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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Dustin Sklavos - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
In terms of physical space, we do at least tell you how much stuff you can theoretically cram into the enclosure. Beyond that I think you're being unreasonable.Getting the hardware to do the kind of testing you're asking for isn't impossible, but it's not really practical either. Having done enough of these tests at this point, I already feel like our overclocked rig is pushing it in terms of just noise.
Also, understand that while multi-GPU subsystems aren't as uncommon as they used to be, they're still far from being the norm, and a good single GPU system is often still going to be preferable to a dual or multi-GPU configuration. The soundcard and PCIe SSD you're suggesting aren't actually going to really change test results either, they may increase the case's ambient temperature by a degree or two at most.
And then, let's say we move over to a dual-GPU configuration. Which cards? Do we use a board with ample spacing between the two PCIe x16 slots or sandwich the cards together to see if the case can handle that kind of load? Do we use cards with blower-style coolers or coolers that exhaust heat back into the case?
Honestly I think you're selling the testing short. Off the top of my head, just from looking at documentation, I'd've thought the Raven would've murdered the competition, but instead its lead is nowhere near as comfortable as I expected and hoped.
Ananke - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
This is one ugly piece of cheap looking plastic. $19 including all fans shall be the maximum paid, before discounts.Totally - Friday, July 22, 2011 - link
Isn't the Raven a scavenger and not a bird of prey?The0ne - Monday, July 25, 2011 - link
They are both. I hate them so much.AEternal1 - Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - link
I've always made my own case contraptions for my computers, because i run insane configurations, and ive yet to find a case that can keep up to my expectations. this is the first case ive bought that i still use.I run my I5 2500K @ 4.8 and my gtx 560 TI @ 1ghz. needless to say, heat is always very hard for me to dissipate in a case, especially since I prefer big air over big water.
I've got nearly every fan option running in this case, I spent about 120$ for extra fans to fit, since most of my extra fans were smaller.
I mounted all 4 of my mechanical hard drives in the back tray, and with this case's thermal design, they all run cooler than they ever did in my open air cases that ive built.
my cpu runs at 40* to 55* with a noctua nh d-14. with the thermal layout i was able to implement with all the fan layouts i had available to me, i can actually put my hands in the case, and one hand will feel cool air, and the other will feel the warm air. thats pretty awesome. i have my cpu air being pushed onto the backs of my graphics card to help cool the backside of them, as opposed to venting the cpu straight up and out. with this cases bottom fans, and then the added fans, it takes all the heat from this area and diverts it perfectly. my graphics cards finally run cooler than in an open air solution, and my cpu stays just as cool as always.
the end result is that this is the first case to actually out perform an open air solution.