Rosewill 4412 (Hotswap) Yay or Nay?

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Beer_Engineer

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Mar 15, 2018
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I am in the process of building a new home server.


After reviewing options in the entry level server space, I eventually landed on the Rosewill 4412 because the pricing wasn't much more than the L4500, and the ease of use promised by the 12 3.5 inch hot swap bays sounded like a bargain for only about $100 more when each of the 3 bays are about $50 each.

I considered a used Super Micro Case, Norco, and even some of the iStarUSA models such as the M-4160-ATX.

I ordered the Rosewill 4412 to visually evaluate it. The case seems serviceable (Not pretty but it's going into a basement rack), but I read a couple of scary stories about these cases since I made my purchase. The reviews of the case and the hotswap cages for the case are generally pretty positive.

What to do....

I like the alternatives, especially the 16 Bay M-4160, which would mean an additional $440 of budget. This wouldn't normally be significant on it's own.... But I've already done the following add on's to my original budget...

Intel E5-2620V4, instead of an E3 V5
32GB of Ram instead of 16GB
3xNoctua IPPC Fans
Noctua CPU Cooler U9DX
Seasonic 750 Watt Titanium PSU instead of a EVGA Gold
Intel S3700 100GB ZIL instead of not using a ZIL (ZFS Intent Log)

I'm leaning towards just moving forward with the build, and then swapping out the case in 12-18 months which would be pretty good use considering the price of it. I have a QNAP NAS that I could use as a local backup for my most critical files, and I could also just use Glacier or something like that as an emergency backup.

I feel better just writing about this because I've read a lot of great feedback in other threads from this community. Thanks in advance for sharing your 2 cents.
 

turgin

Member
May 16, 2016
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I have two of them. They’re not the best made but are serviceable. The stock fans are anemic so I have replaced the 3 x 120mm fans on the drive cages with San Ace fans undervolted to 7v. They are nearly silent and keep my 7200rpm drives under 40c with no trouble as well as provide enough airflow over the motherboard and expansion cards. I also like that I can use standard PC parts.

I just purchased my second one as an open box deal on Newegg for $140 shipped.
 
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Beer_Engineer

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Mar 15, 2018
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Thank you everyone for the feedback, in the end I decided to send the 4412 back.

I purchased a supermicro 846 with A SAS2 back plane from eBay
 

Brian McGahuey

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Apr 12, 2018
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I've got one of these, and dig it. One thing I don't like is the case fans use molex connections, so those will need to be replaced in the future, but they're serviceable for now. I can tell you that with my setup of an i7-920 on an asus p5d motherboard, the cooler master hyper t4 fits with about 3mm to spare.

I know the drive cages aren't the best, but they're standard 5.25" bays, so they should be easily replaced should I run into problems.

I should also mention that I paid only 195 for the case.
 

Brian McGahuey

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Apr 12, 2018
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Update on my 4412......I think one of the cages is faulty. I need to do a bit more troubleshooting on it, but I have one slot that won't seat a drive. Should be an easy RMA. if it is bad, hopefully newegg can just send me a new cage, and I don't have to take everything out and send the case in.
 

Beer_Engineer

Member
Mar 15, 2018
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Yikes, well good luck! My 846 is humming along now with testing.
Hope you get a new chassis or drive bay quick!
 

Brian McGahuey

New Member
Apr 12, 2018
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Like I said, I need to do a bit more testing, as I'm currently running badblocks on all my drives. Also, I guess one of the sata power cables I used last night when swapping my PSU was bad, and I think it fried my boot drive. Which means I no longer have an OS, and have to reinstall proxmox. Not that big of deal, nor am I really all that upset about it, since I got the drive for free anyways. I flashed systemrescuecd to a USB, so I could boot and test the drives before deployment.