Joined on 08/06/04
What a case should be
Pros: Conservative look - no gaudy decorations. No worthless doors or optical drive covers. No chintzy tool-less frobnitzes that don't hold things in securely and have weird parts to lose--you just secure things with screws, the way nature intended. No sharp edges. Good airflow.
Cons: The included fan is a bit loud. Missing a motherboard mount point in one corner, but other nearby screws hold it secure.
Overall Review: It's a bit of a tight fit, but that's what you expect with a uATX case. I built a machine in this case with the Foxconn A7GM-S and Athlon X2 4850e.
Fast and convenient, when it works
Pros: - Convenient to have internal card reader ports - Fast I/O - Extra front USB port is nice too
Cons: - Sometimes when I plug in an SD card, the reader turns itself off, and will not work again without power-cycling the whole computer. (You can't unplug and replug the card reader since it's internal...) - Use caution when inserting CF cards; it's easy to accidentally bend pins (I destroyed another Rosewill reader this way). It'd be better if the socket were a little deeper, to "guide" the card to the proper pin alignment. - The unnecessary blue power LED is insanely bright.
Overall Review: - Requires an unused motherboard USB header. If you have a newer machine, you probably have one or more. - The bottom row of slots are upside-down. Not really an issue when you get used to it, but something to watch for. (It allows Rosewill to save some costs mounting slots on both sides of the same PCB.)
Brings front USB 3 to an older case
Pros: If you are replacing the motherboard in an older PC with front USB 2.0 ports, this will allow you to connect fast USB 3.0 external drives without reaching behind your case. The ports feel sturdy and the connector is long enough to reach the USB 3 header on my motherboard.
Cons: None
Overall Review: Complaints about compatibility and speed might be misplaced. The electronics are all on your motherboard. This just wires the ports to the front of your case.
Great price and feature set for a uATX Ryzen build
Pros: Four DDR4 slots Plenty of USB 3 ports One USB C port Supports two M.2 SSDs (one SATA, one PCIe)
Cons: It took awhile to find memory on the QVL that NewEgg stocked
Overall Review: If you're installing a Ryzen CPU, you'll need to remove the plastic heatsink retainers on the board. Refer to the manual. There are just four SATA ports (including the M.2), but for most micro-ATX builds, this shouldn't be a limitation.
AMD is competitive again!
Pros: This CPU is roughly three times faster than my old Athlon X4 640 at raw photo processing. With 6 cores / 12 threads, it rips through multithreaded jobs amazingly well for its price point. 65W TDP.
Cons: Intel's chips are a bit faster in single-threaded performance.
Overall Review: Good bang for the buck, but if you want more performance, the Ryzen 7 offers 33% more cores for 50% more dollars.
Silent, good for workstation and HTPC builds
Pros: Silent. Low power (30W TDP). Much better than integrated graphics.
Cons: Needed to get an adapter to connect to my DVI monitor.
Overall Review: This card is fine for light gaming, but if games are important to you, you should step up to a GTX 1050 or higher. I paired this with a Ryzen 5 1600 in a PC used for photo and video processing. Once desktop Ryzen APUs materialize, the value proposition of this card will probably disappear.