Most people know that Silverstone are highly regarded as one of the world’s top premium brand case manufacturers. Their build quality and materials choices are top-notch and their designs lean toward the sleek, understated and elegant where price is of less concern to their customers.
The case that I am reviewing today though takes most of that and throws it all out the window…
This isn’t your average Silverstone chassis though…
This is the Raven.



There has been a lot of division amongst the online community since Silverstone first unveiled their “enthusiast oriented” offering at CES earlier this year. A large part of these discussions have revolved around the very different interior layout and cooling; the others have been focused on its love or hate external design of early pre-production samples.
I have been fortunate enough to get my grubby little paws on one of the first production batch Raven cases and will finally get a chance to see whether this sub US$200 MSRP case lives up to all that people are hoping it is, or if it is just not quite what they had expected.

Specifications:
From Silverstone's website

Model: SST-RV01B (black)
SST-RV01B-W (black + window)
Material: Reinforced plastic outer shell, 0.8mm SECC body
Color: Matte black
Drive bay: Exposed 5.25” x 5
Internal 3.5” x6
Cooling System: Bottom: 2 x 180mm intake fan, 700rpm, 18dBA
Top: 1 x 120mm exhaust fan, 850rpm, 18dBA
Expansion Slot: 7
Front I/O Port: USB2.0 x 2
IEEE1394 x 1
Audio x 1
MIC x 1
Power Supply: 1 x Optional standard PS2 (ATX)
Expansion Card: Compatible with expansion card up to 12 inches
Net Weight: 15.0kg
Dimension: 280mm(W) x 616mm(H) x 660mm(D)

The feature which really piqued my interest with the Raven is its 90 degree motherboard mounting. The reasoning behind the design is that cases can cause a heat trap between the case floor and graphics card (especially true with dual GPU’s crammed into an *cough* “enthusiast” system). By rotating the motherboard 90 degrees clockwise, the Raven's positive pressure layout and this more convection-friendly orientation encourages air to just drift up past the cards on its way out the top of the chassis.
It turns out that Silverstone has patented this mounting configuration (as well as all other orientations from 45 degrees either side to 90 degrees) so they’re most likely the only ones to be using this layout in the near future; unless someone else wants to license it off them.

Let’s get this straight up front, if you want to get this online, expect to pay a hefty shipping bill!




The carton of this thing is a monster, and being a steel case, it ain’t exactly light either at 15 Kilograms. The plus side to the behemoth sized carton and packing is that you can be pretty certain that your precious new investment will be safe and sound when it gets to you. The carton gives you a good rundown of what the RV01’s key features are… as well as some slogans thrown in about this “Extreme enthusiasts chassis”



The bundle included with this case all fits in a little box – Manual, a couple of cable ties, some metal brackets and the mandatory bags of screws. Not extensive by any stretch, but it should encompass all you really need.
The Multilanguage manual deserves special mention though – it is very comprehensive and outlines everything you need to know right down to cooler clearance dimensions!! Top stuff Silverstone!

Truth be told, my initial impression wasn’t exactly stellar – this case indeed looks like the offspring from a stealth bomber and the iconic monolith from 2001. Its distinctive, angular design is certainly a deviation from their current lineup and something that you will either love or loathe.





The case externals defy what you’d expect of other premium Silverstone offerings, consisting of predominantly matte-black plastic (yes, plastic) comprising the front bezel, top, rear panel and fairing on the hefty side panels of the case. Unfortunately, the matte finish plastic is exceptionally prone to marking (if for example the panel is laid down on a hard surface, then moved) so you will need to treat it with care if you want to maintain its initial finish – something that I struggled to do myself. Overall, it came across to me as looking more plain than sleek with the meshed and vented accents doing what they could to break up the plain appearance. Silverstone also produce a windowed model, and from the pictures, it certainly looks like it helps spruce up the giant side panel a bit too.





The (very well ventilated) rear half of the top panel is removable via two dial-latches revealing the IO shield, PCI slots (fitted with Silverstone’s AeroSlot ventilation covers), 120mm Exhaust fan and a square holed vent – as well as a solid metal handle that doubles as a routing for cable runs. The covered PCI design is such that any cables coming out of the top of the case have a maximum of 7cm of space before they hit the cover – Unfortunately, people with DVI to VGA adapters are out of luck; as the adapters will not let the cover close (this is explained in the manual). Add to this people with weird shaped dongles (no jokes please) or those with a penchant for multiple USB drives/devices or frequent plugging/unplugging eSATA drives in the back of their regular cases. You’d really better keep the 7cm space restriction and removable cover in mind before buying if any of this applies to you





While we’re up here – moving towards the front we find more angular plastic consisting of a non-spring loaded, smooth moving, magnetic-closing panel concealing the case’s I/O ports. There is also the embossed Raven logo as well as clearly labeled power and reset switches which is not your usual fare either – there is very little travel in them (unlike most “standard” case switches) due to the PCB beneath them using a different type of switch. All in all, they feel sturdy and click with a positive, reassuring feel.
In front of it all, there is an angular clear plastic bar, of which I expect to be lit up with LEDs the moment that it’s powered up.




The 90 degree motherboard mounting does away with the need for a front case intake, freeing the Raven’s designers to do whatever they wanted to do with the front bezel. In this case, they’ve opted to utilize the space for a very plain looking, angular bezel with a door that opens downward and is concealed in the front of the case when opened. On first impressions it is a pretty cool implementation – Simply press downward and the door slides slightly in before down inside the rest of the bezel. The movement is damped by springs and offers a reasonable amount of resistance – which feels good and not cheap at all. It only latches in place once fully opened and requires a small press down to unlatch it and let it move itself back up towards the closed position. Here was where I met my first real concern – The movement back up was not smooth as I had expected; in fact it was downright jerky in places, to the point of almost grinding to a halt – the motion (and funnily enough the noise it made combined with the door’s look) was like a graveyard crypt cover being slid closed in a B-grade horror film – I kid you not!! It certainly fits well with the Raven’s dark-themed marketing though, but with it appearing to struggle more the more frequently I used it, I’d be inclined to question how this will fare with extended use over a longer period of time.
Beneath the door, the plain plastic 5.25” drive bay covers are secured by clip tabs and are able to be easily removed from the outside of the case.





Moving to the back of the Raven, it is covered with a single, angular plastic panel matching the rest of the case design. There is also a hole in the lower section comprising the PSU mount.






The base of the RV01 is very well ventilated and includes removable mesh filters, one accessible from the back of the case, one from the inside. The case feet are comprised of a pair of moulded plastic parts with rubber diamonds glued to them



The panels are secured and removed by manipulating a single latch on each side that resides under the removable top shield of the case and swinging the top edge of the panel out and downwards – a task that is easier said than done due to the tight fit of the plastic fairing and lack of handholds.




Speaking (again) of the plastic, the panels didn’t always seem to fit overly flush with the rest of the external parts of the case in places, it’s a difficult task for any case manufacturer to achieve, and it appears that Silverstone are no exception here.
Overall though, the RV01 is a weighty, sizeable case - make no mistake about it – and regardless of the plastic exterior, it still feels very solid, which should bode well for it in terms of build quality when it comes to having a system in there.

Once you remove the panels, you’ll get a real sense for where the weight comes from. Each panel weighs a ton while the chassis (sans panels) isn’t that heavy at all. The mesh filters on the inside of the panels are designed to be removable for cleaning by removing 7 screws per panel. For those who want to ditch the plastic, the plastic fairing can be removed via screws as well, although the panels do look pretty ugly afterwards.




The first thing that jumps out at you when looking at the motherboard side of the case is the embossed crossbar with black plastic card keepers attached. It does not appear to be structurally critical to the chassis as it merely slots into the rear panel and affixes to the 5.25” bay cage via two thumbscrews, so I would gather that this can be left out if you don’t want it in there. The card-keepers are rubber-tipped plastic and ratchet down to press against the edge of whatever PCI card you have installed – useful if your case gets moved around a lot.


The floor of the motherboard chamber is broken up with two vents for the dual180mm fans as well as a cable pass-through hole for PSU cabling. With the drives being placed well away and not impeding motherboard/VGA airflow (from the rear 180mm fan), this should ensure that temperatures remain much cooler than in an average system.



The 3.5” drive cage is populated with six removable plastic drive caddies that include vibration dampening mounts. These are standard fare for Silverstone’s other offerings that include hot-swap functionality. When removed you get a good sense of the amount of ventilation that the cage offers. Above this, any 5.25” drives are secured by Silverstone’s “rocker”-type locking switches. These work equally well for full length drives and shorter bay devices without rails being needed – a pair of pins pop out to secure the drive via its standard mounting holes.


The top two drive bays can be used immediately, for any others, steel blanks need removal. The cables for the top I/O ports are of a decent length to be run behind the motherboard tray before installation elsewhere and will not affect 5.25: drive installation.

The top of the case is pretty much what you would expect from any other Silverstone case – Standard, quiet 120mm fan and Aeroslot PCI covers



The inside back panel has nothing much of note apart from a single silver screw and pair of tubing pass-through grommets – neither of which are visible from the outside. Silverstone include a set of steel radiator mounts with the RV01 enabling mounting of a 3x120mm radiator onto the rear of the case. All that is required is that that screw be removed, allowing the plastic back panel to come off; exposing the mount points and grommets.



Behind the motherboard tray, there is plenty of room for cable runs. The motherboard tray has four rubber-edged pass-through holes and four integrated cable clips (sleeved in heatshrink to prevent cutting) There are threaded holes for almost every motherboard mounting scenario, but as a consequence, there is no space for holes allowing third party CPU cooler retention plate access.

To the rear of the hot-swap bays, a single hot-swap cable is installed – this is different to the CP05 ones that can be purchased separately as it allows the cable to exit at 90 degrees from the connector as opposed to straight out the back.



The dual 180mm fans draw their air from the meshed side panel vents and are mounted in plastic holders that are easily removed via four screws each.



There is unfortunately no option to swap these out to 120mm ones (as was seen in the FT01 case), which would be useful for easy internal radiator mounting options.

There is also a strange piece of plastic placed about where you would expect the PSU to sit in the case. At a guess, this is to help support the upper of the case and perhaps add in some tortional rigidity when a PSU is installed.



The PSU sits on top of two raised rubber vibration dampening strips. With a top-mounted fan PSU, this can be flipped to draw air in through from the base. The grill is covered by a removable, narrow air filter; accessible from the outside rear of the case. The front most intake filter simply clips out for easy cleaning.

Unlike the FT01, the Raven chassis is predominantly riveted together; the only screws used in the construction are really to attach plastic parts (front panel, fan holders, PSU-support-thingy and rear panel cover). If you want to get stuck into modding this, you’ll need a drill to take it apart fully.
Speaking of taking it apart, the front panel can be removed to expose the door mechanism which runs on two vertical tracks.

Coiled, spring steel is used to provide resistance as well as closing it all up. After removing a heap more screws, the whole assembly comes off revealing a nice spot for making dremel holes – There’s actually room in the bottom chamber for a front mounted 120mm fan intake as well as another space available above it if you are prepared to sacrifice a couple of drives.

Installing my existing system into the Raven proved to be a little harder than I had expected and highlighted a few very important oversights in the layout.
Firstly though, the good stuff - There is plenty of room inside the case for an ATX motherboard, even getting an EATX board won’t be a hassle, nor will using large graphics cards like ATI’s HD4870 X2. The edges are predominantly rolled and non-finger cutting save a few bits around the hot-swap cage.


The first problem showed up as I was trying to use the two cable holes toward the rear of the case. They actually sit beneath the motherboard and any cabling that you want to get through there (like front panel cabling, for example) needs to be both thin enough to be able to fit into the thin gap between motherboard and tray and fed through before you even get started fitting the motherboard in the case.



The 90 degree design also comes with its own little quirks – if you wish to route SATA cables behind the motherboard tray (and through the rear pasthroughs), think again. They’ll need to be extra, extra long in order to reach. Even the included CP05 one couldn’t make the distance. I did manage a workaround by feeding them through holes above the rear 180mm fan. The fan housing did interfere a tiny bit, and the holes in the motherboard tray are sharp, but with a little bit of care, this works adequately.




The real biggie came after fitting the motherboard. Upon installing my IDE DVD writer and DVD ROM in the uppermost two bays, I discovered that the cable wouldn’t reach the connector on the motherboard (on this particular Gigabyte board, it is positioned close to the bottom edge) Even moving the drives to the lowest two bays wouldn’t reach… and if they did, it’d be pretty ugly looking. While there are a lot of SATA drives freely available (and some motherboards that are ditching IDE altogether), for this old dinosaur with his IDE drives - it’s a definite no-go.



I strongly recommend that you examine the layout of your motherboard (and consider future upgrades) before shelling out on the RV01, as you could potentially have cabling issues.



The only other gripe that I had with the design is that the 7cm of space wasn’t quite enough for my (thick) DVI cables to easily bend – in fact, quite a bit of force was needed to get them in a position so that the top cover could close.


Skipping the drives and makeshift cable routing, installation of everything else was straightforward, and the rear cable clips and ample space for spare PSU cabling in the lower chamber made it much nicer than some cases I’ve seen. When I powered it all up I must admit I was pretty astonished on how quiet the RV01 is - the low RPM fans combined with the heavy steel frame and panels really do their bit in keeping the noise down. As to how well it cools though, I sat back for some testing in the presence of the brightly lit blue bar.

System spec:

Intel Q6600 G0 overclocked to 3.0 GHz
GIGABYTE POWER II-BL CPU cooler
Gigabyte GA-EP45-EXTREME motherboard
8GB Corsair DDR2-1066 Dominator RAM (4 x 2GB sticks)
Nvidia 7900GTX overclocked to 661MHz core/900MHz RAM with stock cooler
OCZ PowerStream 520W PSU
4x WD 500GB SATA HDD’s
250GB WD SATA drive (for os)
320GB WD SATA Drive
Creative X-Fi Platinum Sound card
BENQ DW1820 DVD Writer and Samsung DVD ROM (unplugged due to cable length woes)



I usually prefer watercooling my systems, but for the purpose of this review I slapped in some average performing air cooling to give an indication of what to expect if you aren’t shelling out big dollars to keep your hardware cool.

All CPU core temperatures were measured using Coretemp, taking the highest and lowest values and averaging them out – across the course of the testing, idle temperatures sat at 39.6 degrees C
All GPU temperatures were measured using NVmonitor in the same manner, at the same time
Idling sat rock solid at 45 degrees across all tests.
After taking idle readings I fired up Orthos for 30 minutes to stress the CPU cores and subsystem finding that no core reached over 62 – averaged out, it worked out at 56.5C – that’s a deltaT of only 17.5 degrees C between idle and load

That’s really, really good….

Looped, custom Crysis timedemos were then used to stress the GPU – the results (which usually get the outdated 7900GTX up into the high 70’s) only hit 66 degrees with a delta T of only 21 degrees- an impressive result considering that the card was only using Nvidia’s stock cooling solution
Comparing this with a no-name brand case (in a traditional lower 120mm intake, upper 120mm exhaust – with no side panel vents), I ended up with delta T’s of 20.5C for the CPU and 29C for the GPU

To be honest, I’m actually torn between either loving or trashing the RV01.
The internals really are top notch –make no mistake about it – very solid build quality, the innovative design cools unbelievably well with very low noise levels (so much so that I’m even considering sticking with air cooling!!); another huge plus.

But, there are cabling issues.
Having to be well aware of where connectors are placed on your motherboard isn’t something that most of us ever do when we buy a case. The fact that I was unable to use IDE optical drives without either hunting for the mother of all cables, or shelling out for new SATA drives didn’t exactly fill me with confidence on the Raven’s ability to cope with future hardware upgrades, future hardware choices would be limited to what would fit in the case!
All in all, a couple of further, minor tweaks in the design stage could really have gone a long way – making more pass-through’s in the tray for example, or moving the motherboard towards the front by 5-10mm in order to be able to fully utilize the ones that are already there.

Also, there’s the RV01’s looks department.
As a reviewer, it’s very tough to review any case without being influenced by personal bias towards its looks – and this case is certainly a prime example.

This will either look great to you or it may look totally wrong -so please take my comments on its looks with a grain of salt and temper them with your own opinion.
The exterior’s final impression on me was somewhat underwhelming; almost as though it was created as an afterthought. I feel it certainly could have been done better, especially given Silverstone’s reputation, abilities and, more importantly, that despite their more expensive offerings; this really still is a premium case.

But… there is the intriguing potential of the RV01 as a modding canvas….

While plastic-fantastic in places, the Raven really did engage my interest from a modder’s standpoint. The chassis itself does leave plenty of room to disassemble, change airflow options, add watercooling, extra paneling, paint - you name it. The exterior will need sprucing up, certainly – but as it is relatively plain; it leaves a lot of options for cutting, paint and re-design as well.

And that’s why I’m in such a conundrum! The good really does balance out the bad for me. With that in mind I’m left to give it the following rating (balancing out the good against the bad) and hope that things get easier to decide on with Silverstone’s next 90 degree mounted design:

Rating:
Build quality and features: 8/10
Price/Value 6/10
Performance 7/10
Moddability 8/10

Overall: 7/10

HUGE thanks to Silverstone for allowing us to check out their latest product

Fun little look at it on tape....


Go here for a full sized version


HD version HERE

i take my first comments in the other thread back i do actually like it in a strange way and i really want to get one to mod

Josh

I am not a huge fan of the whole 90 degree mobo tray design and not a big fan on looks but the way its laid out for cooling beggars believe.