Review: Silverstone Raven RV01

OK, this is my first time ever trying to write up a review, so bear with me.

My roommate wanted to build a massive new system, and needed a big case to hold it all. After I showed him the novel new approach from Silverstone, he was hooked.

The packages arrived today, and OMG was this thing BIG.

The box was a little dusty, and a little dinged up, but very sturdy. Given the size and weight of the case, it would have to be!

The case was well-padded inside the box, with cushions of soft spongy foam, as opposed to the hard white stuff. Removing the foam, and the protective plastic bag reveals the gargantuan case. As per the norm, a protective layer of plastic covers the side window, inside and out.

The inside of the case are well laid out, and the black paint is sturdy. Expansion card retainer bar is removed quite simply with a pair of thumbscrews on the right. The motherboard tray has several cable management holes pre-cut, each lined with rubber molding. The interior is divided into several "zones".

At the bottom is the power supply, with its own air intake at the bottom. The vibration points for this supply have rubber pads to keep the noise down. To the front of the power supply is a large open area, kind of an air chamber, with a filtered vent at the bottom. This large vent area is there to provide air intake to the pair of 180mm intake fans. The forward fan blows up through the 6 HDD bays and into the bottom of the 5.25 bay enclosure. The rear fan blows up directly across the expansion slots. I was concerned at first that the rear fan was directly above the power supply, but there is ample clearance for the fan to get a good supply of fresh air.

The motherboard tray is non-removable, and even with the retainer bar removed, it was a bit tight lowering the motherboard in without using the cpu fan as a handle. At the top of the case is the mobo backplane and another fan, this one a nice 120mm, sucks the hot air out.

At this point, I was quite impressed. The edges were all rolled for the safety of our fingers (except the one from the lower compartment, where the power supply cables come up into the main chamber, that one was smooth, but not rolled). Even empty, it is not a light case, however. The sliding panel on the front that lowers down to expose the drive bays was a bit finicky, however. It was an ingenious idea, but when open it doesnt take much of a bump to the case for the latch to release and have the door close on you.

As an aside, this case is set up to be water cooling ready. The rear panel of the case is removable, and there are pre-cut ports for the hoses. They even included angled brackets with the case to attach the radiator to the back. The only downside to this is that once you have the radiator on, the molded rear panel is not reattachable.

Eager to proceed, and because everyone wants to see what this thing looks like with something IN it, we proceeded to do just that. Before we started, however, I posed everything for a group photo.

Yes, my roommate dropped almost 3 grand on this system (that price includes the triple 22" widescreen monitors). And yes, he will be joining the 5tb club (6tb once he gets the 6th HDD)

So, a couple hours later, we had it assembled. I persuaded him to let me do some basic cable management, although he was too anxious to get it running for me to correct a couple errors.

Things to note: Seeing as this case is rotated, cable lengths are ALL changed. The front panel connectors are all the way on the left side of the case. AFTER bolting the mobo in, we realized that the cables werent long enough to route around the case, and should, in fact, have come through the routing hole cut behind the board. That said, I am not sure if the cables would have been flexible enough to make it out those openings. I ended up routing the cables along the top of the case with some zip ties. Another point to keep in mind, our SATA cables were very nearly too short. The far right HDD bay, the cable was within half an inch of not reaching. If you guy the hot swap kits for these bays, though, those cables are a touch longer than the default lengths that come with the motherboard. Notably, I was unable to do ANY cable management for the cable running to the DVD drive. In the pictures, you will see that cable strung across the middle of the system. Until he buys a longer cable, that is.

The back side of the case has some built-in cable management clips, and plenty of room for routing the cables. We went out of our way to make sure the bottom right air chamber remained as obstruction-free as possible, and there was plenty of room for us to do that.

Our end result:

System specs:
MSI P55-GD80 Motherboard
8gb of G.Skill Ripjaws series DDR3 1333
2x XFX HD-5770 1GB in crossfire
Intel i7-860
Kingwin Mach1 1000w power supply (LOVE this thing)
5x WD Caviar 1tb drives
Coolermaster V8 cpu cooler (this thing is HUGE)
Lite-on 24x SATA dvd burner w/ lightscribe
Logitech G19 keyboard (he is using his existing Razer mouse)

In Summary:

Pro:
Big case
good airflow
quiet
decent cable management (room for improvement though)
tool-less optical drive bays
water cooling ready

Cons:
need longer than normal SATA cables
weak front door latch (an issue since it is spring loaded to close)
the top handle is plastic. It seems decently strong, but if I were moving this case around a lot, I'm not sure if I would trust it with my expensive hardware.

All in all, a very nice case. The price tag is high, but you get what you pay for.

Score: 4.5/5