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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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.