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
Conclusion: Thermal Performance at Any Cost
The brute force approach to cooling that Rosewill has taken with the Blackhawk Ultra case is almost kind of awe inspiring. They've essentially thrown so many fans at the cooling problem and offered such flexibility in arranging the cooling system that it's hard to really beat them on that front. This case moves a tremendous amount of air, and when you install a very high end system in it, the power of all of those fans becomes apparent.
I also have to credit Rosewill for producing a case that's actually pretty conservative in a lot of the right ways. The things you'd expect to be really obnoxious turn out to be less so: the red LEDs in the fans are actually pretty muted, and for having eight fans with no throttle, the Blackhawk Ultra could've been a lot noisier. If you want to see how cooling can go horribly wrong, go back and look at the Cubitek HPTX ICE's results. They also know how big their case is, and amusingly enough, they include casters you can install in the bottom of the case so you can roll your giant computing beast wherever you need to.
.jpg)
So if the Blackhawk Ultra is nigh unstoppable on the thermal front, why doesn't it get a glowing recommendation? For starters, it may be quieter than I expected, but that doesn't mean it's actually quiet. That wouldn't be a problem if the case was competing in the same market the Thor v2 does, but it's not. My mantra has been that once you get past $150 you should be expecting both excellent thermals and great acoustics, not one or the other. You're paying the premium so you don't have to choose. The lack of fan filters also means the Blackhawk Ultra is going to be high maintenance.
There are really a couple of flies in the ointment here. First, unless you need the form factors the Blackhawk Ultra supports (or you really want to be able to roll your case around), the case is essentially beaten on two fronts. You can get basically the same case, but cheaper and in some ways better, by buying Rosewill's own Thor v2 for $40-$50 less (ignoring frequent discounts from sales.) At the same price point, the Blackhawk Ultra is hanging out in the same neighborhood as NZXT's Phantom 630, and outside of a couple of degrees of raw thermal performance, the 630 is in most ways a superior case. Even with its fans turned all the way up, it's measurably quieter than Rosewill's case.
Ultimately I can see why the Blackhawk Ultra is selling well and reviewing well. Users who want a beefy rig for a decent price will take one look at the brute force cooling of this case and click "Add to Cart," and when they get it, by and large they probably won't be disappointed. Yet this is precisely why comparative reviews are important; the Rosewill Blackhawk Ultra looks fantastic on paper, but there are demonstrably better cases out there.
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.