The Cables:
The quality of the cables and connectors is definitely a nice feature on this unit. The cables are nicely wrapped from end to end, and shrink tubing is used to clean up the end of each run of mesh sleeving. I also appreciate the heavy duty band of shrink tubing used to prevent wear at the point where the cables enter the housing.
We'll start our inspection of each cable by looking at those that connect to the motherboard. In the image below we see the 20+4-pin ATX motherboard cable, as well as a cable that combines a 4-pin and 8-pin 12V connection. As mentioned, the cabling goes from end to end, and even the short stretches between connectors on the same cable are sleeved.
The next image shows a pair of SATA connections and a pair of 6-pin PCIe connections. This is an area where I wound up a bit underwhelmed. Two SATA connections seems low, and I imagine even the most basic small form factor system might use these up quickly. Anyone with more than two SATA drives will obviously be breaking out the splitters. As for the PCIe cables, while two 6-pin connectors may be plenty for a mid-level gaming system today, the lack of 8-pin connectors isn't very forward thinking. Many power supplies are now including them, and they are just a nice feature to have to help future-proof a system.
The next image shows the balance of the cables. There are two leads, each of which features three easy to grab 4-pin drives connections and one floppy connection. While some people may want more 4-pin connections, I am getting the sense that Rosewill doesn't intend this unit to be used by the enthusiast with a system full of drives, fans, and the latest video cards. While there is definitely a place for a unit with this arrangement of connections, many units today provide more.
All of the cables should be of adequate length for most cases, as the distance from the housing to the first connection on each was about two feet. I may have never noticed before, but I found it interesting that all of the cables (motherboard, PCIe, SATA, etc) were about the same length.
|
|
