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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DanNeely - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
A case like this makes tri-SLI on an ATX board easier too; it's not just EATX builds that benefit. If you get a board with x16 slots at positions 1, 4, and 7, you've got an empty slot between each pair of cards to improve airflow and cooling. While there are atx cases with an 8th slot cover to let you do the same, most of them will push the bottom card up against the PSU obstructing it.I don't think this case is in play for significant water cooling at all. There doesn't appear to be enough clearance between the mobo and the top fans to fit a radiator, without dremeling out the 3.5" cage, you're not going to fit one in the front, and a larger PSU would obstruct the bottom fan mount. The giant door fan should help a lot if you're running multiple air cooled cards; which I think is where this is being targetted.
mwildtech - Friday, August 2, 2013 - link
Doesn't look much different from the Thor, not bad overall.WhitneyLand - Saturday, August 3, 2013 - link
Are these giant case articles less popular on AT nowadays? They seem so irrelevant and anachronistic.@Dustin: Love your writing and articles. This is not a criticism of an author.
I know some people still want to read these, but what’s the big picture trend here with the AT audience?
ShieTar - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
Personally, I tend to be most interested in the two extreme options: The Mini-ITX on the one hand, for Media-Player solutions or just On-the-Desk-Systems for friends who need very little computing power. And on the other hand the very big towers, for my own gaming system which just sits next to my desk and gets opened up and fed with new hardware about once a year.So, from an enthusiast point of view, there is nothing anachronistic about giant cases. They give you plenty of options for your build, and as show in this review, once you put an overclocking/SLI setup together, they can quickly become the most silent option too.
random2 - Saturday, August 3, 2013 - link
TIL; Dustin has no taste in cases. :Pbeepboy - Monday, August 5, 2013 - link
On future case reviews, can you include the weight as part of the specs on the first page? It would help me at the very least. Thanks!alex110 - Monday, August 5, 2013 - link
is looking weird.http://mnrparts.co.uk/index.php?route=product/cate...
sulu1977 - Tuesday, August 6, 2013 - link
Just out of curiosity, I want to know what your ideal, perfect case would be given a budget of let's say $500 million.J_E_D_70 - Friday, August 9, 2013 - link
I can see it now: I'm playing a game, friend calls and asks what I'm doing, and I reply, "I'm on the throne."warpuck - Thursday, December 18, 2014 - link
Looks good, that is until you try to install 280 radiator in it. Put it in the top? Nope. Put in the front ? Nope. HDD cage is riveted. OK lets see inside the cage then, maybe. Nope. Outside cage? Sell my 690s and get something shorter? Nope fake 3mm screws. OK then a thin 240 in the top maybe if you can live without heat spreaders on your memory. Looked good up to the point after I put the extreme 9 in. OK time for the Dremel tool, saber saw and drill. So the only thing that fits in there handily is a 140 radiator on the exhaust.