Rosewill Ranger: All About Compromising
by Dustin Sklavos on December 14, 2011 12:10 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- mid-tower
- Rosewill
Conclusion: What Sacrifices Will You Make?
In the Ranger, Rosewill has produced an enclosure that serves one master: cooling. Above all else, that's where its performance and strengths lie. Aesthetically it's good but not great, though that's mostly going to be a matter of taste. Where assembly is concerned, there are many issues, but it's still nowhere near as fraught as the Lian Li PC-A05FN we tested. In terms of noise it could be a lot worse; the soundproofing in NZXT's H2 backfires horribly, necessitating a move up to at least a Fractal Design Define R3 to keep the noise down.
The fact is, until you start spending in the neighborhood of the Rosewill Thor v2 (and to a lesser extent the Antec P280), you're just not going to get good acoustics with good thermal performance; there's always going to be a tug of war between the two. It's only when you're willing to spend a lot more money that you can get a case that's big, solid, quiet, and cool. These less expensive cases oftentimes have a lot of potential if you're willing to muck with them a bit, but the same could be said of something like Antec's P280. (The real expensive monsters like the SilverStone FT02 and Thermaltake Level 10 GT are pretty much golden out of the box.)
There are reasons to go with any number of the cases floating around the Ranger's price point. I like the aesthetics and design of Bitfenix's Shinobi better, and that enclosure can also be found for less than the Ranger, but you'll have to do some work to extract the best performance out of it. Fractal Design's Arc Midi is much easier to build in, too, but the Ranger is able to produce better thermals at less noise despite having no real allowances made towards acoustics. Even the vastly less expensive Bitfenix Merc Alpha can probably put in a good showing with one or two extra fans and still come out less. At the same time, moving up to Fractal Design's Define R3 or the Antec P280 negates a lot of the compromises that come with a less expensive enclosure.
If you need maximal thermal performance and you're on a budget, I'm not sure you can really do better than the Rosewill Ranger—though there are other cases that likely match it. With a couple of side intake fans it could probably make a killing for even an inexpensive multi-GPU box. Just remember the sacrifices you're making to get here: it's going to be noisier than more expensive cases, and it's a lot harder to build in than it should be. Rosewill would do well to make a couple of modifications to this design (specifically increasing the size by about 2cm on every axis); with some minor tweaks, we'd have a homerun here.
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Iketh - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
IIIIIIIII find this hard to believe... motherboards have plenty of flexShieTar - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
Sure, but operating them while bent, with maybe some thermal cycling on top, does not sound like a good Idea.Of course, if the routing is this bad, why not just leave it be and live with the cables within the case, like it has been done with any case before 2008 or so. I'd rather have a somewhat uglified interior and a slightly disturbed airflow, rather than turn assembly into a comical "You sit on it, I close it" episode.
piroroadkill - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
Oh, I got a new case, Fractal Design Define R3, now, and made sure to bear this fact in mind.My system is OK now, although I do have a new board.
piroroadkill - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
Well, you can find it hard to believe, but when I was about to fit a new motherboard, I unscrewed my old one, took it out, put my brand new one in, and noticed there was a gap of about 4mm or something silly between the motherboard and the standoffs near the bottom of the case.I had to push the crap out of the tray to get it back to flat, so the motherboard would actually sit flat on all the standoffs.
My old motherboard had clearly been bent by the motherboard tray. I'm not sure why that's unbelievable.
kyuu - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
I believe what the poster found hard to believe was that the motherboard flex was the cause of your issues, not that the tray was in fact bent and, therefore, flexing your mobo. Although, usually the side panel of the case will bend outwards rather than pushing the motherboard try in, since it is generally going to be a lot more flexible than the tray.I would have to concur with that poster, unless there was really an extreme amount of flex going on with your mobo.
However, I would concur that case manufacturers really need to provide enough space to actually route cables behind the tray and enable the side panel to go without an overt amount of force and/or bending the side panel out.
IvanChess - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
I own the Rosewill Gear X3 and it has lots of plastic and it uses a pass-thru cable instead of a motherboard header for the USB 3.0 (my motherboard doesn't have that so no big loss and you can buy a converter) but it was actually a nice build for under $50 at the time. Lot's of room inside and behind the motherboard tray plus it has a hole for the ATX CPU power cable at the top of the case. The top fans are mounted in plastic outside the case which looks terrible but keeps the inside roomy. In conclusion, the case looks cheap and is cheap but it is very functional especially if you replace the fans and add a fan controller.DanNeely - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
I picked one of those up during the sale too to give my 2ndary box a case that wasn't an exercise in frustration/impossible to get a full size GPU in. The Gear x3's plastic has just a hint of gloss but is much more heavily skewed toward matte. Cable space was a bit tight; but as long as you use right angle sata connectors and make sure none of the fat cables are overlapping the panel goes on reasonably easily.IvanChess - Friday, December 16, 2011 - link
The plastic is mostly matte but it is a different black from the rest of the case so it looks weird. Also, I should have said the case has plenty of room for cables given the price tag although using right angle SATA connectors I did fit three drives into the case without much problem and zip-ties (with handy tie down points built-in to the case) can really compress the cables so they fit into that channel behind the motherboard.mfenn - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
"The routing holes around the motherboard tray are seeming slightly off center, especially around the side-mounted SATA ports, but your mileage may vary; side-mounted SATA ports on a full-sized ATX board are going to result in serious cable bending."Dustin, here's PROTIP for you: Other motherboards exist in this world besides the P7P55D-E Pro. Many of them even have 90 degree SATA ports in different locations! Interesting concept, I know.
Dustin Sklavos - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
"Your mileage may vary."Stunning, I know.