Rosewill Blackhawk Ultra Case Review: Were It Not For Competition
by Dustin Sklavos on March 28, 2013 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Rosewill
- HPTX
- ATX
- XL-ATX
Testing Methodology
For testing full ATX cases, we use the following standardized testbed in stock and overclocked configurations to get a feel for how well the case handles heat and noise.
| ATX Test Configuration | |
| CPU |
Intel Core i7-2700K (95W TDP, tested at stock speed and overclocked to 4.3GHz @ 1.38V) |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD4H |
| Graphics Card |
ASUS GeForce GTX 560 Ti DCII TOP (tested at stock speed and overclocked to 1GHz/overvolted to 1.13V) 2x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 in SLI (full fat testing only) |
| Memory | 2x2GB Crucial Ballistix Smart Tracer DDR3-1600 |
| Drives |
Kingston SSDNow V+ 100 64GB SSD Samsung 5.25" BD-ROM/DVDRW Drive 3x HGST DeskStar 3TB 7200-RPM HDD |
| CPU Cooler | Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo with Cooler Master ThermalFusion 400 |
| Power Supply | SilverStone Strider Plus 1000W 80 Plus Silver |
Each case is tested in a stock configuration and an overclocked configuration that generates substantially more heat (and thus may produce more noise). The system is powered on and left idle for fifteen minutes, the thermal and acoustic results recorded, and then stressed by running seven threads in Prime95 (in-place large FFTs) on the CPU and OC Scanner (maximum load) on the GPU. At the end of fiteen minutes, thermal and acoustic results are recorded. This is done for the stock settings and for the overclock, and if the enclosure has a fan controller, these tests are repeated for each setting. Ambient temperature is also measured after the fifteen idle minutes but before the stress test and used to calculate the final reported results.
For the "full fat" testbed, the GTX 560 Ti is swapped out for a pair of GTX 580s, and three hard disks are added to fill out the case.
Thank You!
Before moving on, we'd like to thank the following vendors for providing us with the hardware used in our testbed.
- Thank you to Puget Systems for providing us with the Intel Core i7-2700K.
- Thank you to Gigabyte for providing us with the GA-Z77X-UD4H motherboard.
- Thank you to Crucial for providing us with the Ballistix Smart Tracer memory.
- Thank you to Cooler Master for providing us with the Hyper 212 Evo heatsink and fan unit.
- Thank you to Kingston for providing us with the SSDNow V+ 100 SSD.
- Thank you to CyberPower for providing us with the Samsung BD-ROM/DVD+/-RW drive.
- Thank you to HGST for providing us with the trio of hard drives.
- And thank you to SilverStone for providing us with the power supply.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
27 Comments
View All Comments
GUYFIERI - Thursday, March 28, 2013 - link
Whats wrong with the title?epoon2 - Thursday, March 28, 2013 - link
it's all in the last page:given the price, there are other products which optimized for both noise & cooling
lever_age - Thursday, March 28, 2013 - link
I wonder what that top middle fan mount does other than (1) ensure that a conspicuous meshed area has a fan behind it, (2) light up, and (3) steal air from the CPU cooler. Maybe it helps the graphics cards in some setups? Possibly? Or it's just the aesthetics and we-crammed-three-230mm-fans-in-a-case appeal.ShieTar - Thursday, March 28, 2013 - link
Not sure which one of the two you think is the "middle" one, but either way it is an exhaust fan. To take air away from the CPU cooler after it has been pushed through there and heated up is exactly what it is there for.DanNeely - Thursday, March 28, 2013 - link
I suspect it's the forward fan on the top (since there's a fair amount of case forward of it). As it is it's probably aimed toward maxing out total airflow.Having that much space to install fans OTOH does fit one major feature checkbox; it makes this one of the very few cases able to fit a 3x140mm radiator without being modded. The only others I know of are from MountainMods and CaseLabs; both of whose cases are significantly more expensive.
BMAN61 - Friday, March 29, 2013 - link
There are 2 other chassis with native support for a triple 140mm radiator; namely the NZXT Switch 810, and their other offering the Phantom 820.So no need to spend megabucks for a chassis from CaseLabs or Mountain Mods.
lever_age - Thursday, March 28, 2013 - link
Sorry, I meant the 230mm top fan (the one halfway between the front and back of the case, not the one toward the rear that's above the motherboard).With a typical ATX layout with say two 120mm / 140mm fan positions on top, it sometimes doesn't help (sometimes even hurts) to have the second one, the one towards the middle of the case. If used as exhaust, it takes air away from the intake of a side-blowing tower CPU cooler as we have here. If used as intake right next to the other top fan (and exhaust), that creates turbulence and doesn't work too well unless you actually add ducting to the CPU cooler intake.
Here, the position of the second top fan looks ridiculous because the two are so large. That said, because of the size of the case, distance to the CPU intake area is not that small. Having the mesh, cutout, and space for a 3x140mm radiator is nice, but that doesn't mean that putting a second fan there actually helps anything (other than arguably aesthetics and checkbox on the feature list, which would be my guess).
Seems like it could be a situation where marketing trumps engineering, which is what I was getting at. We have airflow for the sake of airflow, rather than directing air to useful places.
RosewillEye - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
One can never have too many fans.HobgoblinX - Thursday, March 28, 2013 - link
As usual, I really enjoy reading your reviews. Great detail. Great humor. I just have one question. Could you please re-test the Thor V2? You changed your test bed very shortly after reviewing the Thor V2, and it's a little frustrating to have a case referenced in numerous reviews that I cannot compare to the case under review because the Thor V2 has no compatible numbers.Ilias78 - Thursday, March 28, 2013 - link
And as always, Dustin complains about cable management. Yet he does the worst cable management in the business - regardless the case or the review.