Rosewill RSV-L4500 Black Metal/ Steel, 1.0 mm thickness , 4U Rackmount Server Chassis, 15 Internal Bays, 8 Included Cooling Fans

Pros: Great case, quiet, stays rather cool, and has lots of storage bays. For the price tag, you couldn't ask for more.

Cons: The case sides and brackets feel a bit flimsy, like it was crafted out of cheap aluminum. But, for the price and what I am using it for, I couldn't really ask for more.

Other Thoughts: You couldn't ask for more from this case for the price tag. This case does more then expected from the price you pay for. It has a lot of air flow with 2 fans internal pulling air across the drive bays and also fans in the front to help start the air flow. The two fans in the rear of the case don't really do much, but the extra little bit helps.

Pros: 8 case fans, 3x 120mm front, 3x 120mm middle and 2x 80mm back
all metal/steel
15 HDD bays
Rubber feet in case the case would sit outside a rack
E-ATX/ATX (mini and below) support
Front filter (actual dampens the front fan noise when front door is up)

Cons: No 5.25" drive bay - would have liked an internal optical drive
Can't see front I/O panel lights when front door is up

Other Thoughts: I saw this on sale for $109 and couldn't pass up on such a low cost, well built, all metal/steel 4U rackmount server chassis! Being that it is all metal/steel it is very heavy but expected.

I knew the case didn't have space for a 5.25" device when I bought it but it would have been nice; would have to sacrifice some HDD slots but it is nothing major as I went and bought a Blu-Ray/DVD/CD external burner/player.

The other 4U rackmount server chassis I have cost me ~$320 that is also all metal/steel construction as well. In looking at the two chassis side-by-side it is hard to understand truly how my other chassis cost so much when construction looks relatively the same quality. Needless to say, this is a great quality rackmount for the price!

Pros: Simple design, tons of fans, 15@3.5'' bays, solid construction, all black, plenty of room, easy install. If you're requirements are simple... e.g. sturdy & good looking case that can hold 15 drives and EATX and below boards, quiet with plenty of fans, and no real need for true hotswapping, then this is the case for you.

For me, attached sliding feet is a pro. I prefer heavy-duty steel shelving units from Menards over server cabinets for my machines as they allow for multipurpose use. Thus, I usually end up attaching sliding feet to cases anyways. If you're rack-mounting the case, they could be a problem... but are also probably removable. I didn't check.

Front handles are strong, and there's a support beam accross the middle/inside for support.

Cons: Not really sure why there's a lock on it, other than to protect the front panel from children. Any bad person with hands and a screw driver has access to the case's insides, and to the power cable around back.

As other have noted, the drive rails were cheap plasticy/flimsy. However, I had absolutely no problem mounting the drives with them. Since these are components which rarely get used, cheap does the job perfectly.

I suppose if you're really picky, there's not really any cable management features. However, I've never had a cable management problem that couldn't be fixed with zip ties, screw holes or velcro... regardless of what the case provides.

I like blinky lights, a lot. With the front panel closed, the power/hdd lights are barely visible, if at all, since they are hidden behind the panel and air filter. If you rely on these lights for some reason, keep in mind you won't be able to see them. Looks like the front panel can be permanently removed, if you don't mind losing the lock and air filter.

All things people who are looking for a simple/cheap large-storage 4U server can easily overlook.

Other Thoughts: I suppose for an extra $70 it might be worth losing 3 drives and gaining hot-swapability with this case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147165 ...but it just depends what you want more, storage or hot swappable SATA bays.

For me, I could live with a couple minutes downtime to swap out a bad drive, spend the $70 on another drive, and have 15 bays to work with.

If your needs warrant a hot swappable "higher grade", and maximum storage but not quite "enterprise" class server case, I recommend checking out NORCO... specifically the NORCO RPC-4224.

Pros: Case is very well built - no sharp edges, no flimsy parts. All coolers work as they supposed to making the airflow really good inside the case. So far, installed 7x2TB drives in raid-z1 and a bunch of single 0,5-1,5TB drives inside, all under Nas4Free. Temperature of the drives (all green WDs) varies from 30-35 degrees Celsius. Very satisfied with the case and the price I'd paid for it.

Cons: Two coolers in the back could be less noisier, however PSU makes more noise than they do, so not really a con.

Pros: 15 hard drive bays in one case for under $150. This is a perfect chassis for a mid-size FreeNAS. The fans are very quiet compared to your average rack-mount style chassis and there's enough room beneath the middle-wall of fans to run your cabling bundles to each of the 5 drive pods. The foam air filter on the front is a nice touch too so you can be a little more confident in putting it somewhere out of the way. I call the lack of a back plane a positive if you're trying to avoid buying a couple mini-sas cards just to get started, plenty of motherboards could support half the bays right out the box these days meaning you just need one card to fill out the rest.

This is a great case for your home SAN and lets you side-step the hot-swap price jump while keeping the part that truly matters: 15 hard drives in one case.

3 sets of 5x3TB zfs1 volumes is 36TB, that's a lot of linux ISOs. Oh and my cats love the double-boxes it came in; the outta shell was intact and the inner was in good shape.

Cons: It'd be nice if there was some sort of quick release on the front bays' fans so you could pop them off to remove individual drives but how often are you going to be messing with those bays, really.

Other Thoughts: Keep a larger stock of these please, I had to wait a month before they were available again after the holidays.

I'd pictured the distance between the bays to a motherboard's usual sata ports longer then I thought, you can easily reach any drive from the back of your average ATX board with standard sata cables. Its getting the power cables out to them that's the trick.

Pros: The case is a solid construction. All the fans are included and work. The hard drive cages are modular/removable and the rails to install the drives are included. Since it's 4U, there's planty of room in the case.

Cons: The hard drive rails are plastic. As long as you are not repeatedly taking the drives out, they should last.

Other Thoughts: There are no case rails for installation in a rack. The fans are all powered by separate molex pass-through connectors, so they have to be daisy-chained to the power supply or a separately-purchased fan controller.

Pros: Cheap to buy but solidly built. Holds 15x 3.5" drives. Fans are surprisingly good and quiet for something so low cost. No useless, stupid, bright LEDs. Much more professional than what I was using. Can be rack mounted. Fit standard components meaning that the old hardware I was using as my file server would fit without issue.

Cons: Could be hard to clean the fan filters. No backplane but I knew that going in. I would want something that would easier to hot swap drives with in a more professional environment.

Other Thoughts: I had a Freenas server I previously had crammed into a old case but I wanted to add more disks to build another array. Since I had the controllers/cables etc. already, I didn't care about there not being back planes.

Since for the most part it is only for my uses I don't mind shutting it down and spending a few minutes to swap a drive. Although technically it could be hot swapped, in practice I think it would be easier to shut down. This is because I think the easiest way to remove a drive is to remove the whole cage (5x drives).

The distance from the SATA controller card to the bays was longer than I anticipated, 24" cables would have made it easier and neater to route cables.

Honestly, this was perfect as a cheap but effective case to provide a lot of protected storage for my internal network. I could have bought a fancier brand for almost the cost of 2 disks. I would rather have the 2 disks for my expansion budget.

My old primary PC + SATA controller card + lots of drives + FreeNAS was perfect for this case and my uses.

Pros: Great Case. Lots of room for everything

Cons: Great Case

Pros: I have been shopping for a new rackmount storage-oriented case for a few months now, ever since I maxed out the drive bays in my Antec 300. I'm running a small ZFS NAS at home, so buying one of the 16+ hot-swap bay Supermicro/Norco/Chenbro/etc. server chassis was out of my budget. Once I saw Rosewill's offerings here on NewEgg, I decided to wait for a special to come by to save a bit of money. It fortunately didn't take too long.

- Decent quality, fairly solid and strong.
- Plenty of space to store your hard drives.
- Comes with all the fans you will need in this case.
- With all the fans running, the case is pretty quiet. My network switch makes more noise with its fans whirling around.
- Great price-point for those looking to build a storage server on a budget.

Cons: The case needs some cabling routes & channels, especially when cables are too short from the SAS/SATA controller to the drives. There are also a lack of "zip-tie hooks/holes" to combine cables and get rid of excess wiring underneath the fan bay area.

Other Thoughts: I bought this case specifically for my FreeBSD ZFS storage server. I'm currently using 10 out of 15 drive bays. Now I need to get my hands on a new motherboard with more x8 PCI-E slots to add a second Dell SAS6IR controller card and throw in another 4 drives to the array.

Pros: Very solid case: feels quality made.

Cons: Missing guide rails! I cannot use this case fully, as I received an incomplete set of guide rails: i.e. they were ALL left ones! Supposed to get 15xleft and 15xright. Must be very poor quality control in the packaging in the factory.

Without 15xleft and 15xright guide rails - I cannot use it! Newegg offered an RMA only. Honestly - this thing ships at 14.5KG and arrives an ENORMOUS box... Which is great for protecting it in transit, however it will cost a fortune to return it and there really is no need, when all I need is more plastic rails!

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you very much for purchasing this unit. We strive to provide the most reliable and highest quality products to our customers. Please kindly contact the Rosewill support team either via phone at 800-575-9885 or via email at rma@rosewill.com so we may assist you with the missing items,if the unit is still under warranty.We are eager to assist you in any possible way and look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thanks,
Rosewill Customer Care