Production SENTRY 2.0: Evolution of console-sized gaming PC case

[aranel42]

Got my case last Friday and built it up during the weekend! Took some time to figure out how to attach the locking piece for the riser, due to me not reading the manual well enough. Ingenious design of that part.
Bought some new toys for the case; Ryzen 3600, 16GB 3600MHz RAM and a Noctua NH-L9a. Kept the SF600 v2 and GTX 1060 from the old case. Funnily enough it's quieter than my last case, and only slightly warmer. Might replace thermal paste for the CPU when I get a new graphics card for the Cyberpunk 2077 release.
General question, has anyone used the J-HACK M2427 cable kit? Seems like a nice way to get back some much needed room from the quite unwieldy stock Corsair sleeved cables.

 

[Solo]

You could just do what I did and do your own wiring everywhere.

Before the glorious black L9i:

L9i after I shortened the wires:

 

[andfan54]

I received mine today. Living in HK. Single order. No change of address.

 

[SaperPL]

@sauib786 I’d assume you changed your address or ordered multiple cases? Both choices/circumstances earned getting shipped out last. I’m unhappily in the same boat as you.

Brude27 yeah I ordered 2 of them

There had to be some kind of order, there always would be someone who gets the case first and someone who gets the case last, and going by the contribution order would make everything slower. Two and more cases landed along with address changes because they need extra carefulness to not mess up the colours and amounts, the address changes were made as the last batch because even during first shipment there were still people that woke up realising they have moved and need to change shipping address.

As for the ones who requested address change - most of them did not follow our instructions to go into indiegogo and update their address and to let us know afterwards that they are ready to receive the package in their new address. Few first people did not get such instructions, but most did. We structured the instructions like that because we shouldn't be the ones updating someones shipping address in their contribution as there should be a clear point of reference that was written by the user if anything goes wrong with the package and it is return because of invalid address. Also there's no history of address changes in contribution and no indication who changed the address in contribution (backer or campaigner).

Most of people did a 'fire and forget' by sending their new address through the mail/indiegogo message and never following the instructions. A lot of people asked for address change with vaguely stating when they will be moving and never updated their address or never followed up stating they are ready to receive the package. So we had to go through all of that and figure out whether the address was changed or not.

Any plans for another production run?

Nope, not right now. We are still not done with campaign orders as you can clearly see above.

 

[LeChuck81]

Quick update to let everyone know that, as per declared by DHL's SMS, today I received my Sentry. Can't wait to go back home and start toying around a bit with it. ?

Nation of delivery: Italy, if anyone need the info.

Now, all I need is the new hardware to put in. ?

 

[Brude27]

@SaperPL I recognize there has to be an order of things, and likely should have used the word "impatiently" rather than "unhappily", but at this point in the process they are one in the same for me, haha.

 

[valentyn_l]

I changed my address LONG before the invoicing began and I am still waiting for my DHL notification. Guess there will be no Sentry 2.0 under my Xmas tree... ?

P.S. - I reached out to Dr. Zaber and they dodged my question of "when can I expect the shipment to be made" entirely. Very disappointed.

 

[ZombiPL]

P.S. - I reached out to Dr. Zaber and they dodged my question of "when can I expect the shipment to be made" entirely. Very disappointed.

I didn't process your emails (Saper did before), but I see your email was made on Friday at almost 5 pm.During the weekend we were working on problems with current DHL deliveries (for example, missing some delivery information), and today it is 1:50 pm, and we simply didn't have time to start answering questions sent before the weekend. We try to answer to emails as soon as possible, but currently we are receiving over 100 emails everyday, and it takes time to answer to everybody. Sorry for the delay, but we want to treat everyone equally, and for us your email is waiting for answer for just few hours. Probably in the evening Saper will send you the information about your package.

I changed my address LONG before the invoicing began and I am still waiting for my DHL notification.

And about your address change. I checked it briefly, and yes, it was a while ago, but you didn't change a house number or a street, like other people did. You changed your country of delivery. This is something different, and has to be treated differently since you can not simply change this information after placing an order via indiegogo. This is probably the reason why someone at our office placed you in the last transport batch.

 

[LeChuck81]

@ZombiPL
As @Treshy stated here: https://smallformfactor.net/forum/t...console-sized-gaming-pc-case.7106/post-176997
it seems the actual riser is not (completely?) compatible with PCIe 4.0. Not that it actually matters, at least in the foreseeable future but, again as stated by Treshy, to make the Sentry future-proof, if/when a PCIe 4.0 compatible riser arise on the market, will you look into it/sell it/point us towards it?

 

[SaperPL]

it seems the actual riser is not (completely?) compatible with PCIe 4.0. Not that it actually matters, at least in the foreseeable future but, again as stated by Treshy, to make the Sentry future-proof, if/when a PCIe 4.0 compatible riser arise on the market, will you look into it/sell it/point us towards it?

The riser is not certified for 4.0 nor made for it. It's made for 3.0. Being somehow compatible with early version of agesa supporting pci-e 4.0 was cool, but it might also be unstable and therefore it might have been disabled/changed. It's kind of hard for me to believe that there are actually long ribbon risers that are compatible with 4.0 as such riser support is still very bleeding edge, I think. PCB risers for HPC servers using GPUs for computation may be fully there, but consumer grade hardware for something like back-to-back - i doubt it. You'll find risers that worked with 4.0 on one agesa versions and became unstable on another like ours, that are stating 4.0 compatibility regardless of issues.

As for looking into making a 4.0 riser - at this point this is a waste of time because we have barely crossed the bandwidth of 16 lanes of 2.0 or 8 lanes of 3.0 in games. So actually you don't really need 4.0 or even (stretching it a bit) the 3.0 bandwidth. The 4.0 is cool because of the nvme storage though.

We are not going to waste our time on bringing an expensive riser to the market that wouldn't actually make any difference in actual gaming other than that you can show-off your "4.0" number in GPU-Z. Similarly to the subject of type-C on the front panel, we're going to wait for it (pci-e 4.0 risers) to become mainstream. With that said, if our supplier starts making the 4.0 compatible risers, then we'll see how it looks cost-wise.

 

[LeChuck81]

With that said, if our supplier starts making the 4.0 compatible risers, then we'll see how it looks cost-wise.

That's exactly what I was hoping for ?

Yep, I know that, for the forseeable future, apart for NVMe, PCIe 4.0 is way overkill. I was just wondering if, 10(ish) years from now, when GPUs capable of saturate a full 16x PCIe 4.0 bandwidth will be be (maybe?) mainstream, I will be able to still build into my Sentry without bottleneck.

 

[SaperPL]

Yep, I know that, for the forseeable future, apart for NVMe, PCIe 4.0 is way overkill. I was just wondering if, 10(ish) years from now, when GPUs capable of saturate a full 16x PCIe 4.0 bandwidth will be be (maybe?) mainstream, I will be able to still build into my Sentry without bottleneck.

The case has fairly universal riser mount, so if anyone makes a 4.0 or even 5.0 in this form as two pcb pieces or a flexible 4-5cm riser like we had in first version, then you can use it, no one is stopping you.

Actually I can see one point of having a 4.0 riser and it is going for 4.0 x8 for the GPU if somehow it was possible to route remaining lanes to have both m.2 slots connected as x4 in boards that have two m.2 slots. And in such scenario you could potentially route cables and AIO hoses easier.

 

[Khio]

Hellow ! Sentry 2.0 #0735 reporting in !

The case is really awesome ! It does run full AMD with a Ryzen 3700X and a RX 5700 XT, i made a build on PC Part Picker with all the details if that can help people !

 

[raiyuki]

I agree with you, it looks disgusting

I can’t imagine how he can do such horror in the case with your own hands, which is only in one copy (it is unlikely that he bought two)
this is real steel, which is damn hard to bend, but this guy was able to do it, and he risks everything - a case, his video card, an adapter for a video card, and his motherboard, because it is an effort to bend steel, exactly is also directed in the opposite direction, to the components in his computer, and they are not designed for such a load.

it's disgusting and terrible

If someone had to be the first to test if adding those adapters will fit larger cards, then I'll risk the parts! (Would have had to get a new card anyways).
Course, I'm also not the most visually savvy. I needed the case cause I move back and forth from two locations a lot and it's super easy to move compared to most other cases (not being flat enough).

I'm hoping it helped people decide if they were also going this direction.

And last, Sorry for manhandling it, but I still love this case. Temps are within good bounds too.

 

[mridontknow]

Sentry 2.0 #454!

This is my first build and huge thanks to Dr. Zaber and the Sentry 2.0 team for making it a breeze to install! I have a 3700x, Aorus X570, Black Ridge with a Noctua Chromax fan, EVGA GM 650, LPX memory, a GTX 1060 (easy upgrade path for whenever I get a better monitor), and of course plenty of RGB. I knew it would be worth the wait, but I used the extra time figuring out how to install a RGB button on the front and I'm happy with the way it turned out.

Edit: Video didn't want to play nice so I removed it. I also posted it on the r/sffpc Discord server.

 

[evil4dmin]

Christmas came early this year! Thanks Dr. Zaber!! What a masterpiece!

#0125 ready for some serious gaming! ?

Assembly was great fun, will have to optimize some wire routing but it performs nice so far!

Here is a quick timelapse of my build:
Cheers
Jan

 

[Gourmandises]

Nice build @Treshy ! What's on that gpu, 92s and 40s? My board is still out of the case as I spend time messing with the memory when I have free time.

 

[polarium]

Got my case last Friday and built it up during the weekend! Took some time to figure out how to attach the locking piece for the riser, due to me not reading the manual well enough. Ingenious design of that part.
Bought some new toys for the case; Ryzen 3600, 16GB 3600MHz RAM and a Noctua NH-L9a. Kept the SF600 v2 and GTX 1060 from the old case. Funnily enough it's quieter than my last case, and only slightly warmer. Might replace thermal paste for the CPU when I get a new graphics card for the Cyberpunk 2077 release.
General question, has anyone used the J-HACK M2427 cable kit? Seems like a nice way to get back some much needed room from the quite unwieldy stock Corsair sleeved cables.

My cables are coming in this week, so hopefully I could try the M2427 cables and report back next week. Should work great though, and the space savings definitely would help a lot with breathability/pressure of pushing of components

 

[loader963]

Got my case last Friday and built it up during the weekend! Took some time to figure out how to attach the locking piece for the riser, due to me not reading the manual well enough. Ingenious design of that part.
Bought some new toys for the case; Ryzen 3600, 16GB 3600MHz RAM and a Noctua NH-L9a. Kept the SF600 v2 and GTX 1060 from the old case. Funnily enough it's quieter than my last case, and only slightly warmer. Might replace thermal paste for the CPU when I get a new graphics card for the Cyberpunk 2077 release.
General question, has anyone used the J-HACK M2427 cable kit? Seems like a nice way to get back some much needed room from the quite unwieldy stock Corsair sleeved cables.

I’m currently running a m2427 on a z390 phantom and 9900k with no problems. It’s a slick little piece of hardware that I would have loved in my old cases.

 

[andy66]

Thanks Dr. Zaber! What a beautiful case! It acts perfectly as my Living room gaming pc

- i9 9900k
- Asus Strix Z390-I Gaming
- 2x Corsair 16GB DDR4 3200
- EVGA GTX 1080Ti SC Black Edition Gaming
- 1x Samsung EVO 960 250GB M.2
- 1x Corsair MP510 960GB M.2
- Corsair SF750
- Cryorig C7 Cu