Rosewill Throne Case Review
by Dustin Sklavos on August 2, 2013 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Rosewill
- ATX
- XL-ATX
Honestly, the biggest problem with assembling a system in the Rosewill Throne is the fact that the case weighs thirty pounds. Add in hard drives, beefy video cards, aftermarket CPU cooling, and a power supply, and watch that weight jump really fast. If you're not a ninety pound weakling like I am you'll have a somewhat better go of it, but there's no denying that the case is big and heavy.
Building your system with the Rosewill Throne isn't going to yield many surprises due to its bone stock garden variety ATX case design. You'll unfortunately have to install the motherboard standoffs yourself, a task that's actually becoming less and less common with modern enclosures. Likewise, while the 5.25" drive bays are toolless, the steel drive sleds most definitely are not.
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3.5" and 2.5" drives alike screw into the bottoms of the drive sleds, which are then inserted into the drive cage from the motherboard side of the enclosure and connect behind the tray as is typical of most case designs these days. While I'm not necessarily heartbroken about this design, I feel like this is one place where other designers are making great strides in innovating. It may complicate things somewhat, but toolless 2.5" drive solutions are the direction things are headed. There's nothing inherently wrong with the design here, but there's also definite room for improvement.
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As I mentioned in the introduction, I ran into an alignment issue with the front fascia of my review unit due to its preproduction nature, and that's pictured above. It shouldn't affect test results and my understanding is that it's totally unique to my test unit, but it bears mentioning nonetheless.
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Installing the expansion cards and power supply was relatively painless, but where the Throne runs into trouble is cabling. It doesn't look so bad from the primary side, but reach behind the motherboard tray and experience a rat's nest of wiring that's incredibly difficult to sort out before you've even installed your hardware.
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I'm not sure how much it can be helped; due to the massive amount of connectivity and control in the top of the case, you're looking at a tremendous amount of wiring just for the case alone. Before you even get to hooking up indicator LEDs of the power or reset buttons, you have two USB 2.0 headers, one USB 3.0 header, one SATA cable for the hotswap bay, one molex cable for the hotswap bay, the HD audio header, another molex line for the fan controllers, and then eight fan headers in total for the fan controllers. In some ways, the Throne is already a full house, and if you're lousy at cable routing and organization like I am, things will get very ugly very fast.
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The reality is that as with most Rosewill cases, you're making some very specific tradeoffs. If the reviews on NewEgg are any indication, most users are pretty comfortable making those tradeoffs, but it's nonetheless important that you be aware of them. The Throne doesn't have quite the level of cable organization as a competing NZXT Phantom or Corsair Obsidian, and the relative lack of fan filters mean dust will be an issue sooner rather than later. What you get in exchange is a big, roomy enclosure with a whole lot of airflow.
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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..