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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Aphelion02 - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
God that red and black color theme hurts my eyes. Chea plastic isn't helping either. These case manufacturers really need to hire designers with some modicum of taste.Death666Angel - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
I haven't finished reading this piece, but I still feel like I have to comment on this:"A smarter plan might have been to kill one of the 5.25" bays to add one more 3.5" bay, which would feel at least a little more balanced."
Why? A 3.5" internal bay is about the most useless thing once you have enough room to install the HDDs you want. A 5.25" bay on the other hand offers up a world of customization and usability, with room for fan controllers, displays, a whole bunch of 2.5" bays (1-to-6 converters are available), decoupled HDDs to dampen noise, reservoirs for water cooling, card readers....
Holler - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
agreed 5.25 much more useful.Zoomer - Wednesday, January 18, 2012 - link
3 5.25" = 1 120mm fan mount.AssBall - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
I also agree? What the hell are you going to do with more 3.5"s? The only things I can think of you'd want to jam in there are maybe a card reader and a rheostat/fan/temp monitor. That's 2.JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
5.25" can be used for 3.5" and other devices, sure, but four of them is overkill for an already cramped case. I'd rather they just dropped the fourth (and even third) 5.25" bay altogether. There's obviously personal opinion and intended use as factors to consider, but I have four mid-tower desktops right now and not a single one uses more than two 5.25" bays...and only one uses two bays. YMMV, naturally.AssBall - Thursday, December 15, 2011 - link
Fair enough. Maybe my "keep my old shit" stuff is killing my in builds, but I generally end up with two optical drives and 3-4 hard drives that those extra slots are nice for. You are right though, the case is a little too cramped to shove all that in there and expect decent thermals and avoid cable cluster.Onus - Thursday, December 15, 2011 - link
I am using three 5.25" external bays; one DVD burner, one 5.25" storage drawer (for thumbdrives, O/S, and recovery CDs), and a memory card reader. If I wanted a fan controller, I'd need the fourth and last one available on my case (Enermax Hoplite). The memory card reader could also be installed in a 3.5" bay, but this case does not have one. The two listed for it in Newegg's description are actually a 2-drive 3.5" backplane with drive drawers; they aren't usable for other things.Onus - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
I think this review was good, but I suspect the cable-routing issues would not have come up with a more "typical" build; 1155 or AM3 mobo (possibly a mATX), 1x optical, 2x 3.5" (or make one a 2.5"), HD6770 or other GPU with a single power connector, and a 350W-450W PSU like an Antec Earthwatts or Corsair Builder. With a lot less cables to route, the shortcomings described should essentially vanish; and such builds, once created, are indeed typically left alone.Whether or not I personally like the style, this case does nothing to knock Rosewill off the short list of cases I consider at just about any price point, and where they typically win, often on features like an extra included fan (or two).
JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
If we take the approach you're suggesting, there are several difficulties.1) We would need to get Dustin additional hardware for testing (and he'd need to store it when it's not in use). We can certainly do this, but it's inconvenient at best.
2) More importantly, we would either need to test each case with several sets of hardware (one more set of hardware would double the testing time, two additional points of reference would triple it).
3) Alternately, we would only test a case with hardware that "makes sense" -- according to us, which naturally others would disagree with our choices, whatever they might be. Then we would have a database of test results where we can only compare cases tested with the same configuration. So, Define R3 works fine with our current setup; do we test it with that or with a more "sensible" HD 6770 card and a smaller PSU? What about [insert a case]?
This gets very messy very fast, and ultimately results in either substantially more work for Dustin (with no additional pay), or substantially less useful comparisons. This is why we ended up with the current test beds -- and we do have more than one, but it's either Mini-ITX or full ATX testing.