SilverStone Raven RV03: Streamlined Bird of Prey
by Dustin Sklavos on July 20, 2011 1:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- SilverStone
- Full-Tower
Conclusion: Not Bad, But Needs Care
I'm not going to sugar coat it: I'm a little disappointed with the SilverStone Raven RV03. As a dyed-in-the-wool fan of their engineering and having been particularly impressed by how the FT02 acquitted itself in handling an extremely power-hungry, heat-heavy build when I tested DigitalStorm's Black Ops, I was expecting the RV03 to be a lean and aggressive enthusiast option. What I'm left with is an enclosure that's by no means bad (and certainly a good conversation piece), but it feels like it's being pulled in too many directions.
The RV03 lacks the focus of enclosures like the FT02, FT03, and even its predecessor, the RV02. And what our thermal testing didn't show you was just how hot the single hard drive got: pushing 43C under load. That's within spec, true, but that's also just one drive out of a possible four behind the motherboard tray. The FT03 at least pushes the drives against the aluminum side panel to dissipate heat, but the RV03 has no such allowance. Likewise, the drive bay adapters in the front seem like a nice idea that makes the case even more modular, but the fan mounts make them feel self-defeating.
When you get something that's off the beaten path like the RV03 is, you should be expecting to have to work a little harder to put it together, so I can't fault it for not being a tool-less design the way many of the other cases I've tested are. What I wasn't prepared for was just how much work the RV03 really is. After my initial testing I e-mailed the SilverStone representative with my findings and he replied saying the case frankly should've worked better. He narrowed it down to my cabling: he felt the odd couple of cables (the two video card leads and a couple of SATA cables) above one of the intakes was hampering performance. That felt like an awful lot of impact for just some thin cables, but retesting after tying them back vindicated him as the RV03's performance jumped up to near, if not the top, of our charts. Of course, this meant crowding the space behind the motherboard tray even more, which wound up being bit difficult in and of itself.
If you're the type of end user that loves to tinker, there's a good chance that the RV03 is going to be a lot of fun for you and will pay off handsomely once you've customized it. But for users that want to focus more on the hardware in their machine than cooling it, the RV03 is going to seem like too much work. The RV03's noise floor at 37.8dB is good, but the enclosure will need some coaxing to deliver its best performance.
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yelped - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
Great job on the review!Thanks.
tzhu07 - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
Do these industrial designers have any taste at all?That thing looks like crap. So tacky looking and lacking any kind of grace.
If there was a Razzie award for industrial design, this thing would be nominated for sure.
B3an - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
Exactly! Why is it SO ridiculously hard to find cases in this category that actually look good? And not like they've just got a load of ugly random plastic parts and glued them all together?I mean just look at the first pic on page 1, thats one seriously ugly case, but almost all cases like this look just as bad (or close anyway) and cheap/home-made looking.
For a long time i've been looking for a case with good cooling, loads of space and features and theres such extremely little choice as 99% of them look like cheap tacky shit even when they cost hundreds.
Impulses - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
I feel like a lot of case manufacturers are trying to solve non-existent problems... While ignoring the real issues. CPU heat output hasn't increased all that much over the last ten years, the latest HSF tower designs have largely kept up with the demand and other components have become much more efficient (PSU, HDD, SSD, larger fans, etc.)... The one outlier is the GPU(s).Silverstone's internal design does address that to an extent, but I think they're over-complicating matters. The tried and tested ATX design of old still works wonders, especially if manufacturers stop insisting on throwing in so many useless drive bays that the majority of people just aren't using (5.25" particularly).
People with multiple GPUs aren't usually running a server or a RAID 5 array inside the same rig... Cases don't need to be huge to cope with multiple video cards, just deep. Take any mid-range case that allows you flexible placement of 120mm fans across the front bays and line up those fans so that they each push air directly past the CPU and GPU independently and you don't even need discrete thermal zones, because the airflow creates it.
As far as external design... It's a crying shame Silver stone has forgotten their CM ATSC roots, the understated design of those old AL cases would still sell like hotcakes today imo. Corsair understands that to an extent, tho I think they could go even cleaner.
piroroadkill - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
I disagree with the many drive bays thing - I think it's very useful to fit as many internal 3.5" bays as you can - I have an Antec P182 and I'm running 9 drives - an SSD that I cable tied in, and 8 3.5" hard drives (no optical drive).However, we live in a world where CPU cooling issues can be fixed with something like a Noctua NH-D14, and will be almost silent under any condition, as long as you put a 120mm fan in line to exhaust the heat, that problem is solved, so I completely agree with the GPU cooling issue, since that's the thing that will cause the most heat and noise inside a case.
The0ne - Monday, July 25, 2011 - link
Yep, I like having as man internal drive bays as I can for my main computer. But recently, with USB3.0 and such I've started to lighten up as more devices comes out to make use of it. This is because for the most part most of the HDD are storing data, backups, movies, music and TV shows. Still, it is very convenient to have all the drives in one case and at full speed.This case is not attractive.
EnzoFX - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
Agreed. I too would like a compelling reason to upgrade. I think a layout re-design would be great, and easy for them to do, yet they waste all their time into ugly exteriors and features no one really cares about.How about something with positive air pressure? (Yeah this and other cases do, but most are negative). Get rid of all those 5.25 bays! Fine if you need one, keep one, but make the ones you do put on there have a secondary function, and not just it be wasted space. I also dislike when they add features that other people may add through 3rd party manufacturers, like card-readers, etc. but they are no more better integrated than theirs. If it's coming direct from the case manufacturer, how about integrating it so that it isn't wasted space, or a mess of wires to handle, etc.
SamVimes - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
Right,at the moment most of the cases can be classified into the two main looks, the KITT (Knight Rider) look (with moving lights on the front) and the Transformers look.
When I see the RV03 I'm afraid of pushing the wrong button, not booting my machine but making it convert into a robot, ...
FT02 wft!
sam
gramboh - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
Chiming in to agree with you here. The FT02 is a nice, subtle, high quality looking enclosure. Excited for a new product from Silverstone, I took one look at the first picture of this thing and didn't even bother reading the review.There is a big segment within the enthusiast sector that wants high quality materials, sleek, understated looking cases like the Antec P180/182/183, FT02, Corsair 650D etc. Personally I prefer an option for a window-less side panel as well.
I get there is still a bling contingent who like the hideous stuff that Thermaltake and others put out.
Zoeff - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
I don't understand the reason why this case exists when you can get the RV02-E if you pay 10 more euros. (This case is mostly identical to the FT-02 that the reviewer mentions)This is what I did and many of the flaws of this case don't exist. The mechanical HDD's are properly cooled by a 180mm fan, the PSU length is of no concern and the design is much more simplistic which would appeal to a wider audience. How a case looks like isn't usually what makes or breaks a decision for me but that's just too flashy for me.