Rosewill Wind Ryder RZLS142-AP Case Review

Introduction

Wind Ryder RZLS142-AP is a simple steel mid-tower case from Rosewill with four 5.25” bays, six 3.5” bays (two external for floppy disk drives) and two 120 mm fans, one on the rear and one on the front. This case is clearly targeted to the Average Joe, but is it a good pick? Let’s take an in-depth look at this new product from Rosewill.

The reviewed case is available in two colors for the front panel: black or yellow. We reviewed the yellow version, also known as RZLS142-AP YE (the black version has the letters BK added to the product name).

Figure 1: Rosewill Wind Ryder (RZLS142-AP) case.

Figure 2: Rosewill Wind Ryder (RZLS142-AP) case.

As you can see this case has a solid side panel with a duct and a small mesh on the lower part (we will talk more about these features later).

This case has a door, as you can see in Figure 3. This door has a couple of good features and a couple of bad ones. One the good side, it has a magnetic latch and extensions to the power and reset switches (the way these switches are positioned make them look like the number “2” pay attention on Figures 3 and 4 to see this).

On the bad side, it only opens to 90° – i.e., it doesn’t open fully. The mesh applied to it makes the case look like a little bit more aggressive but this is a “fake” mesh. You see, on cases featuring a real mesh to improve the computer internal airflow, the covers from the bays must be also meshed in order to allow air to enter the case. On RZLS142-AP the covers are solid and thus the door mesh has no other function besides aesthetics. The door also uses inferior-quality plastic. This wouldn’t be a problem for a very cheap case, what isn’t the case of the reviewed unit (more about this on the Conclusions section).

Figure 3: Front door.

Figure 4: Front panel.

In Figure 4, you can see the four external 5.25” bays and two external 3.5” bays present on this case. The traditional USB ports and jacks from the audio system are located on the front panel. As an advantage over other cases, the two USB ports are far away from each other, allowing you to install two “fat” USB devices at the same time. On the other hand, they are too close to the audio jacks and maybe you will have trouble installing a “fat” USB flash drive while your headset is plugged in.

In Figure 5 we have the rear panel. It uses the traditional ATX layout with a rear 120 mm fan that comes with the product. This fan uses a small 3-pin connector, so you can install it on your motherboard and monitor its speed using your favorite monitoring software.

Figure 5: Rear panel.

Now let’s see how Rosewill Wind Ryder (RZLS142-AP) looks like inside.