Rosewill Throne Case Review
by Dustin Sklavos on August 2, 2013 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Rosewill
- ATX
- XL-ATX
It should go without saying that the cooling style Rosewill employs with cases like the Throne is going to be less efficient than more esoteric designs like the Corsair Carbide Air 540 and SilverStone's Raven RV-04. But the importance of efficiency is fairly relative and unique to the individual consumer; if the case gets the job done, who cares how it gets there? The Throne doubly benefits from the inclusion of a fan controller that allows individual users to determine where their ideal balance of thermals and acoustics lies.
The Rosewill Throne was tested with both its highest and lowest fan settings at an ambient temperature of ~24C.
Load temperatures aren't super exciting, but they're competitive and certainly among the better cases we've tested. The competing cases we've listed are pretty much the cream of the crop, so the fact that the lowest fan setting doesn't have to yield too much performance and still hangs in the game is compelling.
It's pretty obvious the highest fan setting just isn't worth it; the copious amount of airflow in the Throne ensures that even running at the lowest gets the job done. The flipside is that other competing cases are still able to do the job more quietly; some tuning may be necessary to get just the right amount of airflow, and your mileage will vary.
With overclocking applied, the Throne starts to demonstrate a clear benefit from a little more airflow than the minimum setting.
Depending on how much tweaking you're willing to do, it shouldn't be too much trouble coaxing the right amount of thermal performance out of the Throne without causing noise levels to spike in the process. The problem is that the Editor's Choice Award-winning NZXT Phantom 630 is able to compete aggressively on both levels, and if you catch it on sale you can have it for the same price as the Throne, if not cheaper.
Performance with our brutal full fat testbed remains competitive. Note that the Throne is able to put up a good fight against Rosewill's own flagship Blackhawk Ultra. The full fat testbed tends to be a pretty tough race, and test units will spread out further when acoustics are taken into account.
Now that we're trying to dissipate 600+ watts of heat under stress, the Throne's noise characteristics don't look quite as bad. Idle noise with the fans cranked up is pretty horrendous as it has been up to this point, but load noise benefits from the tremendous amount of air the Throne moves.
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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..