Riotoro CR1280 Prism Review

 

Conclusion

Summing up the CR1280 Prism is a bit of a difficult one.  Tom and I have each seen the case independently of each other and when we had a chat were of much the same opinion.  So, let’s start with the positive shall we.  The CR1280 Prism is a good looking case of very ample dimensions.  We think the Aesthetic will cause it to appeal to both the company CEO, the dorm room surfer and the hard core gamer alike. It has high airflow, but at the same time isn’t too “in your face”.  It can accommodate Long GPUs, tall coolers and the largest PSUs on the market.  It can take motherboards all the way from E-ATX all the way down to M-ITX.   It has room for up to 4×3.5″ drives along with, and more importantly not shared with 4×2.5″ drives.  In the front it can take a 240mm or 280mm rad, and in the roof either a 240mm, 280mm, or even 360mm rad.  There’s a very nice inbuilt fan controller, and the case has the ability to control Riotoro RGB components such as additional fans.

So why is this a difficult one?  Surely what we’ve just seen ticks all the relevant boxes?  Well actually it does, however we’ve got a few issues with the underlying quality of the case.  There are a few things that make us take a small step backwards and look at it with quizitive eyes.  So what have we seen through these critically squinty eyes?  Well for starters there’s the positively dangerous burrs we encountered on the cut billet Aluminium feet.  Don’t get us wrong, we love the feet, we really do, when we un-boxed the case they made us go all squidgy inside.  The problem was, that moments later the burrs left on them from poor machining, or, and perhaps poor QA made us very nearly slice into a finger.  Yes we like like the “sharp” edges that come with high precision engineering, but at the same time we can tell when a job hasn’t been finished properly, and when it hasn’t.  Next up it was the turn of the “missing PSU mounting pads”.  Now this might not seem like a biggy, but to us it speaks volumes with regards to the level of quality control and assurance that goes on at the factory.  In simple terms, what we have is an operative who doesn’t really give a crap where the pads go, or how well they are adhered, and a quality assurance program that either can’t pick this issue up, or perhaps can but can’t be arsed to.  What all of this says to us as the consumer is that we have a case that may, or may not be well made.  Now, if we’d bought this case at £130 we wouldn’t be best pleased.  To be honest, If we’d bought this case at £90 we still wouldn’t have been happy, as the issues aren’t related to cost and features, they’re related to underlying quality, which should be implicit whatever the price e point.

So what sort of award can we give the CR1280 Prism?  Well, in it’s current incarnation, we can’t give it an “OC3D approved”, and this is predominantly down to the QA issues we’ve encountered.  The case though is not without its merits.  Throughout the review we kept having our modders juices stimulated.   There’s a lot that could be done at the front of the case, there’s work that could be done on the false floor, there’s the possibility of relocating the Riotore logo and slipping a fat 360 in the front.  Basically, if you’re a modder this case should be on your radar as something that has quite a few possibilities.