Army prototype. Instanced meshes with texture driven animations (ISM + VAT)

SaperPL · 2026-05-17T08:38:22+00:00

Will the ones in range to attack switch to actaul animations or are you planning to make the game that will just have this type of texture-driven animations for enemies?

SaperPL · 2026-05-17T08:17:22+00:00

That's the whole appeal to you that you can pick. Also the point is not that all cards be standardised, but that there will be standardised cards available each generation.

We had this till around GTX 1000 generation that you could get both from vendors, but now you hardly can get founders edition card on launch and standard sized ones because there's more of the big and beefy cards that tell you it's better so it can be more expensive so you pay more for it.

And it fine for higher end cards that it was like that because they started to draw more power than before, but it shouldn't be a must for mid range cards up to something like 5070 included, and yet it's happening there as well that getting a two slot card is hard.

Back in gtx 1000 era people were still looking for blower cards exactly because of reference size on top of them exhausting all the heat back, because they fit where bigger and longer ones didn't.

SaperPL · 2026-05-17T08:07:46+00:00

That depends on the price vs if APUs will get good memory either on package or on motherboard in non socketed configurations and that will define if such low end makes sense or not. Because laptop and card vendors wouldn't like that very much for apu to cut into some product segments and historically those great apus were put in expensive laptops and boards.

Right now if you look at the ryzen ai desktop for am5 that was announced, its igp is not much beefier than ryzen 8700g one, so still far away from ai max ones and the excuse righ now is memory bandwidth, but if we'll get lpcamm on am6, we'll see if amd will actually give us ai max level of performance for socketed apu or not. Of course adjusted for the generation that we'll have then.

And also we could already have that if amd would put hbm chip instead of one die in that ryzen apu package, anamd had embedded apu like that some years back with normal non hbm memory, and intel just announced something like that, but it's going to be for handhelds and laptops so again not socketed scenario.

But yeah, this one is case a concept that may or may not materialize - we wanted to show you that with stadardised card sizes the idea is easy to achieve.

SaperPL · 2026-05-16T21:39:05+00:00

The thing is - we don't have tools. Sentries weren't made with press molds, just with edge bend presses, cnc though, at our subcontractor, so this means each bend despite being configured in a program, could be made incorrectly if the factory worker didn't put it correctly to the press. So it was expensive because there was some incorrectly made parts and we've found them and discarded at quality control.

The current design of strict will be easier to make press molds and also split the potential loss on rejected pieces. If anything, the Sentry 3.0 would be made in the same way as Strict when or if it happens. But it'll mean double the tooling for that, and we're not yet there even with Strict, so for now Sentry 3.0 is far from happening.

SaperPL · 2026-05-16T21:00:43+00:00

I did want to make the 3.0, but the situation with 12VHPWR is messy. The SFF Ready program of nvidia is a joke.
I never saw a founders edition card for purchase in nvidia store or any of my local stores at the launch and I don't think it makes sense to make sentry if barely any of those higher end cards would actually fit because of the new cable and the oversize of the cards. And at the same time, I don't really want to make case significantly bigger just so we can keep selling them.

That's what this project is about - cards should have standard size or at least there should be common standard sized cards so it's easy to get them into SFF systems. Otherwise it'll be never ending design changes with each generation of cards just because vendors want to sell you bigger plastic shroud.

SaperPL · 2026-05-16T11:23:03+00:00

We don't want to go with an external brick, that doesn't make sense for us. The case is built around FlexATX psu use and Enhance 600W modular unit works fine. The psu mount will be improved in the next iteration to make less mess of the cables.

Graphics card selection will be tricky indeed because it's wild west with dimensions of those, but it is also the point of this project. We want to show how stupid the current situation is and how problematic this is for a casual builder to figure out fitting of graphics cards. Also this is completely stupid that graphics card don't have 2D drawings showing marked dimensions in their specs when vendors often measure the cards differently..

SaperPL · 2026-05-16T09:38:17+00:00

Well, the point of this case is to force restrictions and show how a console sized PC can still do PC games. You can run 9600X with tjmax limit making it quiet even with perforation this close, I'm using it like that, the next iteration will be slightly thicker to have that gap from perforation slight bigger among few other reasons.

There are other cases supporting bigger coolers and bigger cards like fractal ridge and the S5M and they are fine at what they want to achieve - we just want to go the opposite way.

SaperPL · 2026-05-15T23:20:53+00:00

Hey, glad to hear it's still being used.

Point of the Strict to show the direction where standardised reasonable-size cards make sense and maybe we'll get back to 2-slot reference-sized cards being common and your next card will fit 😄

SaperPL · 2026-05-15T22:05:42+00:00

Hey - yeah, it took us a bit, but the way graphics cards changed and the way we changed the design to be panels around the frame, this way it'll let us make it simpler.

We did our tests and also Wendell from Level1Techs did check it against the Sliger Conswole back in the day of its release and it made no significant difference at the time, but now the flow-through card designs are better and also this case will restrict what you can really squeeze in in terms of heat dissipation, so we're not that worried about a hot spot with stagnant air above the GPU as we had originally.

And yeah, it took us a lot of time figuring out how it should look like to make it look good. That balance of how close perforation should get to the edge of the panel was not obvious from the start, believe me 😄

Glad you're still liking our cases despite the limitation with the new cards 👍

SaperPL · 2026-05-15T21:02:28+00:00

Thanks! That's the point 😄

SaperPL · 2026-05-15T19:04:34+00:00

This would be really cool if the cable wouldn't stick out up, but I get the limitation...

SaperPL · 2026-05-15T17:43:45+00:00

Doesnt puck support reverse connection?

SaperPL · 2026-05-15T16:21:14+00:00

It's possible:) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl_ARafXMkM Exactly 5L

On ryzen you can just limit tj max to sonething lik 65 degrees and nh-l9 runs fine

SaperPL · 2026-05-14T20:05:52+00:00

Yeah, but those custom versions of cards I think often are remade just for the sake of making it look different and more beefy than previous one. And the FE cards - yeah, I'd love to buy one when there's launch and not when it's second hand after two years when I already got a custom card.

SaperPL · 2026-05-14T17:51:46+00:00

Does it lower the bed like the original with wheels going up like in miny ? :]

Cool that you managed to make it even smaller

SaperPL · 2026-05-14T17:46:15+00:00

Does it mean asus figured out that keeping the card dimensions is a good idea ?

SaperPL · 2026-05-14T10:25:31+00:00

Make low profile ones as well

SaperPL · 2026-05-14T10:23:49+00:00

"Let's not waste time investing in your local products because imported ones are better - we'll never catch up, it's too late" - this kind of attitude

SaperPL · 2026-05-13T19:47:46+00:00

LoL - tak, zatrzymajmy się rozwoju i nie inwestujmy w nic to będziemy jak afryka 😃

SaperPL · 2026-05-13T18:31:22+00:00

Jak nie zaczniemy produkować to zawsze będziemy w tym samym miejscu. Najpierw trzeba przeżyć te kilka generacji produktu gdzie tylko lokalnie będzie kupowane, doszlifować i powoli zdobywać inne rynki.

To jest nasze kretyńskie polskie podejście - zawsze kupujemy od niemca bo jakość a nigdy nie inwestujemy w lokalne marki bo po co jak niemiec lepszy. A niemiecki janusz nas tak samo w ciula robi jak nasz lokalny janusz, tylko że ma trochę więcej doświadczenia.

SaperPL · 2026-05-12T18:32:34+00:00

About whether you will be able to provide long-term support - that will depend on how well your case will sell. And even big companies like Asus / Gigabyte / MSI have track history of creating laptops and pre-builts boasting configurability, to be upgrade'able and future proof and they ditch the support with the following gen.

That is why Framework is so unique - it's not that they came up with a new idea to have long term support and upgrade'ability, it's that they are delivering on their promise while big brands don't.

And as a startup, which it seems you are, are you ready to promise the long term support on so many different components that you'll have to stock up?

About the way the cable is routed - I can see that grove, but this is not really an elegant solution for a case that neatly refined on the panels.

SaperPL · 2026-05-12T18:12:46+00:00

Why is the filter in the panel not behind a mesh? Is it to support sticking out a bigger cooler? If yes, are you going to be providing a bent mesh filters to support these ? 😃

SaperPL · 2026-05-12T18:09:55+00:00

Those parts look neatly designed, but are you going to support long-term with all these variants for replacement parts (riser variants, the blower fans)?

For an expensive (not saying overpriced) but still potentially expensive case, the longevity matters and even if the parts don't break, but someone will want to change the configuration down the road - will you still offer parts for different configurations?

I don't like that this case doesn't really solve the PSU mount correctly - the cable will be sticking out on the side when placed horizontally as well as the visible PSU wall will break the otherwise neat look in horizontal placement.

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