The new ProArt line from ASUS is a Content
Creator's dream and this PC case is no exception. Especially if you're not a fan of RGB, which I
know I know there are a few of you out there. This is the ProArt PA 602 and to say that
this case already has some big fans would be an understatement. From its intentionally subtle
branding to the stealthy design there is a lot to love about this PC case and we're going to check
it out right here right now on Robeytech. We build a lot of systems around here at Robeytech and Asus
components have been a staple since well since we started building PCS and to be clear they make
a lot of PC parts and when it comes to style Asus pretty much has a brand for everyone. ROG for the
over clockers, Epic Gamers, and RGB enthusiasts. TUF Gaming for ruggedly built kit with military style
designs for casual gamers, Prime for the all-around user who loves a clean aesthetic and finally ProArt.
A brand emphasizing minimalistic design to strip away distractions for those who create.
We've been watching each of these Brands grow, but it's cool to watch the ProArt line become a
more full-fledged brand with monitors, motherboards, graphics cards, chassis, coolers, and also laptops. I
guess that's that's a full-fed brand at that point in time. We just finished building a $2,600 ProArt
Creator PC, which you can watch right after this video or just pop over right here and it all
took place inside of the ProArt PA 602. Let's take a look at it in more detail. As far as Dimensions
go the PA 602 is about 9.62 in or 245 mm wide, 23.35 in or 593 mm tall, and about 22 in or 56o mm deep. In other words this a pretty big case. And it's hefty too. I fact i mean I was listening to Byran to carry it up the stairs and he sounded like a power lifter. It's 35 lbs or 15.8 kg hefty. For context that about the same weight as a toddler's bike or fully grown beagle though more cumbersome to carry and not as fun to pet. That's the Beagle not the bike. For case IO and controls this has two USB 3.2 gen 1 ports, two
usb2 ports, One USB type-c port as well as power and reset buttons with a Nifty lock for the power button so no one accidentally shuts off your PC during the middle of a massive rendering project. Brian have you ever have you ever had that happen like your toe just? Oh really okay so the lock would actually be helpful huh. Oh he's he's smiling look at that. Not only that there is a switch
here for fan speed and control. This is actually a really neat feature if you need an extra burst of cooling during a rendering session without having to play around with any software whatsoever. Now the PA 602 has a toolless design, which we'll cover a bit later. It's a giant open grill with a dust filter that tells you when it needs to be cleaned. It's wild. It's got like an IR sensor on it that
detects dust and yells at you, like hey dude I'm kind of filthy over here want to do something like
that. It's it's not my voice though it's actually no it's just an LED, but the point is it says hey
I need to be clean. Now this case comes in one color and you know what that's kind of okay. It's
stealthy black and it retails for $269.99 and did I mention that it has wheels, but the ProArt PA 602
supports micro atx, Mini ITX, mini DTX, DTX and ATX motherboards as well as eatx motherboards under
277 mm or 10.9 in wide. You know what honestly that's a lot of x's I just went through those
X's super fast. As for GPUs the PA 602 supports GPUs up to 450 mm or 17.7 in in length. If you're
sticking with the Asus line of ProArt GPUs this is great news, because with that clearance the PA
602 can fit the ProArt GeForce RTX 4080 OC with no trouble whatsoever and the fact is you can stack
them. So it can do two if you use the matching z790 motherboard. As for fan support this case has some
big ones, big fans that is. Now in the front of the PA 602 to there are two 200 mm fans. They don't have
RGB, which is kind of the point of ProArt, but you can replace them with ones that do, but dang I just
cannot get over how huge they are. At the top the PA 602 can support either 3 120 mm or 140 mm fans
and either 120 or 140 mm fans in the back, which I'm super happy when you can do 420 at the top and
140 in the back. Much like the front of the case the PA 602 comes with 140 mm fan pre-installed in
the back of the case, which you see you're going to see some uh some coolness a little later on to
see how that works. As for CPU coolers Asus gave us 190 mm of clearance for air coolers, which we're
pretty sure would be supported with enough airflow, but you know what we'll be doing that in a
video later with you know another time. However if you consider the Fractal Torrent and the fact that
we did an air cooled 13900 K build well that should tell you something. If you were looking to mount an
AIO in the PA 602 you are limited to mounting the radiator at the top of the case, but we wouldn't
call the capacity to mount a 420 mm radiator very limiting. As for PSU support Asus does go a
little meager on the length of the ATX PSUs it can accommodate. The PA 602 can only handle PSUs up
to 190 mm in length. To be fair PSUs like the Asus TUF Gaming 1000 watt gold PSU will fit just fine,
but the Asus PSU named after the God of Thunder might have a tighter fit in there if you keep the
hard drive mounts. Now if you take the hard drive mounts out and all that sort of stuff it becomes
a different story. This case speaking of hard drives can support four 2 and 1/2 in drives and
there are four combo Bays that can support up to four 3 and 1/2 in or 2 and 1/2 in drives. This
is great if you need cold storage and access to massive files. In the Creator World they still use
3 and 1/2 in and 2 and 1/2 in drives. So yeah it's still a thing. We're going to do something here
that I have been itching to do for a while. We're going to use the smoke Genie for visualization so
you can see intake via those dual 200 mm fans. With the top fan feeding the ProArt LC 420 and the
bottom fan feeding that ProArt 4060 TI that we did in our showcase build. For exhaust we have
the 140 mm fan in the rear as well as the 420 mm AIO at the top and they are actually getting a
little bit of special help from this very special exhaust Port which you can't see here, because we
took the tempered glass off, that helps alleviate the positive pressure situation we have inside of
this case. This positive pressure situation though is great for dust control and also keeping the
heat not trapped inside of the case. Now if you do want to do more than just get hot air then
go ahead and slap the Subscribe button whip that like button and ring the notification Bell so you
can get notifications each and every time we post content like this, which is not full of hot air
right here on Robeytech. Okay let's talk about thermals, which is very exciting for me, because
they have those massive tracks of land. Those 200 mm fans in the front. Now if you watch the live
stream, which you should check out, we tested a bunch of different power settings, including things
like multi-core enhancement, Asus AI overclocking, as well as we just tested it with basically the stock
Intel settings. Not only that we tested the ProArt lc42 mm AIO, which is absolutely Bonkers and we're
going to have a review on later on in the new year, but for this video though we configure things with
the same parts we usually test with and all the details for that are down in the description below
and on the graphs if you want more information. While idling the PA 602 averaged 28° C on the CPU
and 31° C on the GPU. Those numbers position the ProArt near the Lian Li Evo RGB and NZXT's H6
Flow. Not a bad pair to be hanging out with by the way. Under full CPU load the PA 602, which surprised
me was a bit on the warmer side of the playground with the CPU Temps at 75° and the GPU Temps at 28.
Comparatively that puts the PA 602 close company with the NZXT H9 Flow. These two cases have nearly
identical scores so much so that everyone else on the playground kept calling them by each other's
names, like hey H9 oh I'm sorry I meant PA 602. As for our 1440p gaming benchmarks the ProArt PA
602 showed that this workstation could still hang in the top three for our leaderboards when
gaming with CPU attempts at 45° C and GPU thermal performance averaging 58° C. The PA 602 CPU temps
were 1° greater than the NZXT H6 flow. GPU temps were 1° c lower. Let's take a few minutes and
talk about the build experience inside of the PA 602 as well as some things that are worth
pointing out. Listen I'm going to tell you up front there is a lot that we love about this case
and a lot that leaves us feeling like this case still needs a bit more time in the oven to bake.
This is definitely a V1, but it is a dang good V1. When it comes to Case Prep the PA 602 is like one
of those dreams that is most good, but takes some weird turns, like you're on a Groove, but you're
also dancing on bacon. It's pretty simple to get inside the PA 602. It has buttons on the back
for popping off both the side and top panels and then once you're inside the the front cover
has these two latches up at the front that let you flip it open and voila. Now there were a few
places that had a couple screws holding things in place, but they were like hidden and behind like
magnetic plates, which is like what the heck Asus I'm building a PC not playing where's Waldo
and we're specifically talking about the AIO. Since we're talking about disassembly I do have to
point out the front cover here. I know we mentioned the dust filter, which is super cool, but you know
what I'm just going to show it. It's branded. Look you can see the ProArt written inside of it. It's,
it's, it's cool, but it's super subtle and we also have to point out the vents in the glass side
panel again. We loved seeing this especially if you're going to go vertically mount your GPU. It's,
it's a very thoughtful design and you got to see with the smoke earlier how it affects ventilation
even if you just normally mount your GPU. What is also thoughtful is the present of a built-in GPU
sag bracket and it's also you know what honestly it looks really good. This thing is really well
reinforced and if you're going to slap in that Asus ProArt RTX 4080 overclock GPU in here
the PA 602 can help it from dropping. Dropping like it's hot or dropping like it's not hot
cuz you don't want a hot GPU. When we pop into the back of the case we found some really really
nice tie downs for cable management as well as that powered Fan Hub located near the top of the
case. We do wish the SATA power cable was just a touch longer, because it doesn't really reach close
enough to the drive Baye to daisy chain very well and the other two is make sure you look for it. We
actually got the whole build done and turned it on and realized we hadn't even plugged it in, because
it was hidden behind one of those cable ties in the back. Now I'm going to sound salty here for
a moment, but I promise I'm not trying to go ham here for the sake of reaction or likes we just ran
into a few issues that left us wondering if Asus designed their ProArt line to work or if these
parts were created in isolation from one another. In our showcase build we used ProArt Parts, GPU,
motherboard and AIO and a couple of the parts struggled to fit in the case well. Let's start
with the AO and the top mounting bracket. Using the ProArt LC 420 mm AIO we struggled to hide
our fan cables. Remember, remember this is part of the PA 602 bread and butter. Big fans bigger
AIOs maximum cooling, but when it came to running the fan cables they didn't give us any place to
actually run them. So if you just kind of hang them had them hanging down there haphazardly they were
showing in the front of the case from with inside the case. Now we were using the Asus ProArt 420
mm AIO so there just wasn't a whole lot of wriggle room. However with enough tenacity and a little
bit of bacon grease from that dream we managed to find a pathway to run our cables through the
front to the mess of wires near the front of the case. Once we did figure out how to get everything
installed properly and cable management there was a little metal piece from the bracket that didn't
go back into the case very well and that was in the back. We're talking about it was hidden it's
just kind of or it's kind of weird. We, we no matter how we oriented it we couldn't actually get it
back with the 420 mm AIO. The other thing I also wanted to mention is there's a place in the back
of the case where there's like a little cover that you had to kind of run cables through, but it was
just just big enough for the cables that already came through the case and because of the lip in
the front it made it really difficult to actually close in addition. It took me almost 5 minutes
to get my cases stuff if you check it out right there from the live stream. Speaking of frustration
the last little bit is the USB 3 header was super challenging to route in a way that worked with the
ProArt z790 motherboard, because there was actually a metal support bracket for the entire case that
was in the way. We ended up wrangling it in place, but you have to be really careful to keep it from
like un locking out. Now this is going to be very motherboard specific and this is only an issue if
you have a motherboard that does side mounting for the USB 3 header, which in our case was the ProArt
z790 board that I mentioned, which is odd, because you think that'd be the one that would fit the
best given they're both ProArt pieces. Now the last thing we're going to talk about is the PA 602
has a three- slot latching mechanism that offers another securing point for your GPU, but the weird
part about this is that those slots don't line up with most motherboards including the ProArt
z790 motherboard. You get access to two slots at best before having to move down the pcie covers.
This wasn't as big of a deal since we were using a two slot ProArt 4060 TI, but if you wanted to build
with like a three slot GPU, like the any of the RTX 4090s it would be an odd fit. If it fit at all. Like
we said earlier it just feels like one of those parts that we designing a vacuum and we're kind
of bummed in terms of how it works. Listen we don't want to dissuade you from considering this case,
but we also want to make sure you're aware of the quirks and potential got yas should you decide to
plan a build inside of it. Now if you happen to see our short on the PA 602 before watching this video
we really do mean what we said in that this case has so many amazing features that it offers for
workstation builds and Gamers who don't like RGB. If that's you and you're building a workstation
PC for Content creation or for heavy computational loads this case really is a compelling one to
consider or if you just don't like RGB. I know I hate saying that, but it like hurts my soul a
little Bryan. I know that it may sound like we're being hard on this case, but we actually know what
Asus is capable of and we've seen the iterations one a great example is the iterations of the
Hyperion. So the V1 is great, but we know what V2 will be and we know what they're capable of
achieving. This case just out of the gate just fell a bit shy of what we know that they're capable
of doing. Now as we wrap this up these are our impressions of the Asus Pro PA 602, but you know
what we want to know what you think. What would you build in this RGB list PC case? Do the pro features
outweigh the cons and the quirks? And let us know all of that down in the comments below. Now while
you're down there go ahead and slap that subscribe button whip that like button and ring that
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here in Robeytech. Also if you have questions or you want to discuss this case further join us over
at discord.gg/Robeytech where you know what you can talk to lots of tech-minded folks and maybe
make a friend. Thanks so much for watching this video follow me @RobeyTech absolutely everywhere
and we look forward to seeing you on the next one.
