Conclusion: Excellent Performance, Questionable Quality

Conclusion: Excellent Performance, Questionable Quality

I'll be clear: I don't expect the world of build quality from Rosewill's cases. These are as consumer grade as it gets, and corners must be cut. That's fine, I understand, and my expectations are adjusted accordingly. Parts of the case can look fairly chintzy (pretty much anything plastic), but basically, the case can serve its purpose.

It isn't a bad looking case, but where the Rosewill Armor EVO excels is in its thermal performance. There are very few other cases out there that move as much air as the Armor EVO does, and odds are you're going to have to spend up to get to them. Can NZXT's Phantoms do it? Sure, if you've got an extra $60 or so to blow on one. The Antec Eleven Hundred comes close and costs slightly less, but it doesn't have as much thermal headroom as the Armor EVO does. All that, and the Armor EVO still manages to fit in a basic ATX mid tower footprint.

The problem is that there are a few flies in the ointment. At or around MSRP, the Armor EVO gets eaten alive by Rosewill's own Thor v2, a case that's built better and has been around for a while. The Thor v2 may be bigger, but it works, and it has built-in fan controllers, something the Armor EVO sorely lacks. As of this writing, you can actually get the Thor v2 for $25 less than the Armor EVO.

What we run into with the Armor EVO are two major problems: build quality is frustrating with the side panels but fatally flawed with the fan mounts in the top of the case. I shouldn't be able to simply pull the fans out like that, and they shouldn't fall out in transit. That tells me the case can't actually support any top-mounted radiators without risking having them fall onto the internal components and potentially break something. The other problem is the price tag. Rosewill is a house brand, and however much they may be expanding, they run into the same problem the bulk of the PC industry does: you can't charge Apple prices for Dell products. The Armor EVO needs to be $99 or better.

There's undoubtedly a good system to be made out of the Armor EVO, but I can't recommend it. Even if the noise isn't an issue to you, the questionable build quality and especially the falling fans make the case a very hard sell. If Rosewill fixes these problems in a revision and adds a fan controller, I'll be happy to recommend it. Until then, I'd stick with the tried and true Antec Eleven Hundred or go for Rosewill's own Thor v2.

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