SilverStone Raven RV03 Review

SilverStone’s Raven cases have a relatively long history. The original Raven was the first case to feature SilverStone’s rotated motherboard design, and the Raven RV02 significantly improved on that design in many areas. It offered excellent cooling thanks to a large bank of 180mm fans, and it looked sleek and elegant. The Raven RV02-E then replaced the three 180mm fans with Air Penetrator models to improve the cooling further.

As with the RV02, the rotated motherboard means the rear I/O panel is found in the roof of the case beneath a removable panel

However, the Raven RV03 is another step forward, and SilverStone has thrown out practically every convention in case design to build a unique chassis. The first of the RV03's features that we noticed was its distinctive colour scheme. Two gold (or Champagne silver, as SilverStone describes this colour) strips run the length of the roof and the front fascia. Whether or not this is a welcome addition is largely a matter of personal taste, but while most of us appreciated the flash of colour, we agreed that gold was a poor choice – a neutral colour such as silver would have been more fitting.

The coloured strips aren’t the only change to the exterior of the case either, as the RV03 has taken on a squat, boxy demeanour. This is due in large part to the shortening of the case from the 643mm height of the RV02 to 570mm; this makes the RV03 feel more compact and chunky, although it can still accommodate an E-ATX motherboard.

The case clearly belongs to the Raven range, though; the front and roof still sport the plated, almost armour-like styling of the first two Raven cases. This has evolved, however, and the removable roof grille now has an aggressive, supercar feel to it rather than the understated styling of the RV02.

With the I/O Ports in the roof, the RV03's rear panel looks plain

Meanwhile, the angular cover for the front panel connections is in keeping with the case’s armoured appearance, and hides the usual microphone and headphone connections, as well as a pair of USB 3 ports. Annoyingly, though, the type of plastic used in the exterior portions of the case felt cheaper and less solid than the plastic used on the RV02.

Removing the side panels reveals that the RV03’s interior has been similarly redesigned. It’s still recognisable as a Raven case, but enough has changed to make you sit up and take note. The first change, which has enabled the case to shrink in depth, is that the PSU is now located at the bottom of the front of the case rather than the upper rear, as in the RV02.

Instead, the PSU is mounted laterally across the case, which is why large grilles have been added to the lower front edges of both side panels. This arrangement necessitates the use of a right-angled PSU power cable, which SilverStone has hard-wired under the front of the case.

Specifications

• Dimensions (mm) 235 x 570 x 422mm (W x D x H)
• Material Steel and plastic
• Available colours Black
• Weight 11.4kg
• Front panel Power, reset, 2x USB 3, stereo, microphone
• Drive bays 7x external 5.25in drive bays, 4x internal 3.5in drive bays 2x internal 2.5in bays
• Form factor(s) E-ATX, ATX, micro-ATX
• Cooling 2x 180mm floor mounts (fans supplied), 1x 120mm roof mount (fan supplied), 4x 120mm front mounts (fans not supplied), 1x 120mm right side-panel mount (fan not supplied), 1x 120mm rear panel mount (fan not supplied)
• CPU cooler clearance 163mm
• Maximum graphics card length 340mm
• Extras Removable dust filters, adjustable fan speed, side window

SilverStone RV03 Interior

Moving the PSU to the front has forced SilverStone to relocate the hard disk bays that are usually housed here. The easiest solution would have been simply to move the hard disk caddy higher, replacing three of the seven 5.25in bays, but instead SilverStone has mounted four hard disk bays behind the motherboard tray.

This is quite a tidy arrangement, and as the PSU’s cables spill out behind the motherboard tray, it certainly makes it easy to wire up the drives neatly. To ensure that the hard disks don’t overheat in this space, SilverStone has also offset one of the two 180mm Air Penetrator fans located in the floor of the case so that a portion of its airflow is directed behind the motherboard tray. There’s also an empty 120mm fan mount on the right side panel, so that a fan could blow cool air onto the back of the CPU socket and the surrounding disks.

The RV03 provides several other areas where you can fit additional 120mm fans, unlike the RV02, which had no extra fan mounts. Most of these are located at the front of the case, with two mounts behind the front fascia in the traditional intake position, and two more on the inside of the 5.25in bays.

Click to enlarge

These mounts provide the option to completely change the cooling profile to a more traditional front-to-back arrangement, rather than the floor-to-roof configuration for which the Raven cases (and SilverStone in general these days) are renowned. For this configuration to work, the front face of each 5.25in blanking plate is removable to allow air into the case. This demonstrates that a lot of thought has gone into the design of the front panel and the arrangement of the fans, but there’s no denying that the dust filters, exposed by the removal of the armour-scale fascias, are ugly.

The RV03 also offers many of the features that are now becoming standard on premium cases. Magnetic dust filters cover both the bottom intake grilles and the PSU intake grille, and all seven 5.25in drive bays have screwless fittings. The two 180mm fans in the floor are also neatly wired to a pair of fan controllers, which are conveniently located in the roof of the case.

Click to enlarge

Building a system in the RV03 proved tricky at first, as the special right-angled PSU cable that’s hard-wired into the case wouldn’t reach our PSU. This is a pre-production issue, and SilverStone has confirmed that the second production run – due to start in May – will use a longer cable.

SilverStone also explained that the issue was caused by the way in which certain PSU manufacturers, such as Seasonic (which makes PSUs for many other companies), mount the power socket. We tackled the problem by snipping a cable tie that held the pass-through power cable to the frame of the case. This is there to stop the cable's output-socket-end pulling on the soldered joints between the wire and the power input socket, so while removing it enabled us to connect our PSU, you don't want to remove it unnecessarily.

Click to enlarge

Equally, you could buy a short extender cable if you’re worried about breaking the captive one, as there’s plenty of room to stow the extra cable. Also bear in mind that the RV03 only accepts PSUs up to 180mm in length, so huge 1kW units might not fit.

Once the PSU was installed, the rest of the build was a breeze. The location of the PSU made it easy to hide its extra cables behind the motherboard tray, and there are convenient cable-routeing holes throughout the case.

SilverStone RV03 Cooling Performance

To give the cases that we review a good workout, we updated our test kit to include an ATI Radeon HD 5870 2GB Eyefinity 6 graphics card and an Intel Core i7-870 CPU, which has been overclocked from 2.93GHz to 3.4GHz using a vcore of 1.305V and a CPU PLL of 1.9V. While this is a modest overclock, our test kit will spend most of its life under high load, so pushing it to within an inch of its life isn't in anybody's interests. More importantly, some poorer-performing cases top a CPU temperature of 80°C, so even this overclock will prove to be too much for some cases.

The CPU is cooled by a Gelid Tranquillo CPU cooler with a Noctua NF-S12B ULN 120mm fan. The NF-S12B ULN is a low-airflow fan, so it will highlight cases with poor cooling for the CPU. We also locked the fan speed on the graphics card to 30 per cent to prevent the automatic speed control interfering with the results, making them inconsistent. After some experimentation, 30 per cent proved to be fast enough to keep the graphics card cool enough in poorly performing cases, while giving better cases the chance to shine.

We recorded the temperature of the CPU using RealTemp, noting the temperature of the hottest core, and used GPU-Z to log the temperature of the graphics card. Having recorded the ambient temperature in front of the main air intake of each case, we were then able to calculate the delta T - the difference between the ambient temperature of our lab and the temperature of the hardware.

As we don't test in a temperature-controlled lab, this allows for small changes in ambient air temperature, which renders absolute temperature measurements of the hardware useless. To load the system, we used a combination of the Canyon Flight benchmark in 3DMark06 and the smallfft test in Prime 95. We looped each test for a minimum of 30 minutes, or until the temperatures plateaued, and recorded the highest temperature in the log files. The combined test represents a worst-case scenario, with both the CPU and graphics card under sustained high load.

• CPU: Intel Core i7-870 CPU overclocked to 3.4GHz
• Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 5870 2GB Eyefinity 6
• Motherboard: Biostar TPower I55
• RAM: 2x 2GB OCZ 1,866MHz DDR3
• Hard Drive: 160GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9
• Heatsink: Gelid Tranquillo with a Noctua NF-S12B ULN fan
• Power Supply: Seasonic M12D SS-850EM

Performance Analysis

With both 180mm fans at their quiet minimum speed, the RV03 cooled our test CPU to a delta T of 48˚C – exactly the same result that the RV02 achieved with its fans at minimum speed. This is a little way behind other cases we’ve seen, such as the Antec Dark Fleet DF-85 or SilverStone’s own Fortress FT02, but it’s still a solid result.

The RV03 was also a few degrees away from matching the FT02 and RV02 for graphics card cooling, as it could only achieve a GPU delta T of 44^oC with its fans on minimum speed. This is only an average result, which put it behind cases such as the Define R3, although only by a degree or two.

With its fans ramped up to their full speed, the RV03’s cooling was slightly better; its CPU delta T of 45˚C was one of the best we’ve seen and was bettered only by monstrously huge cases such as the SilverStone Temjin TJ11 and the Antec Dark Fleet DF-85.

Its GPU delta T also dropped to a reading of 42˚C. This may only look like a mid table result, but in reality it’s only two degrees behind the RV02, which sits near the top of the table.

However, the extra venting that SilverStone has added to the RV03 made it noticeably louder than both the FT02 and RV02. These vents not only leaked the sound produced by the Air Penetrator fans, but also enabled us to hear the whine of our graphics card cooler more clearly.

Click to enlarge

Conclusion

The RV03 is an interesting development of the Raven line of cases. The internal changes have brought a few advantages, such as easy cable routeing and a more compact size. However, the six empty fan mounts conflict with the default floor-to-roof cooling arrangement and effectively undermine it. While they offer flexibility, they also allow too much sound to escape and necessitate the complex arrangement with the front fascia blanking plates, adding unnecessary cost.

Comparatively, the RV02’s uncompromising focus on floor-to-roof cooling is superior to the RV03’s all-things-to-all men approach. Not only was the RV02 more effective at cooling, but it was more refined too. The RV03 is a decent case in some respects, but it's also disappointing that it falls short of the high standards set by the RV02.

• Value
  17 / 20
• Cooling
  25 / 30
• Features
  18 / 20
• Design
  23 / 30

Score guide
Where to buy

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2011/06/08/silverstone-raven-rv03-review/4