Rosewill is actually a division of
NewEgg. This being the case doesn’t detract from the quality and
performance that Rosewill have become known for. They are essentially a
budget-minded alternative to the other manufacturers of cases, fans and
peripherals. Today we will be taking a look at Rosewill’s Ranger case.
This is a mid-tower case that is fully featured and it also comes with a
really nice looking paint scheme.
Rosewill have been producing cases for a
while now and this one is aimed at the budget-minded gamer. This is
evident in the paint scheme of this case. It has a red interior with a
black exterior. Its exterior is painted in a very nice looking mat-black
finish and it uses a steal and plastic construction. To be honest the
construction does feel a little on the flimsy side. This is to be
expected though from a budget case. This case is priced right now at
about 70 dollars. At this price you have to expect that there are going
to be some compromises on some features.
For its size this this case is actually
fairly light. It weighs less than ten pounds without any hardware
installed. This is also one of the reasons why it feels a bit flimsy. At
the front of the case are all of your front panel connectors. One of
the first things you’ll notice though is that there are no USB 2.0
connectors. This case has two USB 3.0 ports, an eSATA port, and audio
ports. There is also the power and reset buttons along with a power LED.
Being that USB 3.0 is becoming more available the lack of USB 2.0
really isn’t a big deal. USB 3.0 is also backwards compatible with USB
2.0 anyway. This case also had a large mesh front panel with a 120mm red
LED fan. This is the only fan that comes with LEDs.
On the left side panel you are given the
option to install up to two 120mm fans and there is a small Plexiglas
window above this ventilated area. On the other side of the case the
right side panel is totally plain. At the bottom of the case there is
plenty of ventilation to mount your power supply with the fan facing
downward. There is also room to install another 120mm fan at the bottom
to improve airflow over your video card(s). With the way the bottom of
the case is designed there won’t be any problems with installing some of
the longer power supplies. To prevent vibrations and scratches to any
surfaces this case comes with four rubber feet.
At the back of the case is where you’ll
find seven expansion slots along with the ability to mount your power
supply at the bottom. Near the top there are three rubber grommets for
passing through wires or water cooling hoses. This is great because it
shows that they did take water cooling into consideration with this
case. Many motherboards don’t have on-board USB 3.0 support so you can
pass your front panel USB 3.0 cable through a rear grommet and into a
rear USB 3.0 port. At the top of the case is a large ventilated area
with an installed 140mm fan. There is also room to install a second
140mm fan if you choose to do so. Unfortunately there are no mounting
holes for 120mm fans. If you’re planning to mount a radiator at the top
of the case you’re going to either have to mod it or install a dual
140mm radiator. This will mean that you will have a difficult time
installing an enclosed liquid cooling unit like the Corsair H100.
The styling of this case is very nice.
It’s a bit understated but it should appeal to quite a few users and
gamers. With the windowed side panel you are able to get a very nice
view of your hardware and the red interior. This case is a little on the
plain side but for the price you really can’t go wrong. From the
outside I really don’t see too many problems that would impede
installation. In the next part of this review we’ll go over how well the
tool-less features work and how easy it would be to install your
hardware. Overall this case is starting to look pretty good and
hopefully once we get it opened it won’t let us down. I’d like to point
out though that this case is going to make water cooling fairly
difficult. If you look at the distance between where the top of the
motherboard would be and the top of the case, there isn’t much room to
install a radiator and fans. You could mount the radiator or the fans on
the outside of the case, but this isn’t the ideal situation. With that
being said let’s have a look at the interior of the case.
Now that we’ve gone over the exterior of
the case, let’s have a look inside and see the features that are built
into this new case from Rosewill. One of the first things you’ll notice
when you open the case is the nice, red paint job on the motherboard
tray.
This case features a tool-less design
for installing optical drives and hard drives. It also comes with an
adapter to convert a single 3.5 inch drive to a dual 2.5 inch for SSDs
or laptop hard drives. This system feels a little on the flimsy side and
you might want to consider using screws to better secure your drives.
There was a bit of a rattle that was noticed when we moved the case
around after installing the drives. This isn’t ideal and I really hope
that Rosewill will address this issue in their future designs.
As I stated previously it would be very
difficult to install a water cooling system in this case. This is a
mid-tower case and there just isn’t much room for the extra hardware
that water cooling requires. For a custom water cooling system I would
highly recommend using a full-tower case. Rosewill happens to make a
very good case for this purpose. Their BlackHawk-Ultra Super Tower is
capable of housing even the enormous EVGA SR-2 Classified motherboard.
If it can house that beast it most certainly can handle any hardware
configuration that you can think of. These cases are on the large and
heavy side, but they provide more than adequate room for even the most
extreme of water cooling systems.
Rosewill do provide for plenty of
hardware configurations with this case, but it just feels like they
skimped in areas that they shouldn’t have. With the way that the side
panels flex you can tell that the steal construction isn’t the
sturdiest. We also noticed that there isn’t much room on the right side
panel to hide cables. There are plenty of cut-outs on the motherboard
tray, but the spacing between the motherboard tray and the right side
panel just doesn’t allow for very good cable management. Rosewill
attempted to compensate for this by giving extra room behind the drive
bays. This is great, but it doesn’t help with some of the shorter cables
that will need to get tucked behind the motherboard tray. Rosewill
should keep this in mind with any of their future designs.
This case does come with quite a few
features for its price range. This is where Rosewill have been able to
compete against some of the manufacturers. There are those that feel
that the case is actually one of the least important components of their
system. This depends on what you plan on doing with your system and
whether or not you plan on showing it off. If you’re going to mod it
anyway then it really isn’t going to matter too much what it looks like.
What you need to keep in mind though is that your case is going to
house your system for a while and therefore it should at least be fairly
sturdy.
This case does feel a little on the
flimsy side, but not so much though that it would fall apart if you
planned to take it to a LAN party. The parts of this case that feel
flimsy are really just the front panel and the side panels. These aren’t
the parts of the case that really matter because they aren’t the ones
that hold any hardware. This case actually has a very sturdy interior
that should hold up to any traveling that you plan on doing with it.
It’s always been my suggestion that if you plan on transporting the case
for any long distances that you put it back in the original box. With
the foam packaging that the original box comes with and the sturdiness
of the box itself, this should help to shield your system for being
knocked around or jostled in a moving vehicle.
Let me wrap this up by saying that for the price of this case you really can’t go wrong. It has a really nice paint job and the red interior looks amazing. It isn’t going to appeal to everyone, but most users will really enjoy how nice this case actually is for the money. At this price there really isn’t much in the way of competition. For this reason I would put it at the top of the list for cases in this price range. There aren’t a whole lot of features, but the features that are included are ones that most users would want. It would have been nice if Rosewill had included more dust filters, but these would probably have added significantly to the cost. At the front the entire front panel is dust filtered. It isn’t the best type of filtering, but it should keep the intake fan from sucking in most of the dust that winds up in the case.
source:www.motherboards.org
