Similar chassis to Rosewill 15 bay 4U

[snowflake]

I was looking through chassis' in Newegg and Amazon and I just throught that this chassis was right for me except for a few details in the design. First of all I loved the fact that there were so many fans and many people were complimenting the fact that it wasn't a jet engine. The problem with that is the Molex connector which I've heard many problems about. The one part about the chassis I liked was the fan array in the middle.

Chassis in context (15 bays is overkill for me by the way): https://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-Server-Chassis-Rackmount-Metal/dp/B0091IZ1ZG/
Another chassis I liked because of the fans:

If you've seen my other thread about getting a home built server then you will see that I did mention about some constraints with a chassis size. At this point, the weight doesn't matter anymore as long as it's still not 50+ lbs or heavier than an iMac. It can also be full length rackmount size. Either the shelf will be replaced or there will be another spot for the server in the house.

<$150 please

 

[nk215]

I have a RSV-L4500 (15 bays).

I have no issue with the Molex connector. They are the cheap and low quality connector so some care is needed to plug them together. but you only need to do that once.

The three middle fan can be daisy chained (and even daisy chained together with the front 3 fans). At the end you only have on Molex connector connecting to your power supply. If you use a modular power supply then you'll never need to dismount this Molex, just disconnect at the power supply end.

One modification you may want to do is to cut two slots so the entire fan assembly can be pull straight up. That way all the HDD can be pull straight back.

This case is very quiet. The 6 120mm fans together do a good job in cooling the HDD and teh PCI slots. I don't even use the back 2 fans. My dual x5650 works fine in this case with 10HDD, 3 Quadro 4000, 1 SAS controller and a 10gb SPF+ card for years.

IMHO, Supermicro fan = loud.

 

[snowflake]

I can't tell by the images but the fans should be easily replaceable right?
At this point I'm very tempted to buy that chassis since it has a lot of cooling potential.

 

[nk215]

I can't tell by the images but the fans should be easily replaceable right?
At this point I'm very tempted to buy that chassis since it has a lot of cooling potential.

Yes. Easily replaceable.

 

[RobertFontaine]

The Rosewill seems very practical. Price, sound and configuration seem simple and adequate.
What is the build quality of the Rosewill chassis like?

 

[J--]

The Rosewills are a decent midrange case.

I had some cheaper ones that were awful from ISTAR USA (sharp case edges, poorly thought out layouts, impossible to remove drives and such), the Rosewill is much much better in that regard, but it still feels consumer grade. For the price of the RSV-L4500 and two optional hot swap drive bays, I ended up returning the whole lot and picking up a brand new Supermicro CSE-836 on eBay for the same price, which, with included rails, dual power supplies, etc., was a much better bargain in the end.


The fan situation, you can always fix, but once the fans throttle down, it's really not that obtrusive unless you're planning to sleep next to it or something.

 

[nk215]

The RSV-L4500 built is solid. there are no sharp edges on the chassis.

The HDD cage/pod has sharp edges but a few mins with sand paper takes care of that.

The biggest issue I have with the RSV-L4500 is the fact that Molex connectors are junk and you'll need to unplug them if you want to pull the hard drive cage completely out. To work around this, I cut 2 slots on the cage so that I can pull the fan mid-plane up and pull the HDDs out from the back.

I like that fact that is has both front and back fans to cool the HDD. Fans are quiet. I also like ATX power supply more than Supermicron power supply. Hot swap bays are nice but I have no need for them. I prefer the front cooling fan instead.

Overall the chassis is not Supermicron quality. My box is the setup-and-forget type. As long as everything works, I won't touch it again for a while.

Fan noise bother me so I goes to an extent to minimize it.

If I had my way, I would mod a Supermicron a case to have HDDs inserted from the top down, back-plane is mounted on the bottom. Low speed fans on both front/back of the HDD with an ATX power supply.