SilverStone RV01 Raven Case Review

Interior Impressions Con't

At the top of the Raven we of course have the components normally found along the back other cases. As mentioned earlier in this review, the peripheral slots' blanking plates are nicely ventilated which turns them into what SilverStone calls their PCI "AeroSlot" covers. These PCI slots use the more old school, retention method of screws; on this case they are not even thumb screws which are easy tightened; rather they are the regular old, old school ones which require a screwdriver. We can understand why SilverStone did not opt for a tool-free as the old screw method may give you a certain comfort factor considering your expensive GPU is hanging on its side. However, would it have cost all that much to use thumb screws?


To further help reassure you, SilverStone has included a large crossbar with plastic retaining arms attached to it. These long arms are there to further help secure your cards in place and help keep them from being dislodged during a bumpy ride. The ends of these arms have small foam rubber pads on them to reduce any chances of marring your cards or otherwise damaging them. These arms lock into place via a rather nifty plastic ratchet and pawl like setup. If you are so inclined you could remove this crossbar completely as it is only held in place via screws.


Skipping over the motherboard for the moment brings our attention to the built-in six bay hard drive cage. This drive cage uses a drive caddy system in which your hard drives are first installed into a plastic caddy and then the caddy is installed into the drive cage. Unlike the drive caddy and cage setup found in the Fortress case we reviewed a while ago this drive cage and the drives themselves are mounted vertically, or on edge to the fan mounted directly below the drive cage. With all the drive caddies installed (even if only a few are filled) this setup is still fairly restrictive and we recommend only keeping the drive caddies you need to use installed. The upside to this setup is that it is not only a fast and easy way to install your hard drive(s) it is also a fairly secure way as well.


Also on the positive side, this case -just like the SilverStone Fortress once again-, comes with the first bay configured for hot-swapping. This goal is accomplished via a RAVEN customized SilverStone CP-05 adapter. While it was certainly nice to see SilverStone include a Hot-Swap adapter we wish they had included more than one, as most users will have more than one drive. You can purchase CP-05’s directly from SilverStone but this to us smacks of corner cutting. This is not a cheap case, yet this penny pinching does tend cheapen it somewhat.


Moving further on up the front of the Raven we come to the five 5.25 “optical” bay drives. Also like the Fortress these bays drive use a tool-less installation mechanism which is a lot like a rocker switch. When you want to secure your drive you simply push in on the switch and two pins pop out and secure the 5.25 device in place. It certainly is a fast, easy and highly intuitive process though if you wish you can also install screws on the other side as well. All in all, fast, easy, customizable and secure; what more could you ask for in a retaining mechanism?


While the motherboard area maybe laid out slightly differently than a normal one with everything skewed by 90° it does take a moment or two to pick out the finer points of this setup. The lack of a removable motherboard tray pops into focus pretty darn quickly but it does take a moment to notice the cable routing cut-outs. All in all these four cut-outs are not exactly what you would classify as spacious. They are on the small side but they are strategically placed and are rubber lined so what they lack in size they make up for in efficiency. Personally, I prefer four well placed holes exactly where I need them over two large general purpose ones. We will see later in this review if these are properly positioned but on first blush at least two don’t seem to be as they look like they are going to be blocked by the “back” edge of the motherboard (two directly under PCI Slots).


You may notice in the previous picture four more smaller cut-outs. These are not cut-outs per say but are in fact built-in cable clips. When we get to the other side of the Raven, we will go into more detail but in a nut shell SilverStone has taken sections of the motherboard tray, cut C shaped lines into it and stamped these into metal clamps. While this sounds crude, it is efficient and there is no sharp edges present. Heck, the whole interior is burr and sharp edge free and you would have to work mighty hard to get scratched let alone cut.

The only downside to this motherboard area is the lack of information regarding which holes are for what standard. This is something we come to expect from SilverStone and while this is not a problem for most experienced DIY computer builders who are most likely a big part of this case’s target audience, the very least they could have done it included a “map”.


Before we move on I am certain some of you eagle eyed readers out there have noticed one important fact which we have so far failed to mention: there is no cable hole / cut-out for either the 4/8pin power cable nor the larger 20/24 pin main power cable. In the formers' case it is because one of the four included cut-outs will suffice and in the later you are expected to use the large hole in the “bottom” of the motherboard zone and run your main cable up to the motherboard this way. Under normal circumstances we would find this unacceptable to say the least, but this is not a “normal” enclosure and as such the distance to your 20/24pin connector (at least on most motherboards) should be minimal.