Rosewill Throne Case Review
by Dustin Sklavos on August 2, 2013 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Rosewill
- ATX
- XL-ATX
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Rosewill's higher end enclosures seem to traditionally occupy a unique and special niche among their competitors: while their build quality may not quite be up to the level of competing cases, thermal performance tends to, if you'll pardon the expression, blow right past them. There are definitely tradeoffs to be made in the process, but beasts like the Thor v2 and Blackhawk Ultra provide borderline unparalleled thermals in their respective markets. If you're looking to build a beastly machine but want to save a few bucks on the case, there's a good chance Rosewill will have what you need.
That trend continues with the release of the Throne. First glimpsed at CES 2013, Rosewill's Throne comes with a tremendous amount of bells and whistles and like its predecessors, a price tag to match. We're still well into enthusiast case territory here and end users looking to save more scratch will probably want to keep sticking with the Thor v2, but at $159 (though currently out of stock at NewEgg), the Throne may be a case to shortlist for your next build.
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Unfortunately, this review does need to come with an advance warning. My case is a preproduction unit that doesn't have quite the fit and finish of units that are available in retail; alignment of optical drive bays with the fascia was off by about 2mm (you'll see later), and there was a short in the power button lead that created some problems during testing. Rosewill's reps confirmed the preproduction nature of my review case and none of their retail cases in-house had the same issues, and reviews of the case on NewEgg do corroborate their claims. If I were buying the Throne from NewEgg I might have a raised eyebrow, but honestly I'm confident those specific issues I ran into are going to be unique to this unit.
| Rosewill Throne Specifications | ||
| Motherboard Form Factor | Mini-ITX, Micro-ATX, ATX, SSI CEB, SSI EEB, XL-ATX, E-ATX | |
| Drive Bays | External | 3x 5.25" (includes one 5.25" to 3.5" converter) |
| Internal | 10x 2.5"/3.5" | |
| Cooling | Front | 2x 140mm intake fans (supports additional 2x 120mm/140mm fans internally behind drive cage) |
| Rear | 1x 140mm exhaust fan | |
| Top | 2x 140mm exhaust fans (supports 2x 120mm) | |
| Side | 1x 230mm intake fan (supports 4x 120mm) | |
| Bottom | 1x 120mm/140mm fan mount | |
| Expansion Slots | 10 | |
| I/O Port | 2x USB 3.0, 4x USB 2.0, 1x Headphone, 1x Mic, 1x 2.5"/3.5" hotswap bay | |
| Power Supply Size | ATX | |
| Clearances | HSF | 180mm |
| PSU | 330mm | |
| GPU | 330mm | |
| Dimensions |
9.14" x 22.84" x 21.89" 232mm x 580mm x 556mm |
|
| Special Features |
Supports 280mm radiator in top Dual 3-channel fan controllers Hotswap drive bay Toggleable red LED lighting for front fans Open-and-close top vent |
|
| Price | $159 | |
As far as features go, pretty much all the Throne is missing is an SD card reader, though I take some issue with the lack of filters on any of the fans but the bottom (where the only fan in most builds is going to be the one in the power supply). This isn't uncommon for Rosewill's cases but it's something that does need to be addressed; over time a Thor v2 will build up a tremendous amount of dust, and it stands to reason the same may happen with the Throne.
The Throne continues Rosewill's brute force approach to cooling, but the sliding fan controllers can at least take some of the edge off. Specific to Rosewill's beefier designs is the inclusion of a 230mm intake fan on the side panel; while I've sometimes waffled on the value of side intakes, it's pretty hard to ignore the positive impact one this massive can have.
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MiLuong - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
Ohh! I saw this case's debut at PAX, and it's actually really a cool case. It's very large, and offers plenty of room for a sweet liquid cooled system. They had it modded, and it looked slick. Even without liquid cooling, there is plenty of air circulation space in the Throne case - room for multiple graphics cards, plenty of power, good cable management, etc. Un-modded, I still think the design is sleek, but I guess that is all a matter of preference - some say it's ugly, some like it... opinion. Anyhow, great gaming case.As the article mentions, dust will be an issue with just about ANY case, and so it's up to the user to keep that clean. I've found it's a pretty simple case to blow out on occasion, and keep the dust down, but, like I said ~ ANY case is going to get dust.
Good Article. Thanks.
Spydermag68 - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
I just cannot get past the look of the front of the case. It just screams don't buy me.Bonesdad - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
Looks kinda Cylon to me..."Don't Buy Me!!!"...by your command.Subyman - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
I don't understand the market position. For people that need this large of a case for E-ATX, quad sli, with water-cooling, and so forth, they are already spending $3K+ on gear, so why save $50-100 on a case? It would be good for that anyway though, since it only supports one 280mm radiator. I see most people that purchase this case being the type that buy the biggest there is to put a standard ATX motherboard and one GPU in it, but bigger is better right?glugglug - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
I'm thinking of getting a case like this for my next build because it is going to have a slew of drives for use as a whole-home DVR. I'm thinking 4x4TB drives to start with (8TB storage with mirroring), plus boot SSD + blu-ray + SD card reader = half those drive bays filled immediately, good to have room to expand.Grok42 - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
Why would you want your main box to be your storage box? Build a dedicated server for file storage.ZPrime - Saturday, August 3, 2013 - link
You really don't need 8TB of storage for WHDVR unless you are basically recording everything on TV. I have a 3TB mirror (using a pair of WD Red) and Media Center tells me that using *most* of that 3TB (I think I have it leaving a few GB free), it's over 300 hours *of HD*.Unless you are just saving the crap forever... but at that point, you can move it off to a NAS, which you can keep in the basement/closet/other room, where heat and noise don't matter. For HTPC, the sweet spot is a smaller system that is as quiet as you can get it. I'm using a Silverstone Grandia GD06 -- similar to the GD05 that Anandtech reviewed, but it has hotswap SATA bays in the front which make replacement of a failed drive from your mirror MUCH easier (the Grandias are a pain in the ass to work in otherwise). This way if I lose a drive, I RMA it and insert the replacement without any downtime to the machine.
Grok42 - Sunday, August 4, 2013 - link
I personally have almost 1TB of just music and audio books. I have kids and you wouldn't believe how much just their movies take up and they watch them dozens of times per year. Most of the stuff I own are DVDs I ripped into ISO format. All in all I'm using about 4.5TB on my media server. That said, I'm with you that too many people save too much junk they will never watch again. Most of my non-kid stuff is old rips from media I wanted to throw in the attic and I don't watch it much if ever.NONE of this is in my living room. I can't imagine why I would want it there. I also don't want it generating heat in any of the boxes I use daily. I put all of that on my house server in the closet that also handles SVN, FTP, HTTP and other duties. I have gigabit networking to most rooms but my main TV can't have a wire run. I use a wireless N bridge that has never had issues other than a slight ~3 second buffering when playing a video. I recently upgraded to AC and it is unbelievably good.
Again, why would anyone that has a ton of video/audio want to store this on their main workstation? I built my server new for less than $400 + HDs. Most have a basic system they could use for basically free.
piroroadkill - Saturday, August 3, 2013 - link
World's most hideous DVR.If I needed that many drives in the machine next to my TV, Fractal Design Define Mini, maybe, but even that is too big. This thing? A godawful, open mesh, noisy beast. God no.
mwildtech - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
Only in Texas.. and well... yeah..