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Production SENTRY 2.0: Evolution of console-sized gaming PC case
- Thread starter ZombiPL
- Start date
Right now we have to focus on paperwork for this shipment and Paypal isn't making this easy.
For what's next, we'd like to be able to make those cases in larger quantities for stock without issues, which should let us think about handing off the sales to stores maybe or setting up a shop that's running all the time, but this needs some preparations that take time.
As for the design changes, right now 2.1 seems more likely than 3.0 meaning there's really not much wrong with the layout and design of the case itself, but there are some details that we need to change if we want to improve our manufacturing process.
The 3.0 thing is probably a discussion for the next year after we'll see Zen 3 and next gen GPUs being delivered.
I guess one of the logical improvements for a 2.1/3.0 version would be a pcie 4.0 riser. if this is the case, I would appreciate it a lot if you could sell them seperately for previous owners of the sentry. It really is the only thing I would want to have improved about my beautiful sentry 2.0 build right now
Could you please explain on these details? It only means the manufacturing process changes or there will be new features?
From the leaks that are out there we can see that top RTX 3xxx GPUs will be power hungry like 320~350W TDP? We're talking something like dual GPU card even maybe.
September seems like a paper launch date. Most likely only top models at that date. Then we'll have to wait for retail availability of reference cards which may really have that intake at the back of the card.
Then there will be wait for the non-reference cards to pop-up based on that wacky new design, maybe even two months of wait to retail availability.
Then we have to wait for those lower tiered models unless these come together with non-reference designs launch or at similar delay from the paper launch.
Not sure if I'd wait for them, but the other question is whether you want to buy a high-end card right now for your system and if that's necessary ASAP or can you use what you already have for some time etc.
3070/TI feels like a long wait if it doesn't come along with the top end and it might happen. We might see 3080/TI/Titan and those could be all 300W+ TDP cards.
No, they aren't compatible. There's a wall in the middle of the case that supports the GPU and drives and on top of that there is a stand-off with a thread for neutral cable from PSU pass-through cable. These would interfere with such boards.
Hi,
could you please elaborate on the "duct" part of your mesage? I just bought a Sentry 2.0 in the sale and also have a NH-L9a-AM4. I plan to build a duct to separate the fan from the cooler a bit and would be interested in your experiences.
Thanks!
Alexander
The duct is not to separate fan from cooler, but to make sure the hot air doesn't cycle back into the fan, so it's essentially that kind of thing you usually had in those old ATX tower cases with a duct attached to the perforation on the side panel.
Sure. I got the 3D print you can find on the Dan A4 website ( that was my previous case and I chose the one that allowed for taller RAM) and installed that on top of the fan that is on top of the CPU cooler. As there is a little more clearance in the Sentry 2.0 than the Dan A4, I used a few washers as spacers and electrical tape around the 3mm or so gap to create a seal so that the duct is now flush with the side panel of the Sentry 2.0. I hope that makes sense. So now the CPU fan is pushing only fresh cool air into the CPU cooler, instead of recirculating the air already in the case.
Thanks for your answer. My original plan was to separate the fan from the cooler because the central part of the fan covers a rather larger part of the heatsink reducing the area of the heatsink that gets airflow. Also the sides of the heatsink are not covered by the fan at all. So I want create a shroud that also works as an adapter for the different dimensions of fan and heatsink.
So I figured that I have about 10mm of space between the top of the fan and the side panel. My original move the fan by these 10 mm to put the fan against the side panel of the Sentry. However, in some of your posts you wrote that this causes a lot of noise. So I'm debating changing the plan and to only move the fan up by 5 mm to create 5mm of space between fan and side panel.
Now that I read your posts about avoiding recirculating of the hot air which I wasn't aware of, I might actually reconsider again. Maybe I'll just stick to the 5 mm plan and build a duct and a shroud... ;-)
Alexander
PS: Van0 thanks for you answer! I found the duct and will consider that as inspiration for my build.
Is anyone else using the sf750 platinum psu in their sentry 2.0? Im using it to power my 3800x on the gigabyte x570 board and the gigabyte 5700xt gaming oc, and the PSU portion of the case is BY FAR the hottest to the touch... the fan is semi passive and I really dont want to replace it, but I still would like to have my psu run a little cooler. Has anyone tried to use a large thermal pad to connect the whole psu to the case body? are there any issues that could arise when doing this? which thickness do you think I should use? 0.5mm? thanks in advance
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Missed the limited-quantity sale :'(
Hoping for another ordering/production run!
@SaperPL have you seen this case? Any thoughts on it?
I like your case's Dual USB-A more than Type-A x1 & Type-C x1.
I also dont really see the point of front panel audio jacks in these ITX cases.
Why don't more cases mount the GPU so its fans are on the same side of the case as the CPU cooler?
www.sliger.com
Hoping for another ordering/production run!
@SaperPL have you seen this case? Any thoughts on it?
I like your case's Dual USB-A more than Type-A x1 & Type-C x1.
I also dont really see the point of front panel audio jacks in these ITX cases.
Why don't more cases mount the GPU so its fans are on the same side of the case as the CPU cooler?
Console | Sliger
Sliger Designs is a manufacturing company based in the United States specializing in computer cases and systems.
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@SaperPL have you seen this case? Any thoughts on it?
I like your case's Dual USB-A more than Type-A x1 & Type-C x1.
I also dont really see the point of front panel audio jacks in these ITX cases.
Why don't more cases mount the GPU so its fans are on the same side of the case as the CPU cooler?
Console | Sliger
Sliger Designs is a manufacturing company based in the United States specializing in computer cases and systems.
I've seen it, there is a review made by OptimumTech and according to that review, the Sentry has still better thermals (mostly for the GPU) even with all that shenanigans with perforations at the back and, if i understand correctly, with those fans installed.
This case is nice and has really nice finish, especially I like how they made the bends on the panels at the back, that's a nice touch there.
But this case is what ends up happening when you try to do something differently and follow requests from the community without fully understanding the consequences or going with them regardless because you want to sell. A lot of people are sending us random mail with suggestion to change layout in Sentry to have GPU facing the same side as the CPU cooler. Here we can see exactly what happens when you do this.
If you were to put the GPU above the motherboard, then the riser would need to go under/behind the board and you would waste space for it limiting cooler height on CPU and also you would waste space for additional riser bends from the back of the case to the center of card PCB. But when you do it as they did, you don't want to have inverted layout with heavy GPU hanging on the bracket and the riser's slot, so you keep it that way. Now the GPU is warming up the bottom of the case and a lot of that heat is going up to the motherboard compartment and affects CPU cooling.
Second thing is that, for some reason, the PSU is oriented this way its exhaust is facing GPU and therefore the heat from GPU will go to the PSU until it's fan will kick in and start pushing hot air on the tail end of the card. And that fan right behind the GPU core, that could do the most to help cool down the card, is blocked there and will blow cool air (or suck hot air) all around the place except for the chip solder area and memory dies at the back of the card.
Apart from that, as you can see, there is literally a lot of space wasted even around such big card as that strix they have on photos, look at how much of space there is under the card for the sake of fitting the card connector with riser's end. And all that wasted space is spread around the card meaning you can't use it to mount additional 2.5" drives and also all that space works against your GPU cooling - the cooler cannot force the hot air to escape directly through perforation if there is a lot of free space around so it starts mixing the air around and recycling it. Air will flow where there's least resistance. That is the core issue that the inlet in our cover is solving/mitigating. If you can't have induced airflow with big fans around the GPU, you should strive to have exhaust of the hot air as tight as possible or you have to duct the intake to separate fresh air from the outside - but for a GPU that means having custom duct for each card, so it's not doable from the perspective of case manufacturer to handle all potential card cooler layouts.
It's not that this case is bad. It seems like a good "idiot-proof" product, because there's less restrictions on the GPU size which is generally the most complicated part here due to not heaving standardised measurements for cards, but it does all that things about the layout and cooling differently to be better at cooling and in the end it fails to do better, then what's the point of having so much bigger case?
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Ah, that's interesting. Yeah, now that you mention it, non-blower fan gpu coolers dont exhaust towards the pcie slot huh? Most if it is directed away from the pcie slot right? The upside of having both fans pulling air in from the same side of the case would make it easier to lay the case flat though wouldnt it? Interesting "dilemma" I like your 2.5" drive mount also seems like a good design.
Not sure why they have fans behind the gpu though if the gpu is mounted "fans up".
As for the PSU, I didnt notice they mount it "rotated 180*" compared to yours. Yeah that seems silly for the reasons you mentioned.
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Most of the full length non-blower style, the so-called open-air style cards are made in a way that that some portion of the radiator is directed at the back/the pci bracket while rest of the radiator fins are directed sideways. The exception seems to be with short ITX sized cards where whole radiator has either fins directed front to back of the card, towards the pci bracket like for example R9/Vega Nano and gigabyte mini cards, or cheaper extruded aluminium radiator with fins directed radially outside of the fan.
Essentially this is taken straight out from Steam Machine prototype, the spot for hard drive mount is. The difference is that we made it easier to manufacture and figured out that we can fit a second drive as well.
I think that the reason for orienting the PSU this way is that they didn't want the power button right in the middle which would make it more like Sentry layout, and by moving the power switch location to the top, they wanted to avoid issues with some of the PSUs having IEC14 connector located and oriented in a way the IEC13 angled connector plugged into it would collide against the power switch. Also potentially for routing power cables from the PSU around instead of squashing them in one spot.
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