system together September - October.

ZombiPL and SaperPL great stuff guys! I'm very happy to see this thing finally in my hands. I really hope you guys make it big with this line of cases!
 
For me the choice is Gigabyte. Having plenty of USB ports is essential if it will be in my main computer. HDMI and no display-port for the age we live in is unacceptable. Asrock x370 chipset has no practical advantages over the B350 for SFF cases like the sentry where you can only fit one GPU. The only thing that I see could be a major problem on the Gigabyte board is the speeds on the wifi cards for people with Gigabit speed internet.

I'm gonna pick on this, because most of the other points have been covered and the others are... kinda silly. (I mean, listing "wake on LAN is unconfirmed" as a con? Seriously. Okay, if that's something you need, it's a con, but you're going to know it. Listing it as a con for the general consumer who probably doesn't know why it exists is ridiculous.)

Okay. So, I know that your post was probably well-meaning, but it comes across as ridiculously biased for no apparent reason. A lot of your 'cons' (on both sides, actually), don't actually make much sense - it feels like making a mountain of differences out of a molehill. They're just a couple of motherboards, in the same price bracket. You're gonna get pretty much the same thing.

Now, the number of USB ports is actually a legitimate concern, and I've made choices between motherboards because of that. It's about the only thing that actually stands out as a defining factor between the two.

However, then you turn right around and complain that, "HDMI and no display-port for the age we live in is unacceptable."

Tell me... How exactly are you planning on using that fancy displayport that was so important?

Are you going to throw away your graphics-less Ryzen chip in order to replace it with an APU? Come on!

Now, I get it, it's a hot debate, there are a lot of opinions flying back and forth, but... One of the things that I hammer into my students is that, before you try and prove something, stop and make sure that the arguments you're making actually support the point you're trying to prove, rather than something tangential.

Personally, I've fought with Gigabytes' bios enough over the years; that alone would sway me towards AsRock. (But then again, I went with something strange anyways, so I don't have a foot in this debate.)
 
Good point darksable.

One thing I can add, is that another legitimate concern is the WiFi/BT card. If you are going for ITX and want the smallest footprint possible with the biggest mobility, you will most likely not be a fan of cables - I know I'm not.

In my Z170 ITX Asus board the default Broadcomm card was terrible - DC's all around, pings increasing two-fold when I used BT headphones/mouse at the same time as WiFi, etc. I ended up swapping it for an Intel 8265, which really made a tangible difference - basically all of the aforementioned issues went away.
But yeah, swapping the card is quite easy as most of the time it's just an M.2 slot covered card with some detachable protection screwed onto it. If it doesn't perform as expected, you can just grab the newest Intel card (which are very good) for around 25-30$ and make the swap.
 
I'm gonna pick on this, because most of the other points have been covered and the others are... kinda silly. (I mean, listing "wake on LAN is unconfirmed" as a con? Seriously. Okay, if that's something you need, it's a con, but you're going to know it. Listing it as a con for the general consumer who probably doesn't know why it exists is ridiculous.)

Okay. So, I know that your post was probably well-meaning, but it comes across as ridiculously biased for no apparent reason. A lot of your 'cons' (on both sides, actually), don't actually make much sense - it feels like making a mountain of differences out of a molehill. They're just a couple of motherboards, in the same price bracket. You're gonna get pretty much the same thing.

Now, the number of USB ports is actually a legitimate concern, and I've made choices between motherboards because of that. It's about the only thing that actually stands out as a defining factor between the two.

However, then you turn right around and complain that, "HDMI and no display-port for the age we live in is unacceptable."

Tell me... How exactly are you planning on using that fancy displayport that was so important?

Are you going to throw away your graphics-less Ryzen chip in order to replace it with an APU? Come on!

Now, I get it, it's a hot debate, there are a lot of opinions flying back and forth, but... One of the things that I hammer into my students is that, before you try and prove something, stop and make sure that the arguments you're making actually support the point you're trying to prove, rather than something tangential.

Personally, I've fought with Gigabytes' bios enough over the years; that alone would sway me towards AsRock. (But then again, I went with something strange anyways, so I don't have a foot in this debate.)

Maybe you didn't understand it but the whole point of those last few sentences is that they are my opinions after the previously unbiased comparison clearly enclosed in the red lines. That last comment was not supposed to be part of the comparison. They are my views for my particular use.

I think it's unfair to call the comparison biased based on that sentence specially when at the very beginning I specify: "For me the choice is Gigabyte" Implying it's my personal choice not a fact.

I disagree that Wake On Lan is silly given that I use it all the time and I know plenty of people who use it specially more than 4-core chip users which is not your typical gamer. The other things that were point out about 3.0 vs 3.1 being the same were things I was unaware of, clear mistakes, but in no way was the information bias given that the Gigabyte card still has 2 USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports while Asrock board doesn't.

About the APU debate maybe I am not knowledgeable enough in that matter when it comes to Ryzen graphic-less chip but can't you use the motherboard ports with the GPU? Most people buying the sentry are getting, or own a GPU as you can see from the overwhelming majority in the pictures and builds in this forums so I assumed a GPU will be in the package which is fair to say given that before introducing the comparison I state that this for use in the Sentry Case not an overall comparison in any situation of the two motherboards.

Only the X370 AsRock board is more expensive. Asrock also has a B350 version that is identical except for a slightly slower wifi card and is priced identically to the Gigabyte board.
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=13-157-780

I didn't compare them because they have the same Wifi speeds so the difference is just the USB ports and displayport making them almost the exact same motherboard.

Good point darksable.

One thing I can add, is that another legitimate concern is the WiFi/BT card. If you are going for ITX and want the smallest footprint possible with the biggest mobility, you will most likely not be a fan of cables - I know I'm not.

In my Z170 ITX Asus board the default Broadcomm card was terrible - DC's all around, pings increasing two-fold when I used BT headphones/mouse at the same time as WiFi, etc. I ended up swapping it for an Intel 8265, which really made a tangible difference - basically all of the aforementioned issues went away.
But yeah, swapping the card is quite easy as most of the time it's just an M.2 slot covered card with some detachable protection screwed onto it. If it doesn't perform as expected, you can just grab the newest Intel card (which are very good) for around 25-30$ and make the swap.

They both have similar cables?
 
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AFAIK the motherboard GPU ports can be used with an onboard CPU-based GPU. For Ryzen they are useless. I don't see how they could be used with a dedicated GPU, nor what would be the point of that (since modern GPUs usually have one or two Display Ports).

I think the port darksable is making is that it's really hard to actually compare the board across any useful features, since they are 95% the same. Apart from the available USB ports and quality of WiFi, the rest is irrelevant and pretty much nitpicking, maybe except the port location which could make cable routing troublesome in some cases (but not in the Sentry).

They both have similar cables?

You didn't get my meaning. What I mean is that if you are not a fan cables, you will want a reliable WiFi/BT card, so that's something to take into account in any ITX board.

Reliable WiFi/BT module = no LAN cable nor peripheral cables. Personally I use a BT mouse (MX Master) and Headphones (Plantronics Backbeat Sense). The only cable I have on my desk is for the keyboard, because I like my CherryMX switches.
 
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AFAIK the motherboard GPU ports can be used with an onboard CPU-based GPU. For Ryzen they are useless. I don't see how they could be used with a dedicated GPU, nor what would be the point of that (since modern GPUs usually have one or two Display Ports).

I think the port darksable is making is that it's really hard to actually compare the board across any useful features, since they are 95% the same. Apart from the available USB ports and quality of WiFi, the rest is irrelevant and pretty much nitpicking, maybe except the port location which could make cable routing troublesome in some cases (but not in the Sentry).



You didn't get my meaning. What I mean is that if you are not a fan cables, you will want a reliable WiFi/BT card, so that's something to take into account in any ITX board.

Reliable WiFi/BT module = no LAN cable nor peripheral cables. Personally I use a BT mouse (MX Master) and Headphones (Plantronics Backbeat Sense). The only cable I have on my desk is for the keyboard, because I like my CherryMX switches.

I believe that it can be used with a dedicated GPU but I am not certain so I will need to research into that so I will not argue that point.


I understand what you mean by no cable now. As I said before even getting a replacement wifi card from intel is cheaper than going for the AsrockX370. The B350 Asrock has the same speed so there is no difference there.
 
You got to stay positive ;-) I'm based in Poland as well so should have the cases (went for B + B) immediately ;-)
Do you live relatively close to them? Can't you just go pick it up? If I could I would. I trust the Sentry team that's why I backed their campaign but I don't trust any shipping service.
 
The shipping services inside Poland are usually reliable, you get the package pretty much next business day, two tops, and have full tracking.
I'm also in Poland and my White Sentry arrived on Tuesday around noon-ish (it was sent Friday evening), in pristine condition. I'm around 550-600km by car from where the Sentry guys are located (depending on route).

KireraD now the agony of waiting for the AM4 ITX boards from Gigabyte/ASRock starts ;) That is, if you want to build Ryzen. I asked GB and ASR via mail about the availability, but GB didn't care to answer and ASR give me the vague 'this month in Europe'.
 
This is my Ryzen bulid, 1700 + 1080TI. Almost done, all nice! The only problem is how to rotate Noctua L9i 90 degrees, I decide to make custom plate with the aluminium profile.By the way, does anyone know what what screw AM4 boated needs? M3 or M4? How much is the height from MB to the CPU PLATE?

Regards
Kirk
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Do you live relatively close to them? Can't you just go pick it up? If I could I would. I trust the Sentry team that's why I backed their campaign but I don't trust any shipping service.

Around 6h drive one way... I'll wait.. ;-) not that desperate. From my experience local couriers are quite reliable, usually most of the packages are delivered within 24-48h in Poland (excluding the ones sent through Polish post - that's complete different story ;-) but they improving as well).
 
The shipping services inside Poland are usually reliable, you get the package pretty much next business day, two tops, and have full tracking.
I'm also in Poland and my White Sentry arrived on Tuesday around noon-ish (it was sent Friday evening), in pristine condition. I'm around 550-600km by car from where the Sentry guys are located (depending on route).

KireraD now the agony of waiting for the AM4 ITX boards from Gigabyte/ASRock starts ;) That is, if you want to build Ryzen. I asked GB and ASR via mail about the availability, but GB didn't care to answer and ASR give me the vague 'this month in Europe'.

Already have my setup built, went for 7700K delided (liquid metal), Asus STRIX Z270I, 32GB RAM, 1080Ti FE, 2 x M.2 drives ( Samsung 250GB and 500GB), on the cooling side i went for Dynatron K129 + Noctua NF-A9x14. Will see how the cooling will behave inside Sentry, if it wont then will probably swap it with LP53 + Noctua.

So far i have the CPU overclocked to 5Ghz without even increasing voltage, worked stable last 2 months, spent "gazillion" hours in Civilization 6 - no issues but the current case is Micro ATX so can't compare that to Sentry yet.

Of course I wouldn't be myself if i wouldn't test the OC ability with Sentry ;-) probably it won't work but we'll see - i have to give it a try, will update you guys here on results ;-)

Regarding the Ryzen ... I was really excited at the beginning but then.. with all the problems and availability issues etc.. decided to wait a bit longer to make sure the whole line is mature enough and initial problems fixed. I need a PC i can rely on .. I work from home very often.
 
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Already have my setup built, went for 7700K delided (liquid metal), Asus STRIX Z270I, 32GB RAM, 1080Ti FE, 2 x M.2 drives ( Samsung 250GB and 500GB), on the cooling side i went for Dynatron K129 + Noctua NF-A9x14. Will see how the cooling will behave inside Sentry, if it wont then will probably swap it with LP53 + Noctua.

So far i have the CPU overclocked to 5Ghz without even increasing voltage, worked stable last 2 months, spent "gazillion" hours in Civilization 6 - no issues but the current case is Micro ATX so can't compare that to Sentry yet.

Of course I wouldn't be myself if i wouldn't test the OC ability with Sentry ;-) probably it won't work but we'll see - i have to give it a try, will update you guys here on results ;-)

Regarding the Ryzen ... I was really excited at the beginning but then.. with all the problems and availability issues etc.. decided to wait a bit longer to make sure the whole line is mature enough and initial problems fixed. I need a PC i can rely on .. I work from home very often.

Impressive setup! Please share some info how the K129 is faring, I wonder how it's gonna compare to the T318.

I know what you mean by working from home - I work 100% remotely ;) I mostly have a laptop for that, but for the work I do on my rig I'm really looking forward to have an increased core number.... Ryzen 1700 looks perfect for the Sentry with 8 cores and a 65W TDP.
 
The wifi difference can easily be fixed. Here is a link the intel wifi card so you can replace it for the one on the Gigabyte motherboard. (867 Mbit/s - 2.40 GHz ISM - 5 GHz UNII - Internal same speed as Asrock's wifi card)

This was helpful for me. I'm going to probably go with this board, try out the Broadcom and if it doesn't work, buying the Intel M.2 will still be cheaper than buying the Asrock board. The only other thing I will do is use some high-band antennas to replace the antenna Gigabyte ships with the unit, which I think is a little obtrusive.
 
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Trident Series RAM is 44mm height with spreaders and I believe the case height is around 51mm, so it will work in theory, and should work just fine with that board, provided you are not using the drive bays above the motherboard in the sentry as they, and the mounting bracket, will significantly reduce the clearance to 34mm with heat spreaders.
 
Good news! I got some feedback from Dynatron on the A18!

"Hi Joshua,
This is Karen from Dynatron. Thanks for sending inquiry to us.
A18 is the solution for AM4 1U server.
We will have coming shipment around middle of July."

I'm requesting more information on pricing. I would definitely want to consider replacing the stock fan, which is 53.8dBA at 100% (by comparison, Noctua NH-L9i is only 29dBA at 100%). Hopefully it's not overly expensive.

Also of note, Karen said that Dynatron is working on brackets for their Intel solutions and I told her I was very interested in learning more. Still waiting to hear back on that. I would love a T318 with AM4 compatibility!
 
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This was helpful for me. I'm going to probably go with this board, try out the Broadcom and if it doesn't work, buying the Intel M.2 will still be cheaper than buying the Asrock board. The only other thing I will do is use some high-band antennas to replace the antenna Gigabyte ships with the unit, which I think is a little obtrusive.

Here's a photo from the swap I made on a Z170 board. It's probably the same everywhere.

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/EDIT
For all of you folks based in Poland - I got a response from GB.

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Translation for others that might be interested - it's supposed to be available within 2 weeks. That probably means that adjourning countries will get it around the same time.
 
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Coming up on 6 weeks with no tracking. First shipment of white cases, region US eastern. Cmon cargo ship, hurry up and dock!

I really appreciate the transparency from the Zaber team, I'd be going completely stir-crazy otherwise.
 
Today I called once again to our contact in our transport company, and received some weird information. It looks like sometimes US customs services stops some packages and they keep them without giving an information to USPS. In such situation packages can stay for weeks in the customs warehouse and USPS isn't updating the tracking information because they physically don't have the box. It means, if you still didn't get your package while everyone else from your transport did receive it, then you should contact with your nearest customs services office and ask if they don't have it. There is a possibility that your package is at some other office (maybe harbour customs services), but you have to ask about it your local officer.

Another thing is that, USPS also don't update the tracking status because.... who knows why. Today we asked many people from our 1st transport whose tracking information is showing the package just left Poland and... they are claiming they received their packages long time ago. USPS simply didn't update the tracking information. It means we really don't know how many people didn't receive their packages, because feedback from USPS is the worst from those we have to deal with.

From 1st transport we had something like 30 packages missing. In the last week many people received their packages, so this number went down to something like 20 packages. From those packages many people already received their cases or USPS claims (from USPS tracking information) those are waiting at the nearest post office. We checked also this confusing information, and also we received some answers saying that the package was delivered while USPS website shows some different information.

It means, from those 30 packages which we thought that weren't delivered, there are still maybe 10 or even less to deliver.

Oh, two more things:
- I asked about the warranty and complaint procedure, and I was informed that because of the contact with US side is so great that they have up to 3 months to answer. What is more, they claim that in almost 100% cases the missing packages are delivered within that period, and they advise to wait patiently (easy to say...).
- Once again i asked for GPS tracking information or at least for the name of the ship (or ships) which picked up packages for 1st transport. I'm waiting for answer in this matter.

I think that is all for now. It's end of Friday in Poland and i won't get any new information before Monday. If you are sure you should get your package by now, please contact with your nearest post offices and customs services offices if they don't have it. Those are kind of institutions that aren't working like they should, and it looks like the situation is very similar in every country. For us (as i said before) this is the last time we are sending packages this way. Sorry for essay...
 
That's... Bizarre.

I know that USPS sucks sometimes, and I've had issues with them domestically, but to just not let people know where their international shipments are!?
 
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