Soldato
Hi everyone. OcUK sent me my new Silverstone Raven RV03 case a few days ago, and it's now been up and running for a couple of days (and lots of changes!) so thought I'd post my first impressions to help anyone looking at buying the case. I am upgrading from an Antec 900 I've been running for 4 years or so.
Popped all my hardware from the old PC inside it a couple of days ago, still tinkering so it's not finished yet but so far absolutely love it! Bear in mind the only cases I've ever used are mostly Antec's - 900 (gaming rig), Fusion (HTPC) and 300's (work PCs) - as well as lots of old Dell's, HP's and a couple of no-brand £20 cases, so I am not comparing to any other modern cases out there. Also, apologies for picture quality - camera phone and I couldn't be bothered getting it out from under the desk until it's done!
First impression when installing in the case was confusion. Because of the way the case is laid out it's very different to every other case I've worked on and I found myself actually following the instructions to make sure I put components in in the right order!
PSU - The internal PSU cable wouldn't reach as my XFX Core PSU had the power connector upside down to the way the cable expected. Fortunately, I had looked over the build log on [H]ardOCP so I knew by removing a cable tie behind the front panel it would free up more cable. That worked and the PSU was in.
Motherboard - Motherboard went in next and that was fine. Same as any other case, just rotated.
Graphics cards - again nice and simple. Vertical but other than that, normal.
HDDs - Hard drives went in next and I elected to put all 4 of mine in the back (2 x WD 500's and 2 x 128GB SSD's). There are five enclosures on the backand one is designed for two SSDs. The instructions recommends to top and tail them where I thought it would be neater if they were the same way round, but when I came to plug power cables into them it made sense - same way round would only have left a centimetre or so clearance between the two power connectors and would have caused problems for my cables. I put one mechanical drive in each of the upper enclosures, but later had to move the one from the top, front to the lower back one as my (normal length) SATA cables wouldn't reach it and leave room for tucking it away. If you are planning on using all the HDDs space behind the motherboard, my advice is buy some longer SATA cables.
Optical drives - this was an issue for me. The case comes designed for one optical drive and I wanted to use two. This required removing the next 3 front bays, removing the fan mountings on the front and back of, then putting two of the bays back in. Not a huge job - couple of minutes. The only problem I had was the case didn't look right with the optical drives in and the bezels removed:
Silverstone do include sticky pads so you can attach part of the bezel back onto your optical drives but the pack that comes with the case only had one set of them. In the end, I decided to go down to one optical drive because I don't really NEED two and the case looks so much better with the front bezel on:
Cabling - this was a dream compared to the Antec 900 everything came out of! Because the PSU cables start behind the motherboard there's nothing to hide initially. There is also a hole next to every component you need to plug in - simply route the appropriate cable to the hole and it pops out exactly where it needs to be. This is also the only case I've ever worked on where the front panel connectors (audio, power button, etc) are already pre-wired around the case and come out exactly where they're needed. Plug them in, pull the excess through at the back and it looks brilliant:
After the struggle with the 5870 power connectors in the Antec 900 once hard drives are in, the Silverstone is simply a joy:
I was also concerned about the amount of stuff I have plugged into the PC and whether it would all fit under the top cover (especially the monitor connections - DVI, HDMI and DP-DVI adapter). Shouldn't have worried!
Top off:
Top on:
(sorry about the messy under-desk cables reflected in the window!)
Overall, really couldn't be happier with it. After the squeeze fitting everything inside the Antec, and the resulting cable nightmare, this really is a joy to work with.
Performance & noise - my CPU temperatures have remained fairly stable between the Antec 900 and the Raven, and my GPU temperatures have dropped by approx. 3-5 C under load, which I'm very happy with considering I simply didn't want to downgrade from the 900's excellent cooling, just have an easier to use and more interest case. The fans on low are slightly louder than the 900's at low, but less than the 900's at medium. High on the Silverstone is probably going between the 900's medium and high settings (cetainly a lot quieter than the 900's high!). The case is certainly not intrusive at any point and as soon as one of the GPU's fans start whirring up, it's soon lost.
Issues - I have got a couple of niggles with the case. The included fan controller switches are great and easily reachable, and while the front fan happily switches from low to high, the rear one switches from low to off! I've checked connections and the fan/controller seems to be broken when set to high. I've emailed Silverstone to see if it's possible to RMA just the fan as there's no way I'm RMA-ing the whole case for this! If they say no, I'll just buy a new fan and swap it over myself. The other niggle is that Silverstone only include the correct sized sticky pads to put the bezel on one drive. I would have preferred two, so in my mail to Silverstone I've asked if it's possible to buy these (or the whole accessory pack) separately.
Overall, I really, really love this case and would recommend it to anyone thinking about getting one. Next step is some white lights to show off the inside through the window, then when I'm happy with the cabling strap it all down behind the motherboard - I'll put up some proper pictures when I'm happy with it!
In the meantime, if anyone has any questions I might be able to answer, post them up and I'll do my best!
Popped all my hardware from the old PC inside it a couple of days ago, still tinkering so it's not finished yet but so far absolutely love it! Bear in mind the only cases I've ever used are mostly Antec's - 900 (gaming rig), Fusion (HTPC) and 300's (work PCs) - as well as lots of old Dell's, HP's and a couple of no-brand £20 cases, so I am not comparing to any other modern cases out there. Also, apologies for picture quality - camera phone and I couldn't be bothered getting it out from under the desk until it's done!
First impression when installing in the case was confusion. Because of the way the case is laid out it's very different to every other case I've worked on and I found myself actually following the instructions to make sure I put components in in the right order!
PSU - The internal PSU cable wouldn't reach as my XFX Core PSU had the power connector upside down to the way the cable expected. Fortunately, I had looked over the build log on [H]ardOCP so I knew by removing a cable tie behind the front panel it would free up more cable. That worked and the PSU was in.
Motherboard - Motherboard went in next and that was fine. Same as any other case, just rotated.
Graphics cards - again nice and simple. Vertical but other than that, normal.
HDDs - Hard drives went in next and I elected to put all 4 of mine in the back (2 x WD 500's and 2 x 128GB SSD's). There are five enclosures on the backand one is designed for two SSDs. The instructions recommends to top and tail them where I thought it would be neater if they were the same way round, but when I came to plug power cables into them it made sense - same way round would only have left a centimetre or so clearance between the two power connectors and would have caused problems for my cables. I put one mechanical drive in each of the upper enclosures, but later had to move the one from the top, front to the lower back one as my (normal length) SATA cables wouldn't reach it and leave room for tucking it away. If you are planning on using all the HDDs space behind the motherboard, my advice is buy some longer SATA cables.
Optical drives - this was an issue for me. The case comes designed for one optical drive and I wanted to use two. This required removing the next 3 front bays, removing the fan mountings on the front and back of, then putting two of the bays back in. Not a huge job - couple of minutes. The only problem I had was the case didn't look right with the optical drives in and the bezels removed:
Silverstone do include sticky pads so you can attach part of the bezel back onto your optical drives but the pack that comes with the case only had one set of them. In the end, I decided to go down to one optical drive because I don't really NEED two and the case looks so much better with the front bezel on:
Cabling - this was a dream compared to the Antec 900 everything came out of! Because the PSU cables start behind the motherboard there's nothing to hide initially. There is also a hole next to every component you need to plug in - simply route the appropriate cable to the hole and it pops out exactly where it needs to be. This is also the only case I've ever worked on where the front panel connectors (audio, power button, etc) are already pre-wired around the case and come out exactly where they're needed. Plug them in, pull the excess through at the back and it looks brilliant:
After the struggle with the 5870 power connectors in the Antec 900 once hard drives are in, the Silverstone is simply a joy:
I was also concerned about the amount of stuff I have plugged into the PC and whether it would all fit under the top cover (especially the monitor connections - DVI, HDMI and DP-DVI adapter). Shouldn't have worried!
Top off:
Top on:
(sorry about the messy under-desk cables reflected in the window!)
Overall, really couldn't be happier with it. After the squeeze fitting everything inside the Antec, and the resulting cable nightmare, this really is a joy to work with.
Performance & noise - my CPU temperatures have remained fairly stable between the Antec 900 and the Raven, and my GPU temperatures have dropped by approx. 3-5 C under load, which I'm very happy with considering I simply didn't want to downgrade from the 900's excellent cooling, just have an easier to use and more interest case. The fans on low are slightly louder than the 900's at low, but less than the 900's at medium. High on the Silverstone is probably going between the 900's medium and high settings (cetainly a lot quieter than the 900's high!). The case is certainly not intrusive at any point and as soon as one of the GPU's fans start whirring up, it's soon lost.
Issues - I have got a couple of niggles with the case. The included fan controller switches are great and easily reachable, and while the front fan happily switches from low to high, the rear one switches from low to off! I've checked connections and the fan/controller seems to be broken when set to high. I've emailed Silverstone to see if it's possible to RMA just the fan as there's no way I'm RMA-ing the whole case for this! If they say no, I'll just buy a new fan and swap it over myself. The other niggle is that Silverstone only include the correct sized sticky pads to put the bezel on one drive. I would have preferred two, so in my mail to Silverstone I've asked if it's possible to buy these (or the whole accessory pack) separately.
Overall, I really, really love this case and would recommend it to anyone thinking about getting one. Next step is some white lights to show off the inside through the window, then when I'm happy with the cabling strap it all down behind the motherboard - I'll put up some proper pictures when I'm happy with it!
In the meantime, if anyone has any questions I might be able to answer, post them up and I'll do my best!
