Rosewill 4U Server Chassis Rackmount Case | 12 Hot Swap 3.5", 2.5" SATA I, SATA II, SATA III SAS | E-ATX Compatible | 3 Front 120mm Fans, 2 Rear 80mm Fans | 2X USB 3.0| Front Panel Lock - RSV-L4412U

This Rosewill 4U server chassis is considered by many to be one of the best "economy" chassis out there. I'd beg to differ that this is one of the top chassis out there. Although you lose 3 drive bays by paying a bit more than some of the other Rosewill offerings, the hot swap bays are a tremendous value and you would be hard pressed to 3d print and/or DIY all of the parts necessary to recreate this setup. I did run into an issue with some missing screws on the chassis handle at the front but fortunately Rosewill includes a significant supply of spares inside the chassis. The chassis itself comes in a double-packed box with tons of styrofoam to keep the chassis safe from scratches and dents. Assembly was incredibly straight-forward with a ton of room for the ATX motherboard, memory, graphics (, and very large heat sink (Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE for size reference) that I was repurposing into a TrueNAS server. I did have to remove the large graphic card support bar spanning the top of the chassis. One mistake I made initially was to repurpose several modular power cables from the power supplies I've purchased over the years. I could have killled my motherboard as one of the manufacturers had reversed the polarity on their plugs and I could not POST. Once I confirmed I was using modular power cables from my actual power supply it was all good. The hot swap function works as intended and I was easily able add drives to my storage pools without rebooting. TrueNAS showed temperatures really low so airflow and fan directions work great. My one minor gripe is the use of Molex power receptacles on the drive bays. These connectors really have not been part of the SATA drive world for some time and I was surprised to see them. I had to buy SATA to Molex adapters in order to appropriately distribute the load across the power supply modular connectors/rails. One other tip is that if you have a home lab setup or smaller rack at home there are rack extenders that you can purchase to either extend the rack out front of the rack or to support the back. I opted for the former as I have a swinging wall-mount rack that would not be able to close had I done the latter. 5/5 stars for being an incredible value but functions like a very $$$ server chassis.

The case seems decent. I have yet to get my equipment moved over (waiting on power), but I don't see anything glaring that would give me pause to think there's going to be an issue. What I will say is that the rails it comes packaged with are absolute garbage. They do not align with the standard RU and must be offset by one hole. Depending on the rack, that may make the rails unusable. I opted to go with a chassis that was offset 1/3 of an RU in both directions and give up the extra 1U of blanking panel below and a gap above the chassis. Setting the chassis in the rails, they deflect immediately. Again, I've not moved anything over yet, so it's a completely empty case. The rails are not able to hold the weight of the case when empty. The left rail failed halfway through pushing the server into the rack and got stuck. I had to open the side of the rack and beat the rail with a hammer to get it to seat on the bearings long enough to unrack. Advice? Trash the rails the second you open the box and go with a set of universals. Sure the server won't roll out smoothly, but at least you'll be able to get it out of the rack. I would wait until this goes on sale before picking it up. For the price, it feels like there are just a few too many corners cut for being "datacenter" gear and in that regard it's hard to call it a good value.

The Rosewill RSV-AI01 specs say a 145mm max CPU cooler height when not using the GPU bracket. My Arctic Freezer 4U-M is 145mm high exactly, but it doesn't come close to fitting due to a critical design flaw on this case. In order to provide the 11 PCI-E slot outlets, the PSU is placed on a little shelf above the motherboard. For an SSI-EEB motherboard, this puts the PSU almost directly above the CPU, severely limiting cooling options in order to stay under the low shelf. Basically, you have to liquid cool. Now, where to place the radiator? There are no mounting holes anywhere to be seen, and because of the 8 hot swap drive bays, there's little room to work with. In fact, one is tempted to place the radiator in the space an expansion card would go on those extra PCI-E slots! Clearly this design was not thought through. The marketing photos did not make this clear to me, and I wonder if it was an intentional deceit. The only real way to run this case would be to do custom watercooling with a 2U radiator placed above the drive bays. Or drill your own radiator mounting holes into the hot swap fan enclosure. Or place the radiator in the extra PCI-E slots which were the raison d'etre of the case to begin with. UPDATE I ended up moving to water cooling, and twist-tying the radiator to the hotswap fans. Meanwhile, the power button on the case was defective, so I can only start the thing by using the reset button as a power switch. Given that you're forced into water cooling, the case ends not being deep enough. Now my PSU cables are obstructing the airflow enough that I'm getting warnings from my network card which doesn't have its own active cooling. I'm basically planning on moving this system to a Sliger case with 28" depth when I get the chance. Anyway, you get what you pay for, but sometimes not even that.

I bought the Rosewill 4U Server Chassis for my server build, and I ended up liking it so much that I bought a second one for my Jarvis AI server. That pretty much says it all. If I buy something once and then go back for another one, it means it did what I needed it to do. The case has a lot of room to work with, the 4U size makes building and upgrading easier, and the hot-swap drive bays are a big plus if you’re using it for storage, Unraid, media, backups, or server projects. It’s not some tiny cramped case where you feel like you need baby hands and a prayer to get everything installed. There’s enough space to work, route cables, and set things up properly. For a home lab or server rack setup, that makes a huge difference. I used one for my main server and the other for my Jarvis setup, and both have worked well for what I needed. No major complaints from me. Would I buy it again? I already did.

Doesn't ft in a standard rack, it was slightly too large. I have 4 other servers and other networking gear in this rack, so it's obviously standard. After googling, I see this is a very common occurrence with Rosewill racks. How hard is it to make it the proper width?? They seem to have doubled the price of this case just because they slapped "AI" on it. The sliding top was also a pain to get on and off.