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

[SaperPL]

For a Sentry 3.0 having a spot for a slim optical drive

No option to do that and also it would be a wasted effort from the point of view of making a feature like this for a small scale production product like Sentry because barely anyone uses optical drives these days in PCs. It would be supporting a feature in a niche within a niche within a niche.

We tried to support things that we could where there was not much implementation and manufacturing costs involved like drive and AIO support, but to fit an optical drive this would be a complete remodelling of the case.

No option to do so because there is no space to do that if you want to support full length GPU and still make it a safe construction for horizontal use.

Sentry 2.1 having either adjustable feet or taller feet for the horizontal mount.

These are fairly standard rubber feet that you can order online. Simply look for riveted rubber electronics feet with 8 mm diameter mounting hole.

The feet size of the included set was decided upon testing multiple dimensions and were optimised for 150W and 180W TDP cards at the time we designed original Sentry. There was no performance increase/temperature decrease beyond the height we have selected at the time of testing with the generations of cards we had on hands.

If you are using a higher TDP card, then you might need to replace them with some taller variant.

Iirc the feet are standardised and have heights in mm like this: 4.0, 6.4, 8.0, 10.0, 13.0 and so on. We are using the 6.4 mm ones, the 8 and 10 didn't make a difference and the differencies with 13 mm ones were barely noticeable, but it started to look bad.

In other news we have a first video on the EVGA XC3 model:

Seems like it's barely on par with the FE on an open bench. It might get really interesting when someone starts comparing those in a tight sff scenario.

 

[aaaadrian]

I tried to grab a EVGA XC3 this morning, but no luck newegg website gave up under immense load and I was able to add some cards to the cart, but they all ended up being removed automatically when inventory ran out in seconds.

Who knows, maybe I'll try my luck on EVGA RTX 3090 XC3 next week. Looks like the dimensions are exactly the same.

 

[aaaadrian]

Guys, gigabyte listed the first blower style RTX 3090: https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-N3090TURBO-24GD/sp#sp

This is crazy, wondering how thermals would look like.

 

[rfarmer]

Guys, gigabyte listed the first blower style RTX 3090: https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-N3090TURBO-24GD/sp#sp

This is crazy, wondering how thermals would look like.

This might be the reference pcb EK designed their block for.

 

[Alster370]

Guys, gigabyte listed the first blower style RTX 3090: https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-N3090TURBO-24GD/sp#sp

This is crazy, wondering how thermals would look like.

Haha thats crazy, think thermals will be fine, noise however.... Amazing though to get 350w dissipated through a two slot blower.

 

[SaperPL]

Haha thats crazy, think thermals will be fine, noise however.... Amazing though to get 350w dissipated through a two slot blower.

That's not a definite thing that this will be noisy. Good blower fan designs can work properly acoustically as well. The issue is that we are used to blower style cards having bad components - poor bearings on the fan + cheap radiatior + coil whine, since those are often the lowest price shelf.

If the double ball bearing in the promo art is a true representation on how it'll look like, then it should be fine on the bearing front.

You guys remember the 970 Mini from ASUS? The one that had this weird blower x normal combo fan blades. I remember this having "ball bearing" in spec. I had an occasion to disassemble few of those because the fans have died. This has shown me what is a definition of a ball bearing for some companies.

<- this thing.

Imagine a small plastic pin, maybe with some metal pin inside for rigidity with total diameter of 3~4 mm iirc. The end of the pin is made hemispherical and is coated with a thin layer of metal. Another plastic piece with a hemispherical cavity comes on top of this. You got yourself a "ball bearing". I would expect a bit more from 970 Mini card from ASUS...

So essentially we have bad opinion about blower style cards because those were made as cheap as possible so far, but it doesn't need to be like that. It would be simply stupid if someone went and cut corners while making a blower design for a 1400$ card.

 

[SaperPL]

There you go.


Now stop looking for replacement pci-e 4.0 risers unless it actually makes sense for your workload.

This will start making sense once the games for new consoles start using direct transfer of data between gpu and ssd.

 

[darksable]

Hey Saper, Zombi - it's been a long time, but I'm back! (Albeit in slightly reduced capacity.)

Anyways, I've been saving up some funds for a computer upgrade for Cyberpunk 2077, like many. While I'm targeting 1440p, high refresh rate, I also absolutely love my Sentry and won't give it up for anything.

So... I'm planning on doing something pretty silly, involving a deshrouded graphics card in my Sentry. If things go well, I'll be posting a full modding log and thermal testing.

Come Monday, I'm going to be talking to a number of board partners' marketing departments, asking them for specific measurements from their engineering teams for the heatsinks before the fans and shroud go on.

I'd like to confirm a few key measurements with you guys before I pass the request along, in regards to *exactly* how much room I have to play with in the GPU compartment.

Length: 305mm. The one dimension I'm not concerned about.

Height: 130mm, measured from the bottom of the PCIe plug, right? Is that cut off because of bezels - in other words, is there any part of the case that's higher than that 130mm mark, or is the 130mm literally brushing up against the top of the case? (This question determines if I can use all 130mm for heatsink or have to limit the height to 120mm.)

Thickness: this is what I'm most concerned about, because it's not specified in the manual beyond, "2 Slots."

The EVGA XC3 at 2.2 slots should fit, but from what I can tell, there's even wiggle room beyond that.

I found a post on the old forums that said that there was 48mm available measuring from the PCIe slot / PCB, is that accurate?

Hesitantly, using up the entire space possible, the dimensions would be 305mm x 130mm x 48mm, correct?

Thanks for the info - I hope you guys are doing well, and I can't wait to pull off my hairbrained scheme to pack in more wattage than you guys ever designed for!

 

[SaperPL]

Height: 130mm, measured from the bottom of the PCIe plug, right? Is that cut off because of bezels - in other words, is there any part of the case that's higher than that 130mm mark, or is the 130mm literally brushing up against the top of the case? (This question determines if I can use all 130mm for heatsink or have to limit the height to 120mm.)

Yes, 130 mm, you have it on a drawing on the website and in the manual. Measured up to the GPU bracket/side wall. You may have that 1 mm + paint thickness of leeway where the holes in the GPU bracket has those two big hos holes. Remember to count in the recess for PEG connectors

Thickness: this is what I'm most concerned about, because it's not specified in the manual beyond, "2 Slots."

That's because it doesn't generally make sense to put an oversized card and it is a novelty that they started doing stuff like 2.2 slots, if you are going oversize make it 2.5 slot or more. Adding just a tiny bit seemed like a weird idea so far until there popped up SFF cases that have just that slight leeway to squeeze such card in.

The EVGA XC3 at 2.2 slots should fit, but from what I can tell, there's even wiggle room beyond that.

I found a post on the old forums that said that there was 48mm available measuring from the PCIe slot / PCB, is that accurate?

go back few pages, I tried figuring out that XC3 fitting and wrote stuff there. And yes, there's like 8~9 mm of space under the 2-slot card. But remember about getting close to perforation with fans and noise issues with that.

Hesitantly, using up the entire space possible, the dimensions would be 305mm x 130mm x 48mm, correct?

Looks like it, but if you put the fans directly onto the perforation, you risk scratching them and having fans that are always noise.


I'll wait a bit before deciding whether to pick one of those or not. At least right now I'll have to get the PSU because those disappeared before the 3xxx launch.

 

[darksable]

Yes, 130 mm, you have it on a drawing on the website and in the manual. Measured up to the GPU bracket/side wall. You may have that 1 mm + paint thickness of leeway where the holes in the GPU bracket has those two big hos holes. Remember to count in the recess for PEG connectors

Okay, perfect, thank you. I was taking that number from the manual; I just wanted to double check it. (But I didn't think about paint thickness, so I'll factor that in, thank you.)

go back few pages, I tried figuring out that XC3 fitting and wrote stuff there.

From top of PCB at the back of the card to perforation down below there is 48 mm of space.

You know, I did read that comment, but apparently I didn't retain it well enough - because gosh, where did I get the 48mm number from?

Looks like it, but if you put the fans directly onto the perforation, you risk scratching them and having fans that are always noise.

Absolutely, but that's actually not a concern for this, because I'm going to be removing the stock fans and redirecting the airflow path to be vertical.

 

[LeandroB]

Guys, gigabyte listed the first blower style RTX 3090: https://www.gigabyte.com/Graphics-Card/GV-N3090TURBO-24GD/sp#sp

This is crazy, wondering how thermals would look like.

Thats crazy and fantastic! But is there clearance in the Sentry for the power cables?

 

[SaperPL]

Thats crazy and fantastic! But is there clearance in the Sentry for the power cables?

It's "reference" sized, 10.5"/266.7 mm and the max length is 305 mm. No problem with fitting.

 

[Mosskovskaia]

If someone is curious about temps with a potential fitting 3080. They guy from UFD did put a rtx 2080 ti into the sentry which could give you a hint about temps of the 3080 should run hotter though. He coupled it with a 9900k which of ridiculous but you can assume what the temps gonna be with a 3080.Rtx 2080 ti

 

[SaperPL]

If someone is curious about temps with a potential fitting 3080. They guy from UFD did put a rtx 2080 ti into the sentry which could give you a hint about temps of the 3080 should run hotter though. He coupled it with a 9900k which of ridiculous but you can assume what the temps gonna be with a 3080.Rtx 2080 ti

I think most of the people interested in Sentry 2.0 already have seen that video. On top of that 3080 is 320W with some models going 330W and 2080 TI is 250W TDP so that's a significant difference in context of case that doesn't have fans inducing airflow for GPU compartment.

 

[Mosskovskaia]

I think most of the people interested in Sentry 2.0 already have seen that video. On top of that 3080 is 320W with some models going 330W and 2080 TI is 250W TDP so that's a significant difference in context of case that doesn't have fans inducing airflow for GPU compartment.

Yeah sure the tdp of a 3080 is higher but that is why I wrote it could give a hint for the temps. I think this card is too much but maybe somebody proves me wrong.

 

[Dustbunnyck]

No option to do that and also it would be a wasted effort from the point of view of making a feature like this for a small scale production product like Sentry because barely anyone uses optical drives these days in PCs. It would be supporting a feature in a niche within a niche within a niche.

We tried to support things that we could where there was not much implementation and manufacturing costs involved like drive and AIO support, but to fit an optical drive this would be a complete remodelling of the case.

No option to do so because there is no space to do that if you want to support full length GPU and still make it a safe construction for horizontal use.


These are fairly standard rubber feet that you can order online. Simply look for riveted rubber electronics feet with 8 mm diameter mounting hole.

The feet size of the included set was decided upon testing multiple dimensions and were optimised for 150W and 180W TDP cards at the time we designed original Sentry. There was no performance increase/temperature decrease beyond the height we have selected at the time of testing with the generations of cards we had on hands.

If you are using a higher TDP card, then you might need to replace them with some taller variant.

Iirc the feet are standardised and have heights in mm like this: 4.0, 6.4, 8.0, 10.0, 13.0 and so on. We are using the 6.4 mm ones, the 8 and 10 didn't make a difference and the differencies with 13 mm ones were barely noticeable, but it started to look bad.

In other news we have a first video on the EVGA XC3 model:

Seems like it's barely on par with the FE on an open bench. It might get really interesting when someone starts comparing those in a tight sff scenario.

Thanks for the reply. I understand I may be the only person that would want a disc drive but still its something that I'd think would be awesome. I still love my case and I'm excited to see what you guys come up with next!

 

[ChrisWilde]

Damn it. Turns out the performance gain from the 3090 is not worth it, so spending that 1500 for the blower model to fit the sentry might not be worth it either. Has anyone seen any announcement so far about a 3080 blower model?

I would rather not drill holes on my case to accommodate the FE, although the possible thermal results seem very tempting, as we could even see better thermals on the GPU than in a full ATX case since there the air wont be trapped in the enclose, as with an open air model.

That could also make it easier to get better thermals with beefier CPUs, since there wont be any hot air from the GPU shooting onto the motherboard.

Opinions please?

 

[riba2233]

Damn it. Turns out the performance gain from the 3090 is not worth it, so spending that 1500 for the blower model to fit the sentry might not be worth it either. Has anyone seen any announcement so far about a 3080 blower model?

I would rather not drill holes on my case to accommodate the FE, although the possible thermal results seem very tempting, as we could even see better thermals on the GPU than in a full ATX case since there the air wont be trapped in the enclose, as with an open air model.

That could also make it easier to get better thermals with beefier CPUs, since there wont be any hot air from the GPU shooting onto the motherboard.

Opinions please?

You are best with getting evga xc3.

 

[SaperPL]

This would be totally wasted effort if gigabyte made only 3090 in turbo variant unless making perform properly makes it so it makes sense only financially for 3090, but I doubt that's the case.

They might by trying to encourage people to buy the 3090 if they want a blower or maybe they don't want to release the blower variant of 3080 before they come with 3090 blower reviews for some other reason, like for example blower 3080 would need to be cheaper and they don't want people to disassemble that before 3090 reviews etc.

 

[HetBalderdier]

It would seem a pretty stupid move to not release blower style RTX 30 series cards. Especially with the rising interest in SFFpc's