Riotoro CR1080 Compact PC Case review - Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

The Riotoro Prism CR1080 is an very intriguing chassis. It is compact, looks nice offers decent enough cooling options and isn't that expensive either. It isn't perfect though, your storage options will be limited and dust prevention (filters) are lacking. But intriguing is the key-word here as this really is a compact design that looks good. The magic happens to the reversed design, the motherboard sits visually on the right side of the chassis, inverted. That also means you will be looking at the decorated/visually interesting side of your graphics card which is nice. The one thing this chassis could have used however was a tempered glass panel. The plexi see through widows does its job, but tempered glass is the trend and realistically does look much better. You can see from the photos that plastic see through windows also are a bit more fuzzy. Ah well, perhaps in a future revision that'll be different. For a chassis in this price range (79 USD) Riotoro did balance out value versus money though

Despite its compact design Riotoro applied a clever thing, the bulge in the see-through window adds a bit of extra space, that means you could even house say a GeForce GTX 1080 in there with the power cabling pointing outwards. The extra clearance works well. The fact that ,for this compact chassis, you can house an up-to ATX form factor motherboard in there is also a nice bonus. The airflow is decent, nothing special with the one fan but certainly enough for a mainstream PC, the space is good and offers plenty of options for cable routing, features like the SSD/HDD space, ease of use and USB 3.0 ports are all available as well though your storage options are rather limited.

Aesthetics

I must admit that when you look at a photo of the chassis, you could end up frowning a little about its aesthetics. The chassis looks a little off. Overall the design is based on a matte dark finish, black on the inside - dark on the outside. It's perfect for dark-colored high-end gear like motherboards and graphics cards. The side panel window will definitely show you all the ATX goods you install in a very tasteful manner. Tastefully done I guess is the better keyword here, as the chassis is not screaming with logos and flickering LEDs. Taste however is a difficult thing to objectively write about, we love it, you might hate it of course. I do again would like to mention that this chassis needs more LED lighting. The overall looks I find to be nice and intriguing, but nothing extremely out of the ordinary though. One could however argue the presence of the visual Riotoro logo, but that as well is diffused a bit.

Features

We can only acknowledge that the product is very feature rich for a chassis in this segment of the market. The HDD/SDD tray, nice cable management options inside the PC itself. Even a 5.25" drive bay is present. Limited is storage with one 2.5 and 3.5" slots, nice are the 7 PCI expansion slots. For the liquid cooling afficonados, you can still fit a radiator in the chassis but here again size will be a limiting factor.

The Verdict

The CR1080 from Riotoro is a fun product. It looks fairly nice and comes with a pretty decent feature set. Next to that I find the build quality good as well. You are of course more limited due to the compact design, but the end result can be a super-duper-hyper-fast PC if you choose your components well. There are plenty of motherboard options up-to ATX available, but you will need to look out for a low profile cooling solution.  Combined with the space and options available you could even install one HDD and one SSD, that has to be the big downside. Then again, that might be plenty enough for most. Regardless, you can build a PC that is massive in performance whilst being nice and small in size. Combine that with plenty of airflow, the option for liquid cooling and a warranty of two years, well that's just golden in my book really. Pricing, you don't need to think 150 USD like price levels, no Sir, it’s give or take $79.99 for the version as tested and shown here today (remember a power supply isn't included). EURO prices should be a notch lower and let me also state that these are suggested retail prices. Overall the CR1080 leaves a nice impression, tempered glass however would have been preferred. But that, for something so compact it relatively offers a lot of space and features for the smallest form factor up-to even ATX. It looks lovely and was designed in an intelligent way, making this an easy to use and install chassis. Nice job Riotoro.

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