Installation
Ok so what will we be installing inside the R5? Our system is comprised of the following: Intel Core i7-3770K, Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H, Zotac GeForce GTX 560 Ti AMP!, Kingston HyperX Genesis 8GB, FSP Aurum Pro 850W Power Supply, OCZ Vertex 4 SSD, Western Digital 1TB drive, ASUS Blu-ray drive and the Thermaltake FRIO OCK CPU cooler.
Taking a look at this case the first thing that I actually wanted to do was place my CPU power extension cable. Although you do not need the extension cable, I always like to use them as they make connecting CPU power to your motherboard much easier. Next go ahead and install your motherboard. Motherboard installation was a bit odd. The top 3 holes for the motherboard do not need standoffs, but the rest do. Did Rosewill just say screw it after the first 3? This does not make much sense to me at all. When I had the motherboard installed I realized that the board itself actually covers up most of the hole where the CPU power cable is meant to go through. Good thing I installed it before hand right?
Next up we have the hard drives. Take out the number of trays you need for your drives. The 3.5-inch drive easily installs using the tool-less system of pins that lock into the opening on the side of the drive. The 2.5-inch drive actually gets screwed in from the bottom to secure them. Once you have your drives secured in the trays simply slide them back into the case. I did notice that the handles on the trays were very flimsy.
To install your optical drives you will need to take off the front bezel of the case. This is easily done by pulling on it from the bottom. Once removed pick the drive bay you want to install your drive in and loosen the tool-less system by turning the dial. This tool-less system is actually really great and works well. When you turn the dial on each side it pulls the locking pins back. So then you slide in your drive and line it up. When you have it in place you turn the dial back to lock the pins into your drive, it really is that simple. I wouldn’t lock the pins until you have your drive lined up completely. For reference here is where the holes in my drive were when the drive was lined up completely.
The last two things we need to install is our video card and power supply. Both go in very easily without any issues at all. With our power supply installed we would be able to install a 120mm bottom fan.
Now to wire everything up! Like most cases we routed almost all of the wires behind the case. When I was routing the cables I saw a few different things that bothered me. First the only real space behind the motherboard tray was the recessed “L” shape. This means you have to fit all of the cables in this section. The included fan controller only has room for 3 fans (the number included with this case). There are room for quite a lot more fans in this case so support for at least a couple more fans would have been nice!I thought I did myself a favor by installing my CPU power extension cable, but I did not! The actual connector end (which is the standard size) was too large to be placed behind the motherboard! This meant that I could not properly put the side panel back on. You can see what I mean from the photo below. On a good note you can see the size of the CPU cutout here and how you would be able to install an aftermarket CPU cooler without any issues at all.
With everything installed you can see the inside of our case is nice and clean.
