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

[Redux-Limited]

I just got my case delivered!!! The l9a arrives tomorrow, so I still have to wait another day, but first impressions are really over the top, I'm so glad I went with the Navy Gray, it looks awesome, the build quality it's also super impressive, when the tech toubers who made reviews said it was build like a tank the weren't lying, it feels sturdy AF, like a case you can take to your grave sturdy.

Can wait to get everything up and running!

 

[Mosskovskaia]

3mm is the absolute minimum for an airgap.

4mm or 5mm is even better.


you could also just buy an AXP-90 copper, & then sand its stock fan down 1mm.

1mm sanded down on an AXP-90 copper, equals a 3mm airgap.

Yeah but the fan that comes with the axp 90 copper ist 15mm in width and a Noctua is 14mm. But with the Noctua got have a total height of 46mm. The heatsink of the 90R is 32mm in height

 

[Instran0]

Yeah but the fan that comes with the axp 90 copper is 15mm

sorry, i edited my post.

an AXP 90 copper will not work then, because its too much to sand, without damaging your fan.

its only possible to sand about 1mm - 2mm off.

 

[Khio]

So after my "I don't have a 3D printer" cheap CPU fan duct and the good result I seems to have...

I wondered if I could do the same for my GPU, as it is a blower card it only have 1 intake, and the heat is pushed out at the back...
So here is my "I still don't have a 3D printer" Radeon duct !

The panel itself is now noticeably colder where the fan is so it seems to at least chanel some air from the outside successfully ?

 

[dmznsdp]

So here is my "I still don't have a 3D printer" Radeon duct !

Did you test the temps with and without the GPU duct?

 

[Khio]

Did you test the temps with and without the GPU duct?

Nothing yet conclusive, I ran a benchmark to check if my duct don't melt and it didn't ! Got slightly more points than last time, but it's not same drivers version and probably not the same room temperature. The drivers 20.8.1 is supposed to release later today, I'll ran more test tomorrow, with and without the duct and i'll be monitoring temp too !

 

[SaperPL]

I think that for the blower fan, making the duct so small is potentially limiting the airflow. I'd make it bigger to take as much area of the inlet. The perforation reduces transfer area.

 

[Khio]

You are the Airflow Master ! You think a duct middle to bottom, full lenght of the card would do better ?

Yea I don't have Photoshop either ! I can try to draw that too and see how it goes

 

[Wenzell]

Happy my case finally arrived today, looks well packaged and good quality

Too bad I forgot to check the gpu clearance so might need to wait until I change my gpu before I can use it or consider other cases instead

 

[Mosskovskaia]

I know that you can use Third party riser cables but how exactly do they mount? like the original riser with the 2 screws? I'm talking about a Riser like This:
Riser Cable PCI E 4.0 Is this possible?

 

[tja4430]

Any thoughts on this new cooler from IDCooling? ID-COOLING IS-47K. Low-profile 47mm cooler.

LINK

Wonder how this would compare to the Cryorig C7, especially with the fan positioning.

 

[SaperPL]

I know that you can use Third party riser cables but how exactly do they mount? like the original riser with the 2 screws? I'm talking about a Riser like This:
Riser Cable PCI E 4.0 Is this possible?

This kind of riser is not supported by our case. Sentry holds the riser by the pci-e slot body from its sides. You need a riser that has PCB parallel/going straight into the pci-e slot plastic body on the GPU side. The one you have linked has slot body soldered perpendicularly to the PCB.

Also there is no reason right now to use pci-e 4.0 on the GPU unless you are doing some kind of scientific/GPU-accelerated workloads. It makes sense to have pci-e 4.0 compatible board for the m.2 nvme drives, especially if you want two of them on board.

Any thoughts on this new cooler from IDCooling? ID-COOLING IS-47K. Low-profile 47mm cooler.

LINK

Wonder how this would compare to the Cryorig C7, especially with the fan positioning.

This is essentially black ridge without coating and edges of the fin stack simplified. ID-Cooling seems to OEM/ODM factory for black ridge.
Black ridge is 'meh' because it has terrible mounting mechanism where you have to somehow magically figure out a perfect tension on the screws, it has compatibility issues with motherboards when it come to any case that is not back-to-back layout and also the fin stack is mostly useless because you need super unique/expensive VLP memory sticks to mount a 120 mm fan there, that are (the VLP sticks) basically only there for blade servers right now.

 

[tja4430]

This is essentially black ridge without coating and edges of the fin stack simplified. ID-Cooling seems to OEM/ODM factory for black ridge.
Black ridge is 'meh' because it has terrible mounting mechanism where you have to somehow magically figure out a perfect tension on the screws, it has compatibility issues with motherboards when it come to any case that is not back-to-back layout and also the fin stack is mostly useless because you need super unique/expensive VLP memory sticks to mount a 120 mm fan there, that are (the VLP sticks) basically only there for blade servers right now.

Hmm, seems like there is a issue with backplate mounting according to this thread:

LINK

The ram compatability seems to be a little bit less of an issue than the Blackridge cooler

 

[SaperPL]

Hmm, seems like there is a issue with backplate mounting according to this thread:

LINK

The ram compatability seems to be a little bit less of an issue than the Blackridge cooler

Oh, I didn't notice that. So it's not really a black ridge clone, it won't support 120 mm fan under the fin stack.

Still, this is technically just a reversed NH-La, but made more complex because the fan is under the fin stack, worse mounting mechanism cause it's ID-Cooling and maybe looks better than NH-L9a.

 

[Khio]

Did you test the temps with and without the GPU duct?

As promised I ran some test today ! I didn't know how to do that properly so I tried to run Unigine Valley, Unigine Heaven and Furmark, with and without the GPU duct ;

Spoiler: The GPU fan duct

The test system :
Motherboard : Gigabyte B450 I AORUS PRO WIFI
CPU : Ryzen 3700X ( all default settings in bios )
RAM : 3600 CL16
GPU : RX 5700 XT Reference Model ( FreeSync ON, drivers 20.8.1, default "Standard" drivers settings )
Room Temp : 26C

Without Duct​	With Duct​

Furmark, without duct :

Furmark, with duct :

So the result, it's not much but it seems that in all case the GPU manage to boost slightly faster with the duct with consistent slightly better score \o/

 

[MelbourneFL]

It is slightly faster and slightly cooler. With the improvements suggested by SaberPL it might get even better. I'll probably try that too with my blower style card.

Alexander

 

[dmznsdp]

Thanks for the results @Khio! And what about the noise? Or the fan speed maybe.

 

[Khio]

Haven't noticed any difference in noise ! I think the fan speed is the same

 

[kai535]

Not sure if anyone else thought of this but if you swap the front panel usb to 2.0 ones the cable is half as thick and normally shorter making cable management a bit easier( I felt like I was over bending the 3.0 and it was bowing my case )

 

[SaperPL]

Not sure if anyone else thought of this but if you swap the front panel usb to 2.0 ones the cable is half as thick and normally shorter making cable management a bit easier( I felt like I was over bending the 3.0 and it was bowing my case )

Lower lip of the riser mount in your build is not inserted into the notches of the center wall. It's not assembled correctly.