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

Dustbunnyck

Caliper Novice
Nov 10, 2019
31
5
Is Sentry 2.0 ok for gpus like 2080 for example?
Heat/throttling wise?

I would buy sentry 2.0 if someone is selling:)
My 2080ti hits 85 playing modern warfare so it's gonna get hot. But it would hit 80 in my old big atx rig so it's not that much worse
 

SaperPL

Master of Cramming
DR ZĄBER
Oct 17, 2017
472
882
My 2080ti hits 85 playing modern warfare so it's gonna get hot. But it would hit 80 in my old big atx rig so it's not that much worse

The temperature alone doesn't determine whether 2080TI is okay inside the case or not. Are you getting the same framerates as in the full ATX tower? does the card boost to the same clocks? Because that's what matters.

Squeezing 230-250W TDP card inside sff case like this may bring diminishing returns on the investment if it is thermally constrained.
 

Van0

SFF Lingo Aficionado
Mar 29, 2019
129
166
I've said it some pages back, but my 2080ti runs great with the mods I made to it. Removed the stock Gigabyte Windforce fans and replaced with Noctua Chromax fans and created a cardboard duct.
Using heaven benchmark and undervolting to 950mV, Freq - 1980MHz, Temp - 78C.
 
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SaperPL

Master of Cramming
DR ZĄBER
Oct 17, 2017
472
882
I've said it some pages back, but my 2080ti runs great with the mods I made to it. Removed the stock Gigabyte Windforce fans and replaced with Noctua Chromax fans and created a cardboard duct.
Using heaven benchmark and undervolting to 950mV, Freq - 1980MHz, Temp - 78C.
Noctua needs to start doing some aftermarket fan shroud assemblies for the GPUs...
 

LeChuck81

SFF Lingo Aficionado
May 6, 2019
129
36
The temperature alone doesn't determine whether 2080TI is okay inside the case or not. Are you getting the same framerates as in the full ATX tower? does the card boost to the same clocks? Because that's what matters.

Squeezing 230-250W TDP card inside sff case like this may bring diminishing returns on the investment if it is thermally constrained.
Would it be possible to add in that wonderful Google Doc of yours the estimated TDP of the GPUs? Maybe with a color code (green = below suggested TDP, yellow = risky/depending on orientation, red = not suggested)? Would be an useful info for people looking what to buy.
 

SaperPL

Master of Cramming
DR ZĄBER
Oct 17, 2017
472
882
The doc is only a suggestion for fitting the card. It's already a pain to keep track of what manufacturers do with their specs. If you go and add the cards right away when the chip launches, then when the card actually hits the shelves, a lot of pages are done all over with different photos and specs as the ones we have used for compatibility listing were placeholders etc.

Keeping track of TDP etc is something that would only add work because essentially you get a card with reference TDP, unless it's a card that has increased power draw and custom power delivery, but that card will most likely not fit at all. Meaning if the card fits, then you should check the TDP by the chip model. There might be some exceptions in this, but not often.

Rule of thumb would be to go after cards like 1080/2070 if you don't feel like you're an experienced builder, otherwise you should know what you are doing at this point.

The similar thing goes with fitting the card, if a card is marked as not fitting but you don't get it by the numbers, then maybe you don't understand how the card was measured. Either follow the recommendations or ask on the forums what's up with the card not being marked as fitting. We actually got some not an insignificant amount of mail questions like "why this X card is marked as not fitting when the specs are showing they should fit" where most of the cards had just placeholder dimensions from reference cards but were actually clearly huge in comparison to reference cards, were 2.5~3 slot wide or simply were measured without the length of the PCI bracket and the person asking about it was comparing the dimension to the one on our spec that included the bracket.

Anyway, proceed with caution, this is just suggestion list and not a list of *certified* cards. We haven't tested all of those cards for fitting.
Finally once again - don't pick 2.5 slot cards - you are risking damaging the fans and in best case scenario you'll just have them running really loud.
 

LeChuck81

SFF Lingo Aficionado
May 6, 2019
129
36
Anyway, proceed with caution, this is just suggestion list and not a list of *certified* cards. We haven't tested all of those cards for fitting.
Finally once again - don't pick 2.5 slot cards - you are risking damaging the fans and in best case scenario you'll just have them running really loud.
Indeed, personally I check that Google Doc with a grain of salt, it's just a starting point, then I double check measurement and look around for other experiences.
 

Dustbunnyck

Caliper Novice
Nov 10, 2019
31
5
The temperature alone doesn't determine whether 2080TI is okay inside the case or not. Are you getting the same framerates as in the full ATX tower? does the card boost to the same clocks? Because that's what matters.

Squeezing 230-250W TDP card inside sff case like this may bring diminishing returns on the investment if it is thermally constrained.
I am the same frame rates as I've always targeted 4k 60fps. My cpu stays relatively cool while the Gpu does work. It doesn't throttle at those Temps
 
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John Grimm

Cable Smoosher
Aug 21, 2019
12
5
Any1 have a backpack/bag suggestion for the sentry? I need a carrier that will hold the Sentry + Keyboard and couple of mice.
I've tried checking Amazon, but search for backpacks is meh. :(
 

Khio

Caliper Novice
Dec 16, 2019
25
39
Any1 have a backpack/bag suggestion for the sentry? I need a carrier that will hold the Sentry + Keyboard and couple of mice.
I've tried checking Amazon, but search for backpacks is meh. :(

I found something ! Lifewit Bag on Amazon ; Made you some pictures

It can hold everything I need, even without removing the feet ! The Sentry is quiet heavy though, I don't know how long the bag will hold, and I reinforced the shoulder straps braces with some cords in case one break, because those metal straps will.

There are some pocket on the front, the big left pocket can even hold my Nintendo Switch Lite !
 
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John Grimm

Cable Smoosher
Aug 21, 2019
12
5
I found something ! Lifewit Bag on Amazon ; Made you some pictures

It can hold everything I need, even without removing the feet ! The Sentry is quiet heavy though, I don't know how long the bag will hold, and I reinforced the shoulder straps braces with some cords in case one break, because those metal straps will.

There are some pocket on the front, the big left pocket can even hold my Nintendo Switch Lite !
Much appreciated m8. I've ordered it. :D Delivery next week.
If the bag breaks, i know a grandma with heavy duty machine that can sort it out quick.
Thank you for helping me out. :)
 

phinix

Chassis Packer
Feb 1, 2020
20
2
Seeing all reviews etc looks like regular CPU is around 40C idle/750-80C load, then GPU is about 40C idle/80-85C load.
Is that right guys? ANyone who has this case could confirm?
By load I mean gaming, not some heavy tests.
 

Idle2824

Average Stuffer
Apr 26, 2018
67
68
my 3700x is 50°C idle, 80-85°C when running sustained all core workloads at 4.05-4.1 GHz. Higher boosts on single cores lead to really spiky temperature readings in my experience, with the highest I saw at 90°C on HWInfo. My GTX 1070 idles at 40°C, plays games at about 80°C, I think. The GPU fans don't spin up to anywhere near their maximum though, so everything seems fine.

I'm using the black ridge cooler with a noctua a12x15 fan underneath it, set to blow air through the fins and out of the case. It gets audible at 50% fan speed and is loud but not ridiculously so at 100%. I'm pretty sure the vlp ram being so close to the fan intake makes it louder, since out of the case it's super quiet at 100%.

For all the talk about reversing the default black ridge fan direction being better, I found it was just much louder, to the point where it wasn't worth any potential thermal performance increase.

Also, I had to take the x570 chipset fan off to fit the cooler, but I've never seen it go above 70°C. It idles at just over 60°C though, but it sounds as though that's relatively normal. It does get some active cooling from my cpu fan, which is right above it, and it gets cooler when the CPU is under load because of this.

I'm pretty happy, all told. I have not downclocked or undervolted anything, and I am not seeing any throttling or underperformance on either my CPU or GPU. The only overclocking I have done was to boost my RAM up to 3600 MT/s and tighter timings, since my sticks have no XMP profile.
 
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SaperPL

Master of Cramming
DR ZĄBER
Oct 17, 2017
472
882
Seeing all reviews etc looks like regular CPU is around 40C idle/750-80C load, then GPU is about 40C idle/80-85C load.
Is that right guys? ANyone who has this case could confirm?
By load I mean gaming, not some heavy tests.

I can confirm this is the case with new Zen2 CPUs. Both 3700X and 3600 behave like this because those are not really 65W TDP CPUs but they have 88W socket power limit by default. AMD simply did the same thing what intel was doing for few generations now by stating the TDP for CPU without the boost enabled and the boost is pulling power outside the rated TDP.

Zen2 is really aggressive when it comes to "race to idle" and it'll take some time before the bios/drivers/power plan will get optimised so any insignificant load won't push the turbo unnecessarily when just browsing web etc.

Also the second thing is that AMD has made it that way ryzen master will show the mean/average temp of the cores and not the max temp from the cores, and they are stating those temps are safe for those chips. It's the same as with macbooks hitting 80 or 90 degrees or GPUs turbo boosting till they reach 80 or 85 degrees. We just need to get used to that change. (Btw there was a time when GPUs were hitting 140c iirc :p)

The max temp for Zen2 is 95c and there is no lower target temp that manages turbo to throttle back as it was in previous CPUs, so it'll start throttling when closely approaching 95c and not like it was before around 70~80c.

The not cool part about whole thing is that TDP ratings are now fake all over the board for both intel and amd and amd is shipping 65W TDP Ryzen 7 3700X that's actually 88W PPT with 125W TDP rated Wraith Prism stock cooler and the same 65W TDP Ryzen 5 3600 that's 88W PPT with actual 65W TDP Wraith Stealth cooler and the whole thing hits the SFF using LP coolers the most.

Things you can do to mitigate this:
1) update your bios to most recent one
2) try slight undervolt on the cpu, for some it does magic while even slightly improving performance
3) tweak your power plan. Limit the max clock to 4100 MHz, the power draw starts rising significantly over this mark
4) Enable ECO "45W" mode - it'll actually limit your total socket power to 60W iirc.
5) Disable turbo boost in bios (core performance boost) if you are not okay with those kind of temperatures, but it'll effectively remove the gains of Zen2 from your CPU.
 
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Khio

Caliper Novice
Dec 16, 2019
25
39
I ran some H265 encoding to get you some temp and speed on my Ryzen 3700X with the Noctua NH-L9A, in both case at max speed at 2500 RPM ;

At default setting ( Max TDP 88W ), CPU boost up to 4,1 Ghz :


At custom 65W TDP, CPU boost up to 3,9 Ghz :


The max temp for the CPU is 95C so it does throttle at 88W but doesn't go above, so it is probably safe to run. It didn't reach the max temp at 65W though so the Noctua is really doing its job for 65W !
 

incunabula

Average Stuffer
Jun 14, 2019
87
132
Trying again @SaperPL

Any idea when the next batch will go into production? For the record, saying you have no plans yet, or you don't know if preferable to continuously ignoring the question. Don't mean to sound rude, just genuinely interested in having some idea when they might be purchasable.
 

SaperPL

Master of Cramming
DR ZĄBER
Oct 17, 2017
472
882
We don't know yet. There are other projects that have priority that have piled up while we were fulfilling the campaign orders.

We know that there are a lot of people who want to get our case, but regardless of how many of you would order the cases in the campaign, there always would be those who didn't know about the case and got to see it just because their friend got it, or they weren't sure about the whole crowdfunding thing.

The time for ordering the cases was during campaign and we have just shipped last order a bit over a month ago, so there wasn't really any big things happening with the case production going forward.

I think we have said that few times already, but we're not a full fledged chassis manufacturer, meaning making cases is not our daily routine and this is a double-edged sword - on the one side this means we don't need to make cases to make a living and therefore we can make as we believe they should be made properly and not as they should be made in order to maintain business (which is clearly visible that we have a different approach in design) and on the other hand not having to make cases in order to make a living means there are other things that we have to do instead.

We have few big projects with actual deadlines that are taking most of our time right now and we are looking back at the production from the campaign (when we have time for it) to think if there's anything we'd like to improve, like packaging process, some slight details in the manufacturing etc. But that's not something we'll do over a month when we are focusing on multiple different things.

As for ignoring the original question - sorry for that. Stupid as it might sound, but I simply forgot to check if I should respond to other comments that piled up after writing in details about the Zen2 temperatures, because I had to do switch focus to something different at that moment. We're taking the time out of our daily jobs to answer your questions and sometimes we are splitting focus between writing the response comment and talking with someone asking questions over our shoulder about completely different thing, so things like this may happen.
 

incunabula

Average Stuffer
Jun 14, 2019
87
132
We don't know yet. There are other projects that have priority that have piled up while we were fulfilling the campaign orders.

We know that there are a lot of people who want to get our case, but regardless of how many of you would order the cases in the campaign, there always would be those who didn't know about the case and got to see it just because their friend got it, or they weren't sure about the whole crowdfunding thing.

The time for ordering the cases was during campaign and we have just shipped last order a bit over a month ago, so there wasn't really any big things happening with the case production going forward.

I think we have said that few times already, but we're not a full fledged chassis manufacturer, meaning making cases is not our daily routine and this is a double-edged sword - on the one side this means we don't need to make cases to make a living and therefore we can make as we believe they should be made properly and not as they should be made in order to maintain business (which is clearly visible that we have a different approach in design) and on the other hand not having to make cases in order to make a living means there are other things that we have to do instead.

We have few big projects with actual deadlines that are taking most of our time right now and we are looking back at the production from the campaign (when we have time for it) to think if there's anything we'd like to improve, like packaging process, some slight details in the manufacturing etc. But that's not something we'll do over a month when we are focusing on multiple different things.

As for ignoring the original question - sorry for that. Stupid as it might sound, but I simply forgot to check if I should respond to other comments that piled up after writing in details about the Zen2 temperatures, because I had to do switch focus to something different at that moment. We're taking the time out of our daily jobs to answer your questions and sometimes we are splitting focus between writing the response comment and talking with someone asking questions over our shoulder about completely different thing, so things like this may happen.

I appreciate the reply. That's all understandable, I'm just trying to get a handle on what might be available when, so I can make part decisions. Sounds like it will likely be a while before you're ready to go again, so I'll look elsewhere. Thanks again.
 

dtagirov

Chassis Packer
Nov 28, 2019
16
18
I remembered the question I want to ask for three years already)

What will happen if I cut out this part from the case? Do you think this cooling will improve? (on video cards like a blower, it looks as if about 30% of the holes on the video card are blocked, from where air is pushed out). And the second question - how much can this affect the stiffness of the case? In my opinion, everything looks pretty strong - in fact, the mounting points of the video card from both sides are preserved, and we only lose this middle bar, which always seemed to me superfluous, and the purpose of which I never understood. Maybe we can see such an improvement in the third version of this case, if possible? )

photo there