SilverStone Raven RV04 Case Review
by Dustin Sklavos on June 20, 2013 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- SilverStone
- ATX
Noise and Thermal Testing
Since the SilverStone Raven RV04 includes fan control for both intake fans, I tested it at each of the three settings. What I found interesting, and I'm sure you will, too, is the way this $159 case performs compared to others in its class. Most other cases have more fans (some, like the Rosewill Blackhawk Ultra, have a lot more fans); the Raven RV04 is getting by with just two 180mm intakes and no exhaust fans.
Ambient temperature during testing hovered between 23C and 24C.
I consistently found throughout testing that the "medium" fan setting was the best choice for the RV04. Graphics card thermals are competitive at stock speeds, but the CPU runs cooler than every other case I've tested, and often by a substantial margin.
Noise levels aren't going to set the world on fire, but they're not awful either. Users who want to have more fine-grained control over fan speeds will want to switch to an analog fan control; swapping out the 180mm fans is likely possible but not worthwhile.
When we overclock the system, the RV04 starts to show its true colors.
The processor continues to run incredibly frosty, with only the powerful Rosewill Blackhawk Ultra even competing with the Raven's performance here. Graphics card performance, on the other hand, is very middle of the road.
The Blackhawk Ultra has to run 2dB louder to compete with the Raven RV04's thermal performance, and it's the second best case at cooling the CPU. Noise levels once again aren't excellent, and the ASUS GeForce GTX 560 Ti generates a tremendous amount of noise when heavily overvolted and overclocked, but we're still competitive. What's clear is that for serious workloads, the "low" fan setting is out of the question.
I saved the best for last, though. I had a hunch the full fat testbed would really show off the Raven RV04, and it turns out I was right.
At this point, what's abundantly clear to me is that the Raven RV04 is going to be one of the best cases you can purchase if you plan on air cooling your processor. In a traditional ATX enclosure design, an exhaust fan is needed to help direct airflow from the CPU cooler, but the RV04 genuinely does not need one. Graphics card temperatures are also quite good; the two GTX 580s we use for the full fat testbed have blower style coolers instead of open air coolers like the one on our GTX 560 Ti, and blower coolers seem to benefit tremendously from the RV04's design.
The full fat testbed tends to be a monster when it comes to noise levels as well, but the medium fan setting of the Raven RV04 is able to provide the best balance of noise and thermal performance. While the Raven was providing stellar CPU performance and merely competitive GPU performance in our stock and overclocked testbeds, it outright sweeps the full fat testbed.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
26 Comments
View All Comments
maximumGPU - Friday, June 21, 2013 - link
to be honest the AP's have killer airflow, but i think they tend towards the "loud" side of the equation a bit too much for my taste. If there was a 180mm fan out there with similar airflow but quieter i'd change my AP's in a heartbeat.JDG1980 - Saturday, June 22, 2013 - link
Did you try the AP182? It has an analog controller built in so that it can be adjusted to exactly the speed/noise level you want. And its controller has the same screw spacing as the switch on the AP181, so you can integrate it into a TJ08-E or FT02 and mount the potentiometer in the same place the speed switch on the old fan was.Impulses - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
I think you and the industry in general are over thinking this... Straight airflow was prefectly achievable with some of the oldest ATX cases out there, most of them just had oddly placed fan mounts... Straight airflow with a standard ATX case only became harder to work out when they started putting the PSU at the bottom which then brought the drive bays in line with the CPU/RAM (and with this case we've now come full circle, it'd work equally well if you flipped it all around and would probably leave more bay room on the bottom).I have an old/cheap Thermaltake case I've clung to because the front fan mount (s) were tied to the hard drive bay, which could be placed at any point in the 5.25" stack... Thus, I've got am optical driveand card reader in line with the PSU at the top, a fan mount just below that in line with the CPU fan, and some freedom to configure either front or side intake for the GPUs depending on whether I'm running blower style coolers or open ones...
The only thing wrong with the original ATX spec was the position of the fan mounts and the industry's obsession with having a smorgasbord of 5.25" bays on nine out of ten cases. Even having the PSU near the CPU isn't a big deal anymore with current CPU/PSU designs, certainly no worse than having it next to several GPUs that can get 10-20 degrees hotter than any CPU (each!). It baffles me that everyone keeps flirting with so many oddball designs and ignoring the plainly obvious, the more you mangle a case's flow of air the worse it'll do.
genghisquan - Friday, June 21, 2013 - link
While he did praise the cases's airflow/cooling abilities, the author points out several flaws in this case's design. I didn't get the "on and on" vibe that you were talkin' about. However, I still have to agree with you that the earlier Raven designs were way better than this.7amood - Friday, June 21, 2013 - link
I love the case internal design but I hate all the plastic. I'll wait for the TJ04 maybe they will use an easily removable front door rather than using this stupid hinge door.Shiitaki - Friday, June 21, 2013 - link
I currently have the Raven RV03 case and love the original design of rotating the motherboard. The included fans on the bottom should be 200mm, and quieter ones would be an improvement. The big reason for me was the ease of connecting things, not having to crawl under the desk, and reach behind the case. I keep it on the floor, as most people with large cases do. The RV04 is just a case, like any other. There's nothing novel or original about it. Antec used a similar cooling design of blowing air from front to back 15 years ago. Considering how much work it is to assemble a Silverstone case, without a justification, it's just going to be an annoyance to build for no reason.