SilverStone Raven RV04 Case Review
by Dustin Sklavos on June 20, 2013 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- SilverStone
- ATX
Conclusion: Wait for the Fortress FT04
The long awaited SilverStone Raven RV04 is a strange bird and a mixed bag. I liken it to NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 480: for its purpose, it was the best, but you had to make some real compromises. The 480 had ugly power consumption and thermals and nasty noise compared to the Radeon HD 5870, even if it was measurably faster. By the same token, the Raven RV04 has a flimsy fascia and door and is needlessly complicated to build a system in, but offers probably the absolute best air cooling performance you can find.
I'm unhappy with the build quality of the RV04 and the internal design. The core concepts of the design and the thermal design itself are all top notch, but the Raven starts breaking down when looked from a practical perspective. If you're not the type to tinker with your desktop, the slightly goofy interior will probably be a one time hassle. Unfortunately, no matter what kind of user you are, you're going to have to deal with the abysmal door design. Is it worth putting up with?
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As it turns out, there are a couple of flies in the ointment. First, there's the fact that closed loop coolers are becoming increasingly popular, and the Raven RV04 is very obviously not designed for these. There's space to mount a 120mm closed loop in the rear of the case, but honestly if you do this, you're not using the RV04 properly. Anyone interested in doing any kind of liquid cooling really needs to just rule out the RV04 entirely; this isn't a jack of all trades like many traditional ATX cases are these days, this is an air cooling case through and through.
The other fly in the ointment is the impending Fortress FT04. The FT04 and RV04 use the same chassis, but the FT04 should have a higher quality shell and I suspect the problematic door design will be mitigated somewhat. You'll pay more for the FT04 when it arrives (I've heard around $199), but you can also expect it to be quieter and slightly easier to use. Odds are that's going to be the air cooling case to go for.
Ultimately, once you're in the price bracket the SilverStone Raven RV04 is in, you're probably going to be looking for something more specific than a straight up ATX enclosure. The RV04 is able to perform amazingly well with nothing but two 180mm intake fans and smartly designed airflow, which is something that many high end enclosures only wish they could claim. If you want to build a dual or multi-GPU rig, use cards that come with blower-style coolers, and then stick something like a Noctua NH-U12S or NH-U14S on the CPU. At that point I'd be hard-pressed to find a more efficient air-cooled design, and for those purposes I would recommend the RV04. However, given my intense misgivings about the door design, I'm inclined to play the waiting game and see how the Fortress FT04 turns out and I would advise you to do the same.
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genghisquan - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link
The graph really should have RV02 and/or RV03 comparisons. I was already iffy about this case when I first saw pictures of it. Rather than keeping what was great about the RV02 and trying to improve the few errors that it had, it seemed like the RV04 wanted to do something completely new. Why change what was already good about the RV02?JeBarr - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link
I too would have liked to see a comparison with the previous Raven chassis but the designs were so good they lasted far longer than most reviewer test beds.This new Raven, though showing great performance numbers is just so dang ugly. Heck, I'd take the RV03 with champagne trim before getting anywhere near this new pile.
losttsol - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link
Silverstone sure has put out some strange cases lately. Are they under new management or something? Maybe there's just so much you can do with a rectangle? I used to love their designs, but I wouldn't even put them in my top 5 anymore.landerf - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link
What the hell is that? Fucking gross looking. They've fallen far from the FT02 days. All they needed to do was update that and they'd have a real winner instead of this plastic clown.smellykaka - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link
It looks to me like you could make a massive improvement in the look of this case just by removing the front door entirely?smellykaka - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link
Bitterly disappointing, the terrible look and terrible drive layout, because a case with minimal 5 1/4 bays and multiple big fat front fans has been on my wishlist for a long time.JDG1980 - Friday, June 21, 2013 - link
Antec's P280 has a soundproofed front door.Shinobisan - Friday, June 21, 2013 - link
I'm being a bit 'counter culture' and thought I would write out my experience.I was using a Corsair H80 closed loop cooler, and it died. Critical Failure. The pump went bad, and before I noticed the extra noise... my PC was shutting down due to CPU over-temp.
I'm so glad my motherboard saved me there.!
So... my conclusion can be a quote from good ol' Scotty, "The fancier they make them, the easier it is to plug them up".
For me, the closed loop cooler is just too much of a risk. There are too many critical components that can fail and cause bad things to happen.
I went with one of the latest fan coolers now, the Noctua NH-D14. Super cool, less risk of failure.
Oh... also a bit of a note on the closed loop type coolers - specifically radiator installation.
They recommend setting up the radiator to pull in fresh air from the back of the chassis. This is the best cooling method. But only for the first week.
My PC chassis is great, with air filters on all intakes. This keeps everything running nice and cool because there isn't any internal dust buildup.
BUT... the H80 doesn't have an air filter. When I went to remove it, there was dust blocking about half the radiator. So, the radiator was working at half efficiency.
If I would have installed it the other way around, it would pull warmer air from inside the chassis and exhaust out the back. This would have been slightly less effective, but the performance would not have dipped over time. In the long run it would have been better to keep it clean.
Not many reviews cover the dust issue. Short term it doesn't matter (like on these test beds)... but long term... dust will kill your cooling.
HisDivineOrder - Friday, June 21, 2013 - link
Ehhhh... I don't know. I mean, it just seems like to me you're going on and on about how well designed this case is and how it's cutting edge this and what not.It's like they took one of those ancient Lian Li cases I had a long time ago that inverted the motherboard upside down where, yes, you had to go in from the other side. Then they tossed the biggest, most awesome fans they could put in the front.
Is that cutting edge design? Is that amazing? I think I was more impressed by earlier Raven designs and I fail to see the advantage of this one over those designs. At least they had the advantage of pushing air upwards and out of the case. You talk about air moving straight through the case being important, but I don't see how having hot air exhaust in the natural way up isn't the superior way of handling a scenario where a case doesn't have an exhaust fan.
And I also don't see why having an exhaust fan is preferable to having one unless it's the loudest, most annoying exhaust fan in the history of the world. Even a really, really, REALLY slow one would be better than not having one.
JDG1980 - Friday, June 21, 2013 - link
The inverted motherboard tray is actually a pretty big deal. As the review notes, for optimal cooling, you want the intake fans blowing straight at the CPU and GPU heatsinks. But a standard ATX case doesn't do that; instead, one intake fan covers maybe the lower half of the motherboard (including the GPU, if you're lucky), and the other one blows at the back of the power supply, which is usually a waste. The CPU heatsink sits behind the 5.25" drive bays, getting little airflow except from its own fan and maybe a small assist from the exhaust unit. This design has little more than tradition to recommend it. Flipping the motherboard upside down may sound simple, but it makes a big difference because the whole motherboard now gets covered by the airflow from the intake fans. (You could, I suppose, leave the motherboard as-is and put the external drive bays and PSU on the bottom, but no one wants their drive bays down there.)I do prefer the rotated motherboard design, but it is clearly more complex; because of the orientation of the motherboard and card ports, you need a "fake roof" to route the external wiring out the back, unless you want it to look really, really ugly.
The photos indicate that the RV04 has a mount for a rear exhaust fan, even though the fan itself is not included. So it shouldn't be at all difficult to add one if you were so inclined. I wonder if this mount will be populated by default on the FT04.
But I do think you're right about one thing: SilverStone gets a lot of cooling design wins because they have "the biggest, most awesome fans". Nothing else out there really equals the AP181 and AP182. Even cases with 200mm or bigger fans seem to fall behind compared to the SilverStones. And the fans aren't that loud, either. What I don't understand is why, given clear design wins like the FT02 and TJ08-E, other companies haven't specced out high-quality 180mm fans and given SilverStone a run for their money on this turf. I wonder if Nidec could be convinced to design a line of 180mm Gentle Typhoons?