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Testing Methods, Results And Final Analysis
In spite of any installation woes, the finished product looks great! FYI, the grey reflections are cast by the table it’s sitting on, and the off-white reflection is from a light under that table.
Great looks and photographic augmentations aside, we really want to see how Rosewill’s Cullinan compares to other cases. To the point, I found two vastly different cases of similar size with which to compare the excellence of its glass panels and the inconvenience of its riveted-in power supply shroud/drive cage.
Test hardware and methods remain consistent from the earlier review, and have been kept that way for over a year so that readers can compare data from any of our recently-tested mid-towers and full-towers.
Test Results
Similarities between Cullinan and Z9 Neo temperatures can probably be attributed to fan arrangement. The Z9 Neo may be cheaper, but it does have one more (low-cost, non-controllable) fan.
The Cullinan’s fans aren’t exactly quiet, either. Its tempered glass side panels do a fairly good job of blocking in graphics noise, but so does the Z9 Neo’s plastic panel.
Focusing on performance similarities between the Cullinan and Z9 Neo hasn’t put much light on Enthoo Evolve ATX Tempered Glass performance, but we can see in the cooling-to-noise chart that its lower average temperatures and similar average noise levels produce a far better overall performance profile.
Rosewill quotes a Newegg price of $150 for the Cullinan, where the Enthoo Evolv ATX TG sells for around $40 more. The 27% additional cost can’t be offset by a 12% gain in overall performance, so the Cullinan takes the value lead between the two tempered-glass cases. The Z9 Neo, being a far cheaper case with plastic and steel panels, isn’t competing for the same buyers and was only included because of similarities in both size and internal construction.
That last part puts Rosewill in a bit of a bind. While the Cullinan has some high-end features such as the tempered glass side panels, front panel glass insert, better fans, and better port selection, it still has a few design and manufacturing shortcuts that let us know it’s not a complete contender for the tempered glass version of the Enthoo Evolv ATX. For example, I really despised the abuse I had to put my graphics card through to get it past the small opening for its screw tab. I reached maximum frustration after forgetting to add an ATA power cable to my power supply, since there isn’t enough room inside the riveted-on power supply shroud to fit my hand in and insert the cable end. I even had to ditch one of the case’s SATA trays just to make room for the EPS12V cable. While any of these flaws may have been mere annoyances on a case half its price, each of these are potential deal-killers in the high-end market.
And then there’s the missing eighth slot. It’s even missing from the more ergonomically-designed Enthoo Evolv ATX. We all know why some high-end system builders might need it, and that case makers consistently give us additional mounting space in the other direction because motherboard manufacturers keep labeling 10.6”-deep boards as EATX (13”) rather than XL-ATX (which requires an eighth slot). A case manufacturer could indulge a few extreme builders by adding that slot to its EATX designs, but even that wouldn’t have been a big enough move to mitigate all of the Cullinan’s other hardware installation difficulties.
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