Rosewill RSV-L4411 Rackmount Server Case Review

For most DIYers, the key to a good rackmount case is price, quality and the number of HDDs that can fit inside. Let's see if Rosewill offers this.

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Manufacturer: Rosewill
5 minutes & 41 seconds read time

Introduction

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Rosewill sells several different products. They are like the Swiss Army Knife of the computer industry with everything from cell phone accessories to the products we're talking about today, server chassis. Rosewill currently lists five different server chassis, four 4u's and one 2u. They also carry a number of server chassis accessories for the rackmount cases.

I would call the RSV-L4411 Rosewill's flagship rackmount chassis. For the most part, all of rackmount chassis Rosewill offers start with the same base chassis other than the 2u offering. The main difference between the different models is depth for the non-L Models and the front drive bay configurations.

The RSV-L4411 ships with three, four drive sleds installed. The 12 drive sleds are designed for both 2.5" and 3.5" drives and offer users hot swap capabilities with drive status LEDs.

Specifications, Availability and Pricing

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The Rosewill rackmount cases use 1mm thickness steel for most of the case construction. There are several bits of aluminum around the case as well. Two USB 2.0 ports, power and restart buttons, nearby followed by status LEDs. The RSV-L4411 uses up to E-ITX sized motherboards and allows for up to seven expansion cards on the back.

The RSV-L4411 weights just over 23 pounds, so the case is quite beefy. I think anyone shopping for a rackmount case has owned or at least seen a wimpy case before that flexes under its own weight. That isn't what Rosewill sells. I was very surprised at the build quality to be honest. I expected a nice offering from Rosewill, but didn't expect anything this nice.

Part of my initial assumptions on what to expect when the Rosewill RSV-L4411 came from the $199.99 price at Newegg. Rosewill sells the drive sled at Newegg on its own for $49.99. The RSV-L4411 includes three of the four-bay sleds so that leaves around $50 for the case or there about. We wouldn't really expect much of a rackmount case for $50, even though the retail price of components rarely works out to the total cost of a full package.

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The Rosewill RSV-L4411 also ships with a nice accessory package. Each drive sled gets a SATA cable and two sets of screws, one for 3.5" drives and one for 2.5" drives. You also get a set of keys for the front door and a few other bits for changing the front drive-bay configuration.

Packaging

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The Rosewill RSV-L4411 ships double boxed and as you can see it's quite a large package.

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Newegg only charges $11.99 for shipping to the lower 48 states in the US.

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Inside we found a well packaged case with foam on all four corners.

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The accessory package includes the paper user manual, screws for installing a motherboard and drives into the case and additional rails for 5.25" components.

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The case also ships with 12 SATA cables for the included HDD cages.

Rosewill RSV-L4411 Rackmount Case

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The front locking cover is the same on all of Rosewill's 4u rackmount cases. The front door provides security for the drives as well as the power and reset button.

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The door also adds air filtration to the case. Air comes in through the front, passes over the HDDs and then moves to the back of the chassis to cool the CPU and PCie cards. The filter keeps dust out of the system and is removable for cleaning.

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Here we get our first look at the case with the door open. Of all of the rackmount cases Rosewill offers, I think the RSV-4411 would be the most popular given the high value. Adding 12 drive sleds to your existing case would cost nearly as much as this $199.99 case.

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Two USB ports sit in the middle between the power and restart buttons. Four LEDs in the middle show system power, HDD activity and network activity.

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We've tested several drive sleds over the years and would put the Rosewill sleds in the middle of the pack as far as quality goes.

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Electrically, the cages only support SATA drives and are not compatible with SAS drives. Here we also see the amount of space for air to pass over the drives and into the system.

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The sleds work with both 2.5" and 3.5" drives.

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The Rosewill 4u chassis ship predrilled for rails, but they are NOT included in the package. Newegg lists a Rosewill 3-section rail kit that is adjustable for length and uses ball bearings for the slides. The kit is $39.99.

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The handles are a longer than what we find on Supermicro and other rackmount cases. We found a couple reports where the handles were an issue with doors on racks. Most racks are adjustable so you can maneuver the rails back if needed, but most people wouldn't want to do that on a rack that is already populated with systems.

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The back of the chassis looks like any other steel ATX case on the market. Two 80mm fans exhaust air from the system.

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From the factory, the case ships with rubber feet on the bottom of the case. You'll take these off prior to putting the case in a rack, but the feet keep the case from scratching your desk during the system build.

Inside the Rosewill RSV-L4411

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Here we get our first look inside the case. Three 120mm fans keep the drives cool and pull air into the motherboard area. Two 80mm fans exhaust air from the case, all of the fans are included. An aluminum crossbar across the top is to keep the case sturdy, but we didn't notice a difference with the bar removed. The case is built well and doesn't flex from its own weight.

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The motherboard area gives us a lot of room to build a system. We tested both a single socket LGA2011 and a dual socket LGA2011 motherboard in the case.

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The drive cages have four SATA data connectors and two Molex 4-pin power connectors. These are removable should you with to use different drive cages or run optical disk media players.

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Here we see a close up of the SATA data and power connectors. My only complaint is the data cables aren't labeled so you will spend a little bit of time mapping the drives.

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At the time of writing, we needed to test a Supermicro ATX motherboard with dual 10GbE Ethernet and onboard LSI SATA / SAS RAID. The case makes the full size motherboard look tiny, almost like a Mini-ITX motherboard in a regular consumer case.

Later we tested a GIGABYTE dual LGA2011 Xeon board in the case and it filled the case nicely. The motherboard tray extends all the way out to fit dual Xeon and dual Opteron motherboards, while still leaving a full three inches of space between the board and the drive cage fans.

Final Thoughts

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4u case designs have gone out of favor for co-locations, but they offer more drive density for storage servers when rack space is plentiful. The 4u height also gives users the ability to run 90mm and in some cases, 120mm fans for CPU cooling. I know some will cringe to hear about overclocking in IT, but high frequency trading is really taking off and that market is taking advantage of all the CPU power they can get. The RSV-L4411 case delivers excellent cooling for the system components as well as the HDDs. The cooling is quiet and that makes this case a good option for audio and video studios that don't have a dedicated server room.

I think for the DIY crowd, price plays a large role in the purchasing decision. At $199.99 plus $11.99 shipping at Newegg, the RSV-L4411 is strong in the value department. You can spend less money on a rackmount case that feels like it's made out of tin and flexes in all directions under its own weight or you can purchase this case with zero flex, even with the case cover removed, and get 12 acceptable quality drive sleds.

Any shortcomings we found, the price more than makes up for. If Rosewill could add a way to secure the USB and button cables to the inside of the case, it would be nice. One of our drive sleds needed a bit of adjustment on the plastic rails and the handles stick out a bit far for some improperly configured racks. Other than those issues, we were very pleased.

After looking at the other products offered at Newegg for rackmount cases in this price category, I couldn't find another case with this many features.

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