WarFactory Sentinel: Gaming on a Grand
by Dustin Sklavos on June 8, 2011 12:01 AM ESTConclusion: A Smart Buy
WarFactory had to have been feeling pretty good about themselves when they sent the Sentinel along, because this is the kind of build I really like to see: performance, price, and value all line up beautifully. Noise is nonexistent, power consumption is low, and there are virtually no cut corners.
If we sit down and really analyze the component choices, there are very few changes I'd personally make to the build. I think the 650-watt power supply is a bit overkill and there's a strong tendency in both enthusiasts and the industry to put vastly more powerful power supplies into systems than are really needed even for long term use. The fact is, though, quality power supplies under 400 or even 500 watts are actually fairly rarefied. For future-proofing I'd probably go with a 500 watt myself, but we're splitting hairs here. The other changes I'd make are the RAM and the hard drive, but again, these are minor quibbles and almost boil down to personal preference.
From a pure financial standpoint, it would cost the end user about $250 less to build the same machine themselves using off the shelf parts. If we assume WarFactory is getting decent deals from vendors, they're maybe making about $300 at most per build. That's not offensive, and in exchange you get personalized customer support for the lifetime of the computer or the boutique. I think that's a very fair deal, and one I'd personally go for before buying an extended warranty from Best Buy.
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. If you don't need need the warranty, you could save some money (or upgrade a few components), but looking at find similar systems from other vendors won't save you much—iBUYPOWER for instance came to around $1142 while CyberPowerPC checks in at $1110 (with minor differences in component choices).
While this is a solid offering, Llano is just over the horizon and is likely worth waiting another month to see how things shake out. We'll also see if the other vendors can equal or surpass the Sentinel. There are two main reasons we're withholding an Editors' Choice award. The first is that WarFactory just hasn't been around long enough for us to know they'll be here in five or ten years; they have a decent looking site and mission statement, but they're only two years old. The other reason is that while pricing is competitive, when you can assemble the same system for $849 from Newegg you're looking at a 25% markup. It's a reasonable deal considering the warranty, but you might also consider pre-configured systems like this, this, or this—in other words, you can get similar or better performance at lower prices and still have money left for a decent SSD (or a 2-year extended warranty).
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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.