Rosewill Armor EVO Case Review: Sometimes Performance Isn't Everything
by Dustin Sklavos on January 23, 2013 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Rosewill
- ATX
- E-ATX
Noise and Thermal Testing, Overclocked
Since Rosewill's Armor EVO is obviously more than a match for the stock testbed, overclocked and overvolted components would seem to be the order of the day. Again, though, expect pretty much the same results as before: a case that runs cooler than Antec's class leading Eleven Hundred, but also runs louder in the process. We're talking about two 120mm fans and a 230mm fan pulling intake duty and three 120mm fans handling exhaust. The 230mm fan, in particular, is blowing directly on to the GPU.
Ambient temperature remains roughly the same at ~21C.
The Armor EVO's thermal performance continues to be pretty tough to beat. You'd really have to go past the $150 price point to find cases that can compete with it (outside of the Eleven Hundred), and even then you're talking about performance roughly on par with lower noise levels.
The astonishingly low temperatures of the CPU cores keep the CPU fan from having to ever reach its inflection point, where it starts having to go full bore. GPU fan speed is also ridiculously low.
Idle noise on the Armor EVO is a bitter pill, but the stellar airflow keeps load noise from being too much of a menace, and it sweeps the Eleven Hundred. The Armor EVO does such a good job of keeping the components cool that the heatsink fans just never have to spin up that far.
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1d107 - Thursday, January 24, 2013 - link
Completely agree. In older days I tested an Antec P-180 with a 130W Core-i7 and didn't find any advantages of having the top fan. And now, when CPUs have lower TDPs, this becomes even less relevant.But, mot of all, this case looks plain ugly on the outside. Look at all those unused mounting holes on the side panel. Even the most hidden corner of my closet doesn't deserve this.
Galatian - Thursday, January 24, 2013 - link
Actually you are missing the point of the opening. It is (at least for some persons) the best spot to put in the radiator in their water cooling loop. And I believe people who buy cases with as many fan screw holes as this are usually the market demography this case is designed for. A complete silent freak (who doesn't use watercooling) will probably just get a smaller case with noise insulation.WeaselITB - Wednesday, January 23, 2013 - link
I don't understand the slight against this case (and others) for lack of a fan controller. Sure, back in the day when motherboards had 1 fan plug for your CPU (if you were lucky), I could understand, but doesn't everyone just plug the fans into the motherboard and let the automatic thermal monitoring control them? It seems odd to ding the case for not including a fan controller, but then ding the motherboard for not having enough fan plugs on the board (which has happened in other reviews).Which is it?
-Weasel
chaos215bar2 - Wednesday, January 23, 2013 - link
This is pretty much what I thought. I have no interest in a manual fan controller, builtin or otherwise. The inclusion of one is actually a drawback, since it wastes space with controls that I don't want or need.There's definitely room for a case to do something really innovative in this area, but until that happens, I'll either use the motherboard's builtin thermal controls or, if there aren't enough headers, I'll use one of the various third party options. That way I end up with a system that doesn't need any manual intervention for thermal control and has exactly the features and behavior that I want.
Onus - Wednesday, January 23, 2013 - link
I also agree with this. Furthermore, sometimes proprietary fans are used, for example Antec's, with the HL (or HML) switches.Although I've been satisfied with all of the Rosewill cases I've used so far, that top fan problem looks like a dealbreaker on this one.
dtolios - Wednesday, January 23, 2013 - link
I agree that the manual fun controller is kinda outdated. I would prefer a smart placed pwm splitter with aux power supplied directly through the psu. Long cabling and sharing a "fan xpert" or equiv smart fan header with more than one fan is more than enough. Imhoezekiel68 - Thursday, January 24, 2013 - link
It's good that you pointed out the top grommet flaw, but I'm not sure it's fatal. Most radiator designs have the screws pointing into the case with the screw heads on the exterior. Knowing the grommets could come loose, a simple set of four (slightly) larger black washers could be used to ensure a cooling unit would not fall in.Should this be necessary? No, of course not. Rosewill should certainly address the issue. But, given the other pluses of the case, it's worth noting there is an easy work-around.
ol1bit - Friday, January 25, 2013 - link
Wow,I must have missed that info in the past. Interesting it is a New Egg brand.
Mike89 - Friday, September 13, 2013 - link
Looks like a pretty nice case to me. The way the sides connect are no issue to me, I've had a lot of them and they are no problem to open and close (I think the reviewer made too big a deal out of that). What's attractive to me is the extended side and top for more room inside the case and I think it looks good. Another really good thing is all fan's are included. You hardly ever see that in any case even the expensive ones. Adding a fan controller would be a cheap and easy thing to do here. The price is about $100 now so I think it's a pretty good deal. I think the reviewer should spend less time on cooling comparisons and more on the case itself. This review didn't even pop off the front to show the fans. I personally could care less about cooling comparisons and skip them when I'm reading about a case. I mean with front, rear, side and top fans I already know what the airflow and cooling is going to be like. Thought this review could have been more thorough.