SilverStone RV01 Raven Case Review

Exterior Impressions Con't

Moving to the front half of the Raven's top, we come to an extremely well hidden yet poorly thought out front panel. In a nut shell you have a nicely angled cover which does a great job of concealing the various connectors but when it is flipped up, it exposes a fairly miserly assortment of options. From left to right you have a lone FireWire connector (400 not 800), headphone and MIC jacks and only two USB connectors. To us this lack of any e-SATA ports and only two USB ports is not acceptable. Maybe we are being overly harsh; as we consider 4 front USB and 1 e-SATA ports to be the absolute minimum for a case this size, but we don’t think we are being unfair.

The key reason why we do not think we are being overly harsh is the fact this is a case where you cannot easily plug and unplug USB devices directly from the motherboard, making those front USB ports all the more precious. We can easily see many situations where two will not be enough for many of the Raven's target customers. In some ways the lack of an e-SATA port is just icing on the cake insult wise; once again, you will not be able to easily plug an e-SATA capable device into the motherboard. This is 2009 not Y2K and oversights like this should not happen; especially when you are talking about a SilverStone case.


Directly in front of this stealthed panel are the rather large Power and Reset buttons. These buttons are triangular in shape and are flush mounted. The only real problem we have with these buttons is the fact they are both the same size. In the dark, you may end up pressing the wrong button and having a soft reboot instead of a hard one (or vice versa) but this is as we said a minor irritant at best. Also on the positive side is the positive feel of these buttons; they may be made from plastic put they not only have a short throw (something this reviewer likes, as it reduces the chance of useless “half presses”) but a very good solid feel to them. You know exactly when they have been depressed and it reminds us of other high end cases with good circuitry and switches built in. All in all the buttons may be made from plastic but they hide some very good equipment.

In front of the power and reset buttons is a rather large yet stylish Raven logo molded right into the plastic. It may only be a Direct Injection molded logo but it really does add a bit of subtle flair to an otherwise over the top case.


Moving to the front of the case we are once again reminded of a knight's helmet or a gable roof or even a stealth fighter; everything about the front is angular with clean edges galore. However, we do have a major gripe with this aspect of the Raven. To be more precise we have issue with the angular strip which lights up like a Christmas tree when the unit is powered on. There is no mistaking when this bad boy is on as you could probably use it as a good night light…if you are into eerily blue lit rooms for sleeping in that is.


This high visibility strip really is a double edged sword. On the one hand it is easy to know when your system in on or active; but this does become annoying when in darkly lighted rooms. If you are into mood lighting when playing your games and you hate extraneous light sources you will loathe this light strip. If you have your computer in your room and you leave it on while you sleep you too will come to hate it. For everyone else, ambivalence is probably the likeliest outcome.


On a more positive point, and just like a knight’s helmet opens up, or the bay doors of the stealth bomber open up to expose the “accessory rack” so too does this case's front door open up to expose the 5.25 bays. Where the Raven does not rely on the usual front to back air movement scheme, the SilverStone engineers opted to remove the front fan and air intake port. This move in turn freed up a lot of real estate which allowed those ingenious engineers to incorporate a sliding door. With a simple backward and downward push, the door slides into the bottom bezel and is completely out of the way.

Even better than its theoretical advantages, is the fact this door actually works in the real world. With a simply push, the door slides down to reveal the 5.25 bay area. The feel of the door sliding down is very unusual and the closest we can describe it, is it is a lot like opening the long side door on a minivan. It is our belief that SilverStone has set the door up in a dual rack and pinion type setup.

This door is not only smooth in opening it is a self closer as well. When the door is pushed all the way to its full down position, one more push will cause it to rise and slide shut all on its own like an automatic lifting gate found on some vehicles. The only issue we have with this door is the closing mechanism and the door's lack of handles. As time goes by we have to wonder how well this spring based closing mechanism will age. Seriously, if something does go awry, how you will unstick a stuck door which is smooth and has no handles?


When you are finished playing with the unique door and actually leave it open, you are greeted to five 5.25 bays, all of which have black plastic blanking plates. These blanking plates are held in place with small tabs located on each side and are easy and simple to remove. We a big fan of this style of retention mechanism and always like it when we see it incorporated into the design of a case. However, there is no FDD plate included and while very few people actually use a Floppy anymore it still would have been nice for this $235 case to come with this cheap accessory! Also note worthy was how light and flimsy these plastic panels are. These are the kind of cheap blanking panels you would expect on a $50 case not a $200+ case and we were disappointed with them.

Before we move on we would like to highlight and reiterate one point of this case's deign: namely the vertical air movement of this case. The front of the Raven is solid plastic with no ventilation holes nor mesh to be seen anywhere. Most people expect some air movement to originate somewhere on the front of a case, but it makes perfect sense for this case as it has been designed in such a way to suck air in from the bottom and push it up and out the top.


Unlike the front of the Raven, the back is not quite as air tight. In fact the upper-most portion of the back has a row of exhaust vents that give the single large black piece of plastic a rather sinister look. The look may not be for everyone but we actually prefer the look of the back of the case to the front. Under most circumstances this would not be considered a good thing but we think it just adds to the quirky, unique look SilverStone was going for.