Rosewill Ranger: All About Compromising
by Dustin Sklavos on December 14, 2011 12:10 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- mid-tower
- Rosewill
Assembling the Rosewill Ranger
Rosewill doesn't include motherboard standoffs preinstalled, but once we start hovering around this price point we're willing to sacrifice a few amenities. That said, things don't start off on the best foot with the Ranger. Rosewill includes a generic I/O shield built into the case that has to be punched out, and all that really does is add an extra step to assembly. Getting the I/O shield for our testbed in turned out to be an exercise in frustration, too, as the Ranger made for a particularly tight fit. Wiring things up is a little better, and Rosewill amusingly opted not to include a power LED header at all; given that the front fan glows red, that LED would've been redundant. The cable routing holes made for plugging the eSATA connector into the sideways-mounted SATA ports on the motherboard a bit difficult, though, and the front panel audio header could've used another inch or two of slack.
Mounting a 3.5" drive in the Ranger is incredibly easy; the two drive sleds snap into the sides of the drive and then are held in place when you mount the drive to the cage. The plastic tray included also supports mounting two 2.5" drives, and while it isn't the firmest in the world it definitely gets the job done and is easier than some of the other trays I've used. Finally, the tool-less clips for the 5.25" drive bays are easy enough to use, but they do feel a bit loose: you'll want to screw in the other side of the optical drive for security. You'll have to actually pop the front panel off to remove the drive bay shields as well, which is another in a string of minor nuisances.
Popping in the GeForce GTX 580 from our testbed isn't too tight a fit, but this is really as long a video card as you'll want to go with. Theoretically you could shimmy in something longer like a Radeon HD 6990 or, I don't know, a Voodoo 5 6000, but you'll lose access to at least one external drive bay in the process, depending on where you need to slot it in.
Finally, while getting the power supply in is easy enough, routing cables turns out to be an utter nightmare. 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. Rosewill at least has all of the cabling for the storage drives routed to behind the motherboard tray. Getting the AUX 12V line in is also very difficult; clearance between the port and the top 140mm fan is borderline nonexistent, and I actually wound up having to use the heatsink to pin the cable down so it wouldn't get caught in the fan.
This is also where I realized just how much cable routing space there isn't in the Ranger; I'm used to having to apply a little force to replace the panel behind the motherboard tray, but I had to apply pressure to three of the four sides of the panel at once to eventually squeeze it on. This is really inexcusable; even an extra centimeter or two would've made a world of difference.
Honestly the Ranger is more work to build than it really needs to be. Tweaking the layout of the mounting holes in the motherboard tray and adding 2cm to every axis of the enclosure would've made everything a lot easier without making the case that much bigger. As it stands, this is just too small and difficult to work in. Hopefully it'll at least perform well enough to merit the trouble.
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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.