Rosewill Thor v2: The God of Cooling and Silence?
by Dustin Sklavos on August 24, 2011 2:15 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Full-Tower
- Rosewill
Assembling the Rosewill Thor v2
Do you remember when I said the Rosewill Thor v2's internals reminded me of the insides of Corsair's cases? That's a good thing and a compliment: Corsair's cases are still the easiest ones to build in I've ever seen, and thankfully the Thor v2 was just as easy to work with.
Installing the motherboard was easy and painless, though Rosewill doesn't include stand-offs built straight into the board, a convenience I do miss. Where Rosewill does run afoul of Corsair is in the rubber grommets used to line the holes in the motherboard tray, which as I said before are held in largely by wishful thinking. Honestly they're just not strong enough to stay in and for most of my cable routing I wound up either accidentally or deliberately popping them out, and this was going on pretty much from the get go.
Unfortunately, while the drive trays are still back-facing and thus awesome, they aren't tool-less. The trays support both 2.5" and 3.5" drives, though only the 3.5" drives use rubber standoffs to dampen vibration (presumably anyone using 2.5" drives would have SSDs), and drives are always mounted from the bottom instead of the sides. Still, the trays work well enough and routing the cables behind them was a breeze.
The same can't be said for the tool-less mechanism Rosewill uses for installing 5.25" drives. To remove the bay covers, you actually slide the right part of the case's front bezel off and then lever out the covers. Honestly, the old school "squeeze-and-pop" bay shields would've been perfectly fine here. My main problem is that the tool-less mechanism used to lock the drives into place is flimsy and loose. Optical drives are often among the loudest components in a good build, and with very little really securing them, they're free to vibrate in the bay. I would have been happier with just openings for screwing them in, and thankfully, you can forego using the case's locks and just use screws to mount them.
Getting the power supply in and everything else wired up was delightfully painless, as you'd expect from a chassis this size. While the case's cables are a mess of tiny wires, they're ultimately still fairly easy to actually sift through, and there's plenty of space behind the motherboard tray to keep the installation clean. The only issue I really ran into was routing the USB 3.0 cables out the back of the case: the rubber grommets in the back are just as loose as the ones inside, and shoving the cables through them invariably caused them to pop out. You'll also have to route a fan controller cable to the inside so you can connect the side intake fan, something you'll definitely want to do.
All told my chief complaints remain the iffy build quality. The rubber grommets are no big deal (NZXT's H2 had the same problem), but just about everything about the 5.25" drive bays rubbed me the wrong way. They aren't a huge issue and you can work around the problems, but even the material that lines the inside of the bay shields to filter dust is barely held in place. The fan controllers in my first review unit were also problematic: if I didn't tape the knob down, eventually fan speed would just ramp back up to full. I don't want to have to choose between having a tower that runs silent and cool with a piece of shipping tape on the top of it or a tower that runs very cool but with some noise, and I shouldn't have to. Judging from reviews on NewEgg, though, my problem seems to be isolated.
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PA Systems1 - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
Considering the cooling, kitty would freeze his little butt off curled on top.geniekid - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 - link
I want an FT02 for my upcoming build, but I may have to settle for this case instead. The FT02 looks so much nicer, but not $100 nicer.realjetavenger - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 - link
Anyone else notice how similar this case is to the HAF X? The Thor has the moving top vents and a bottom mounted fan but otherwise in specs and appearance it is Rosewill's version of a HAF X.Onus - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 - link
I have no doubt that the Rosewill case is superior to the HAF X. Almost every Coolermaster case I ever bought had untapped screw holes and poor tool-free mounts; most had minor panel misalignment and/or other QA issues. I've switched to Rosewill cases, and have not found any of these (admittedly trivial) issues with any of them.I'm not a fan of huge cases (I'm not a madd overclocker, and don't run 1kW of GPUs), but if I were, this Thor v2 would be on my short list. There would be no Coolermaster cases on it; as nice as their designs can look, they are not well executed.
f4phantom2500 - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 - link
Maybe Cooler Master's quality has gone down since I bought my Centurion 5, but I haven't had any issues with it. Admittedly, I haven't used a Rosewill case, and every case I've used prior to the C5 was off-brand and ranged from acceptable-but-not-too-good to just bad. But in the review here he states that the 5.25" drive bay locks in this Rosewill case aren't very good; I actually really like the locks in my C5. Then again my standards are probably substantially lower than Dustin's. The only toolless element of the C5 that could use improvement, imo, is the expansion card clip holder things. They're not completely useless but I wouldn't trust them if I was putting in a robust (read: heavy and expensive) GPU and/or moving the computer around a lot.Khronikos - Sunday, August 28, 2011 - link
I disagree. In fact, I think CM has went up in quality more than down. I use a 690 ll advanced, admittedly not a top end, and I have no issues whatsoever. Sure, you might run into problems with any case but there are zero alignment issues or anything of the sort. I haven't run into tap problems but that could be an issue on any case and is remedied pretty easily. I like my minimalist case look better than the HAF as well. The Thor looks okay but really not my kind of case and way beyond my needs lol.Metaluna - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 - link
I'm not in the market for a case like this, but I do like the top-mounted ports. I currently have a P182, which I keep on the floor. It has the USB ports sticking out at a right angle on the lower half of the front bezel, and when cables are plugged in, it's just way too easy to trip over them and pull out the cables or damage the ports. I actually broke one of the ports once this way. Fortunately Antec sells replacements, but I'd rather have the front ports up off the floor in a more protected position.ajlueke - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 - link
I saw at the beginning of the review that you stated this arena was typically the forte of brands such as Antec, Silverstone, Corsair and Lian-Li. All those brands are represented as comparisons in your review, save for Lian Li. I was curious how this case compared to the lian Li offerings, particularily the TYR-X2000, or X2000F (USB 3.0 version.) I have been using the stateside version of the TYR-X2000 in the form of the ABD Canyon 695 for some time now, and was wondering how this case compared to the far more expensive Lian Li cases. Perhaps we'll see that in subsequent reviews?pandemonium - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 - link
Just like Ferrari's and Lamborghini's don't like being smashed up just for an action scene, Lian-Li's don't like being subjected to pokes and prods by reviewers. >.<matt3D - Wednesday, August 24, 2011 - link
I saw this case at school today... lol, I got a free t shirt from newegg.