WarFactory Sentinel: Gaming on a Grand
by Dustin Sklavos on June 8, 2011 12:01 AM ESTBuild, Noise, Heat, and Power Consumption
Keeping in line with the WarFactory Sentinel's "balanced budget" aspirations, cooling is handled by the custom cooler on the ASUS GeForce GTX 460 768MB TOP (phew), AMD's stock cooler for the Phenom II, and the two 120mm fans the CoolerMaster HAF 912 ships with. Since none of the components are particularly power hungry (as you'll see below), none of the fans have to work too hard, and the result is a reprieve from the noisy gaming systems I've been testing of late.
It's the balance that I really appreciate with WarFactory's component choices in the Sentinel. There's no shame in wanting to build a "sky's the limit" performance machine, but I think there's really an art to building within a budget. When I'm building a machine for friends or family, I live for that, so a system like the Sentinel that really hits the sweet spot and includes a lot of the same component choices I might have made is appreciated. The only questionable decision I feel like they made was the use of G.Skill instead of a more reputable brand like Kingston or Corsair or Crucial, but WarFactory is willing to back it up with a lifetime warranty and RAM is at the commodity item level where differences usually only matter for overclockers.
When we're talking about budget, it's important to see just how much it would cost to build the system yourself, and in that situation (assuming no shipping or sales tax) you're basically paying about $200 for WarFactory to build it for you. To me that seems fairly reasonable; the company is still cutting a profit but not an obscene one, and you're basically paying for a lifetime service plan for the computer. Compare that to paying $300 to Best Buy for one of their insane extended warranties and it seems like a much better deal.
At this point the proof is really in the pudding, so to speak. The thermals for the Sentinel are frankly outstanding; even the graphics card isn't hitting 60C. It's a welcome change of pace, especially when you realize the Sentinel runs very quietly. Outside of the Puget Systems builds and the Dell Precision, this is the quietest desktop I've tested and would be a fine choice for anyone who needs a powerful computer on a budget and doesn't want to have to worry about a jet turbine in their bedroom or office.
While AMD's chips do tend to be less power efficient than Intel's, it's basically a wash in power consumption. The Sentinel's idle consumption is still perfectly reasonable, while load consumption ranks among the lowest (thanks to the use of a single moderate GPU and lack of overclocking). Once you factor a decent video card into the equation, most of Intel's power savings evaporate.
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HangFire - Thursday, June 9, 2011 - link
Folks get so obsessed about the performance difference between Phenom II and i7 that they forget the biggest bottleneck in any system is spinning rust. For gaming systems this might be tolerated in lieu of a bigger video card, but if you want a balanced system and a responsive computer for all purposes, a small SSD makes a lot of sense.At home my personal/primary box is a 550BE unlocked/overclocked, but the real performance boost is when I put a 64GB C300 in as the Gentoo boot disk and moved the HDD to storage duties. It boots in seconds and builds packages in half the time. I have portage on HDD but do builds on ramdisk.
The difference in this system before & after is amazing, all for $99 (Shell Shocker special).
Also, no problems here with G.Skill.
Termie - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 - link
I'm curious why Dustin criticized the choice of G.Skill memory, instead of Corsair, Crucial, or Kingston. In my experience, G.Skill makes excellent RAM at competitive prices. My G.Skill has way more overclocking headroom than my similarly-rated Corsair, as well as better designed (shorter) heatsinks. At the same price, I'd always go G.Skill over Corsair, and wouldn't even consider Crucial or Kingston.Based on forum posts, I think most people would agree that G.Skill is a good choice.
Arbie - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 - link
We've got years of info and experience with these and they remain the high water mark in more than one way.Also, FYI, the correct saying is "The proof of the pudding is in the eating."
Thanks for an interesting review. I often wonder what I could get off the rack for right around this price point, in particular how well it would game and how hot & noisy it might be at low loads.
In comparison, the top-end boutique boxes are of little interest, because at those levels I would always build rather than buy. I usually don't even skim through such reviews.
L. - Friday, June 10, 2011 - link
Let's see, I just built a system for a guy, charged him 150 euros for config and tweaking (including OC'ing to max on air), and the result is 50 fps average in Metro (anand settings), 41 in Heaven Unigine, etc.And still, his machine cost him less than a grand, service included.
Oh and by the way, if you live in Europe where shipping is not too expensive, I can do it for you too -- think I got an account on them anandtech forums - name "morg."
This piece of crap should not exist, it costs a lot, it's made from the crappiest parts, come on a gtx 460 ? why not put an integrated Intel GMA ? - in all seriousness the build-makers there should've taken a 6870 or a 6950 -- hell that'd have made huge savings on the PSU/cooling side of things.
And COME ON, who the fuck wants to buy an AMD CPU today ???
There's that i5-2500k which Oc's (for me so far anyway) pretty easily to 5Ghz on air, it costs 280 bucks for mobo+cpu ... why would you go to that phenomcrap which is barely cheaper and totally underpowered (Ok, it's not an SLI you don't really need the horsepower -- until you're using the cpu for real).
DDR3-1333 ? hello ? we're in 2011 ?
The case is an ok-choice if you like toy-like pc's - otherwise antec 100 does exactly the same job while not looking like kiddie stuff.
Then let's see ... optical drive ?? I hate optical, but I have to admit this one is an ultra failure, when combo blu-ray readers /dvd writers cost 50 bucks ... lol
Oh and look at how cute they are, they put in an SSD !!! woot ... a goddamn 100 bucks SSD in a config where they wouldn't shell 175 bucks for a CPU or 200 bucks for a GPU ??
Seriously... and those people talk to gamers -- my ass.
Now I like your conclusion Mr. "IwroteTheArticle", but in all seriousness it's friggin off.
You said 250bucks on parts ? I can get an I5-2500k, all gigabyte, HD6950, etc. for 811 bucks. And this is not it, this is old crappy tech that just came out of the depths of their garage, the cpu is almost end-of-life, the ram is 2 years old...
But the most important is the following :
"
Between the reasonably smart component choices, the solid build quality, and the generally good value, I see no reason not to give the WarFactory Sentinel our recommendation.
"
Seriously, I know you don't know enough about hardware to do excellent reviews, and I really don't mind as you take into account other persons' sensibilities to price / pre-made and that stuff.
But honestly, the component choices is all shit except the box, nowhere close to an optimal perf/dollar build by any stretch.
I see every friggin reason to say this out loud : This build is a failure and a waste of money, it costs 300 bucks more than parts for my i5-2500k standard build, which I sell around 950 and which much more importantly, has two times the horsepower in CPU or GPU tasks -> yes I do get 50 fps avg in Metro2033 bench with your settings.
Said it before, will say it again, you want solid advice and conclusions, just ask me, but please stop spreading nonsense on a "respectable" informative website --
L. - Friday, June 10, 2011 - link
Oh and I forgot one thing, wanna spice up the deal ?For that same Target Price as the box here and say a 200 bucks service fee, I can give you another unlocked+Oc'd HD6950 to put in there ... you know have a setup that kills almost every boutique build except some extremely rare 5Ghz+ with OC gtx580 sli's in anything beyond 2560* -
And that's for the same price as the phenom-460-attic-build piece of crap presented here ...
molecriket - Friday, June 10, 2011 - link
Although Amd is behind the intel stuff there are reasons to go AMD. The first is the price, Amd beats all Intel prices. What do you want your computer to do? Probably no more than AMD does, so mabye you can save money.I always use Amd and my customers always thank me, I save 30 to 50% and it runs like a top and lasts longer.
We are at the point of price and not 10 ms. faster, not to mention reliability which AMD rules and I wait for Bulldozer.
Lasthitlarry - Sunday, June 12, 2011 - link
I've been looking around and I could be wrong, but there seems to be a misprint or something for the processor.AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition
(spec: 4x3.2GHz, 45nm, 6MB L3, 95W)
should either be the 945 with 3.0GHz cores or it should be pulling 125W, not 95W
I'm gonna lean towards 125W since the PSU is so beefy.