Rosewill Throne Case Review
by Dustin Sklavos on August 2, 2013 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Rosewill
- ATX
- XL-ATX
Where I think Rosewill has made major progress from the Thor v2, and to a lesser extent the Blackhawk Ultra, is in the aesthetics of the Throne. The Thor v2 is an incredibly powerful case with a fairly goofy look to it; the worst I can say about the Throne is that it reminds me of the Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
The front of the Throne is actually pretty slick in my opinion. While Rosewill cuts costs using a plastic fascia for the front and top panels, it doesn't look terrible. There are two large vents that allow the front intake fans to breathe, and then a door hides the reset button, the toggle for the red LED lights in the two front fans, and the three 5.25" drive bays. The door opens to the right by default but can actually be removed and rotated, a welcome addition.
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Get to the top of the case and you see the Throne's bread and butter: a flat tray indented into the panel holds the six generously spaced USB ports (two 3.0 and four 2.0) along with the hotswap drive bay, audio jacks, power button, and sliding fan controllers. There's also a sliding vent mechanism similar to what we saw on the Thor v2.
The right side panel is solid steel while the left side panel includes plenty of ventilation and a beefy 230mm intake fan, which blows pretty much directly over the expansion slots. Note that this fan is thick; the power leads for the video cards I installed cleared it, but only just. If you're using an unusually tall enthusiast card (think EVGA Classified or ASUS Mars) you may very well run into problems with the intake.
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Removing the side panels is easy; they're both held into place by two thumbscrews, and they're hinged. When you get inside the Throne, everything is pretty business as usual. This is an extremely standard ATX enclosure design. With no swappable drive cages, the ten drive trays will undoubtedly feel at least a little excessive, but the Throne is designed to hold just about everything. I think it's interesting how much 5.25" drive bays have been deprecated; there are only three, all with toolless clamps. Meanwhile, space behind the motherboard tray isn't copious but it's acceptable, and the hinged side panels ensure it never becomes a serious issue.
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What I appreciate about the Rosewill Throne is its clarity of purpose. The cooling design isn't especially elegant but I don't get the feeling it was ever intended to be; this is a design that's about getting as much air into and through the case as humanly possible. Similar to the Thor v2 and Blackhawk Ultra, we're again dealing with a brute force approach to cooling. I'm still not entirely sold on the fit and finish and build quality, but you don't buy Rosewill cases for aluminum front panels, you buy them because you need a lot of cooling power at a good price.
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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..