SENTRY 2.0: Evolution of console-sized gaming PC case

For unknown reason , I keep receiving Sentry 2.0 newsletter into the junk folder !!!
I hope you can figure out a way to avoid that,

awareness emails at this time are very important !
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I'm not sure if we can avoid that in a simple way. Our newsletter providers are also working with other companies and sending their emails, so probably some of them people are marking as a spam. The only way to not getting our newsletter into the spam folder is marking our emails as "This is not a SPAM". With time email provider's mechanism will learn that it should stop blocking emails or sending them to spam. I don't know if there is a better solution for this problem.
 
I noticed that the funding requirement was cut in half.

What changed for you to cut the requirement so much? What was the logic behind needing 1,000 cases and now only 500? Sorry if it seems like I'm being overly critical; It just caught me off guard when I refreshed the page and we jumped to 87% funded.
 
I'm not saying it's not a smart move. I'm just curious what changed to have 500 cases be the goal. Some previous calculation must have been done to arrive at the original 1000 case goal.
 
I noticed that the funding requirement was cut in half.

What changed for you to cut the requirement so much? What was the logic behind needing 1,000 cases and now only 500? Sorry if it seems like I'm being overly critical; It just caught me off guard when I refreshed the page and we jumped to 87% funded.

I think it is a smart move

I'm not saying it's not a smart move. I'm just curious what changed to have 500 cases be the goal. Some previous calculation must have been done to arrive at the original 1000 case goal.


I think the best answer is the one which I gave to one of our backers few minutes ago via email (he had similar question):

"i noticed that you lowered the fixed Goal of your campaign from 250.000,- USD to 130.000,- USD. I wonder why?"

From the beginning we wanted to start our campaign with the price of €230 euro. We informed everyone about that (including youtube reviewers). Just before the campaign we noticed that Indiegogo has a misleading information in their forms, and we couldn't use EUR as our currency. Because of that, we were forced to use USD. As you know, €230 EURO converts roughly to $260 USD. We thought it was obvious, but many people just did think that the EURO to USD conversion rate is like 1:1. When they saw $260 USD they thought we added $30 dollars to the price we advertised before. It means they though we lied to them (which we obviously didn't). Because of that many people did not participate yet in the campaign.

Right now we gathered over 100 000 USD and we are receiving many messages from people like you, who are asking what will happen if we will not gather the 100% of funds (we were at 43% after 1st week). They were afraid, that because campaign slowed down, it might not be successful and they might not receive their Sentry cases. We decided we will try to calm down this situation.

Most of our subcontractors before the campaign gave us prices for their elements for the quantity of 500 units, but some wanted orders for 1000 units (because of that we started with 1000 units minimum goal). We contacted with them and asked for new offers for minimum 500 units. And we received them. It means right now our real minimum campaign goal to manufacture a batch of Sentry 2.0 cases is 500 units. We contacted with indiegogo, explained the whole situation (including this problem about not allowing us to use EURO currency) and asked if we can change target to 500 units. And they agreed. Right now it should be easier to gather the rest of the funds in the next 3 weeks.


It means, everyone noticed that our campaign slowed down, and we wanted that people will be sure it will be successful and they won't waste their time (at this point we couldn't tell if we will reach the goal or not). After a contact with our sub-manufacturers we decided we can change our goal a little bit (before the campaign we had several offers for some components with MOQ of 1000 units). Right now every offer we have is for 500 units, and thanks to that reaching our campaign goal is more probable.
 
The GPU I’m looking at is in the GPU Compatibility spreadsheet as YES under compatibility column but it is highlighted in orange. What exactly does that mean if it’s highlighted in yellow?
 
The GPU I’m looking at is in the GPU Compatibility spreadsheet as YES under compatibility column but it is highlighted in orange. What exactly does that mean if it’s highlighted in yellow?

I've added the note about it right now. Orange colour means not entirely sure / missing data or photos not showing all details to determine way of measuring. Thanks for reminding me to do this.

There are a lot of cards that don't show how much space PEG has, have weird dimensions where we have no idea how are they corresponding to the photos and there's zotac with their renders instead of real life photos...
 
Also, is this an appropriate thread to get advice on hardware as it pertains to cooling in the Sentry 2.0?
This is my first SFF build so I’m not quite versed on optimal cooling methods and configurations.
 
Also, is this an appropriate thread to get advice on hardware as it pertains to cooling in the Sentry 2.0?
This is my first SFF build so I’m not quite versed on optimal cooling methods and configurations.

Like what components to get? Sorry for being vague, it really depends what kind of a build you want, normally that dictates what cooling you should get. You can install a 120mm AIO (radiator and fan don't exceed 47mm) or Cryorig C7 or C7 Cu variant (great air coolers if you dont mind the noise) or Noctua NH-L9.
 
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Like what components to get? Sorry for being vague, it really depends what kind of a build you want, normally that dictates what cooling you should get. You can install a 120mm AIO (radiator and fan don't exceed 47mm) or Cryorig C7 or C7 Cu variant (great air coolers if you dont mind the noise) or Noctua NH-L9.
Kind of. I’m planning on getting a RTX 2080 blower card, a i7-8700k with a delid job, and a regular Cryorig C7.
Mostly concerned that the i7-8700k May run too hot but I’m unsure. In that case, I’d planned on a i5-9600k.
 
Small update on the cooling support.

There's a feature that's still undocumented in the manual in terms of cooling support. We've got a single 120 mm fan mount over the motherboard. There are four holes that are slightly misaligned in the vent perforation just for this purpose:


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The reason was that, there are X99/X299 boards that use server/hedt socket and therefore don't have any low profile coolers with a fan that would fit this kind of build, but there are dynatron radiators that are pretty consistent in their height.

What you can do with this?

1) 27 mm dynatron radiator + standard profile memory sticks with rads like Vengeance LPX + 120 x 15 mm fan
2) 27 mm dynatron radiator + standard profile memory sticks without rads like Vengeance LPX + 120 x 20 mm fan
3) 23 mm NH-L9i radiator + VLP (very low profile) memory sticks + standard 120 x 25 mm fan

Noteworthy is that it needs to push air outside of the case, otherwise slashing air with fan blades right after the perforation gets really audible and unpleasant.

With T318 + 120 x 15 mm noctua fan on my R7 1700 at stock it performs somewhat comparable to NH-L9i, with the difference being a lot better acoustics under load.

Noteworthy is that plugging the cable gets cumbersome with most of the fans, but noctua has the cables enclosed in these rubber tubes which makes it easy to handle when closing the lid - it just bends with a knee in the middle.


Btw, I'll have black ridge soon, I've ordered Aorus AM4 board to check whether it's actually going to fit. I'm planning to do some checking in CAD to see which boards will support black ridge properly (soon TM).
 
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It seems like my mock-ups of black ridge were slightly off depicted black ridge having chance to mount on more boards than it actually will be able to support. I've just done a fast volumetric CAD model for it and the Aorus B450 board, and it seems like it's going to be a tight fit.

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I'll have the board on Friday probably for checking though.

For other boards, like for example Asrock boards, it may need whole 10 mm shift on the socket to fit, which would mean an oddly specific bracket combined with graphite pad...
 



The Black Ridge on Aorus B450 board thing:

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Full gallery: https://imgur.com/a/561m3cG

It fits, but the AM4/AM3+ bracket is still at fault making it lie on one of the onboard components. I did not disassemble it yet to check which one is it, but I've heard the plastic being crushed when I tried to tighten the screw closest to the chipset.

Not fun, luckily the board is still alive, but I'm not sure if I have proper pressure or not because of this and the fact that if I tighten the screws to the max, I literally see the the PCB under the socket making a bulge in the middle of the board, so I'm not recommending this. Also the way the brackets are made doesn't force the cooler alignment on the CPU because you have M3 screws in like 6 mm holes so there's a ton of leeway and because you are mounting it from the bottom of the board, I assume I smeared the paste all over the CPU while trying to center the screws in the mounting holes. So once again - potentially great cooler, mind blowing poor implementation of AM4 support.

This thing's fin stack is huge. As you can see it obstructs first 2.5" drive slot and partially the second one including the bracket, so you can fit only one 2.5" and still have to figure something out how to mount it because of this.

I'm not sure if it performs so great with it's stock 92 mm fan, and 120 mm fan under the fin stack requires so niche ram modules that I'm not sure if I care about it at all, so the excess of fin stack outside the fan may not be used so much. For comparison, I've used T318 with 120 mm slim noctua fan for the last week and I feel like performance both in temps and acoustic is comparable, but with that, I can do two 2.5" drives without a problem. I'd also be thinking about simply mounting a 120 mm slim fan over NH-L9i/a radiator for same effect.

Anyway you have it if you wanted to know if it fits and how it fits.
 

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SaperPL That's really cool that Quinn of Snazzy Labs has a Sentry 2.0 as well. His videos have pretty good production quality and are pretty thorough. For those that aren't familiar, he usually has interesting Hackintosh, Mac and PC content.

Also I too ordered a Blackridge. The moment I saw it wouldn't really fit inside Sentry 1.0 with both 2.5in drives, and not being able to easily use a slim 120mm fan, I thought, "what's the point?" and put it back in the box. I guess it's a good choice for Dan A4 users, but it's a mediocre fit for Sentry with too many tradeoffs. My LP53 is still a solid cooling solution.
 
Also I too ordered a Blackridge. The moment I saw it wouldn't really fit inside Sentry 1.0 with both 2.5in drives, and not being able to easily use a slim 120mm fan, I thought, "what's the point?" and put it back in the box. I guess it's a good choice for Dan A4 users, but it's a mediocre fit for Sentry with too many tradeoffs. My LP53 is still a solid cooling solution.

Well, yeah, that's also my issue with this cooler. It goes everywhere over the board including pci-e slot (except for this single aorus board), so you have to have standard profile memory, nothing above the board in your case and you are still limited to this 92 mm fan, so you're not really using a the whole huge fin stack it has. Also note that they are cheaping out on the black coating right now, it was really black when it launched and right now it's just a bit tinted.

There are still people that will go for just single M.2 drive builds with 1TB SSDs or something like that, so not having 2.5" is not that big of a problem as the specific board requirement and really, really bad mounting mechanism.
 
I just had a chance to check this card out, and ASUS has a 13.4 cm height in their specifications for 1080/1070/1060 strix, but it's actually not true for 1060. I've measured this with calipers and it's 130.2 mm actually and it really, really tightly fits in Sentry 2.0.

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This does not necessarily mean that 1080 Strix will fit, it's probably bigger, unless this measurement in the specs is invalid for all of the Strix cards.

This 1060 is also a really, really tight fit and I've had a really hard time fitting the card inside, so not recommended for the sake of 1060, really. For 1080 it might be worth it IF it's the same size, but I can't confirm it.
 
Hardware Unboxed guys made a live stream build with 2 Sentry cases at the same time with installing AIO water cooling in both of them. You may want to check that out (YOLO assembly without reading the manual is always fun :D)

 
Is there any GPU compatibility spreadsheet that includes 1080 TI models? I’m looking at a few TI cards but I’m not sure which do and don’t fit aside from going solely by spec sheets and the size layout for Sentry 2.0.
 
Is there any GPU compatibility spreadsheet that includes 1080 TI models?

The last gen spreadsheet was made for 1.1 where we weren't really recommending 1080TI and thus assumed if you want to do this you have to know what you're getting into. The current gen list has the 2080 TI because of the increased perforation area.

I’m looking at a few TI cards but I’m not sure which do and don’t fit aside from going solely by spec sheets and the size layout for Sentry 2.0.

You have to look at the specs and photos of the card and figure out how did the manufacturer measure the card to know which limit from our size drawing has to be applied for the specific card.
 
The last gen spreadsheet was made for 1.1 where we weren't really recommending 1080TI and thus assumed if you want to do this you have to know what you're getting into. The current gen list has the 2080 TI because of the increased perforation area.



You have to look at the specs and photos of the card and figure out how did the manufacturer measure the card to know which limit from our size drawing has to be applied for the specific card.

So I’m looking at the Gigabyte Gaming OC 1080ti which is listed as 37x280x114. I called the manufacturer and they said the 114mm measurement is the PCB measurement only and does not include the I/O shield/bracket. That makes it 2mm too large according to the size drawing. However, would that “POSSIBLE OVERSIZE AREA” accommodate for that? I’m not really sure what would go in that area aside from the excess of a GPU’s oddly shaped cooler.
 
It'll be fine. It's as you said - 2mm taller than reference sized GPU so you still have 16 mm of free space in the oversize area. Gigabyte triple fan cards are mostly fan as long as they're not 2.5~3 slot wide.
 
The one behind Tim is also Sentry 2.0, the black one, it's visible fully in the first video. I assume that build wasn't perfect and something moved in transport inside since Steve had some important parts left afterwards in the stream :D
 
The one behind Tim is also Sentry 2.0, the black one, it's visible fully in the first video. I assume that build wasn't perfect and something moved in transport inside since Steve had some important parts left afterwards in the stream :D

Ah good eyes! I assumed it was just an open testbed or something
 
Watching Hardware Unboxed and noticed Steve in the background with a Zaber Sentry 2.0. Sorry for the derpy screenshot of Tim. At least the Sentry 2.0 looks good lol glad to see Sentry traveling the world.

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Good eyes! Also thanks to the iconic jog-line across the vents. Good design.
 
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If 3700X is really going to be equal in games to 9900K then it's going to be a go to recommended CPU for Sentry 2.0 with its 65W TDP unless you really have to have those 12 (or hopefully 16) cores.
I had the exact same thought when I saw 65w TDP, 100Mhz less than 3800X but 40W less, cannot wait to put that chip in my Sentry 2.0 when I get it later this year.
 
Don't expect 3700X to consume 65 watt - it'll go up to 130 easy on boost and may go beyond that.
 
Don't expect 3700X to consume 65 watt - it'll go up to 130 easy on boost and may go beyond that.

More likely is that it'll only achieve the boost clocks on a few cores but when all cores are loaded it'll drop down closer to base clock much more often than the 105W 3800X will. This is pretty much how my 2700 works. It boosts to 4.1GHz on one or two cores but load them all up and it drops right down to 3.4GHz. Whereas the 2700X will sit at 3.8GHz all day.
 
Don't expect 3700X to consume 65 watt - it'll go up to 130 easy on boost and may go beyond that.

Where's the base for such expectations?

I don't expect AMD to overstep the tdp do much. They did it properly with 1700, 2700, 2600 etc and the node drop to 7nm with chiplet design lets them go up with clocks on 65w SKUs as well.

Also what Ej24 said is quite reasonable.
 
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