SilverStone Raven RV01

Verdict: The laws of thermodynamics aren't enough - the Raven needs to be bolder.

The Raven RV01 follows on from SilverStone's Raven mouse, even though it looks nothing like it. This isn't a flippant attempt to compare a case to a mouse either; the items share little in the way of design characteristics. There's no glowing plastic boil or carbon fibre on the Raven case, for example, and the mouse doesn't look like a space-age tank. The Raven range appears to be rather confused, and this is evident in the design of the Raven case.

The basic concept of the Raven seems to be sound; the case sucks cool air from beneath it and expels hot air from the top. This arrangement is an efficient way to cool a PC, as it uses the thermodynamic law that hot air rises. The case positions the motherboard tray so that the graphics cards sit vertically in the case and can expel hot air out of the vented roof. The Raven sucks in cool air through the vents in the floor and side via two practically inaudible 180mm, 900rpm fans mounted above the PSU chamber. The two vents in the floor have removable dust filters, and a PSU with a bottom fan can suck in air through the floor vent.

The 120mm exhaust fan in the roof is as quiet as the two larger fans, and is mounted next to the I/O shield of the motherboard. This roof section hides the otherwise exposed I/O connections and detaches via two twist-locks at the rear. There's no room underneath the removable roof for a dongle-like device such as a DVI-to-HDMI converter, which is a fairly serious limitation.

The removable roof section also blocks easy access to the I/O ports of the motherboard. This makes the FireWire, two USB 2 and headset connections of the front I/O panel appear a little meagre, even if these ports are hidden under a sturdy beak-shaped flap.

As there are no cable management options on the outside of the case, DVI, speaker and other cables dangle inelegantly. With the Raven's looks, and the way in which it blows hot air upwards, rather than across a desk, this is a big shame, as it's clearly best placed on top of a desk. The hole from which cables spill can be used as a handle, which is useful, as the case weighs 15kg. However, the steel exterior has the same abrasiveness as a £20 OEM case, which is disappointing.

The slide-down panel of the fascia is another weak point. The sliding panel makes an ugly grinding sound as you push it down, and it judders closed in a comically underwhelming few seconds. You can dock the sliding panel so that it's always open, and avoid this humiliation.

If you fancy using water-cooling, you can use the supplied radiator brackets and two pre-cut holes at the rear. However, you have to remove the moulded rear panel to mount the radiator, leaving it hanging from the rear of the case.

<strong>Building a neat Raven PC</strong>

After much trial and error, we cracked the problem of building a neat PC inside the Raven. Step one is to ignore the suggested build order of the manual, which advises you to install the motherboard far too early in the process. Once you've gauged where to route the front panel wires and the 8-pin EPS12V cable, place the motherboard to one side.

We'd recommend using a S-ATA optical drive too, since dealing with EIDE cables is a nightmare. However, the Raven positions the motherboard's S-ATA II ports far away from the optical drive bays, so you'll need to use extra-long S-ATA cables such as Akasa's silver SATA2-100-SL, pictured on the right.

The Raven has five 5.25in and six 3.5in drive bays. Once the optical drive, hard disk and PSU are installed, you should pass as many cables as possible along the rear of the motherboard tray, using the large clips that SilverStone has cut from the motherboard tray. We used the lowest central clip hole to route S-ATA and PCI-E cables to the main chamber.

The narrow cable routeing holes quickly become clogged up. As these slots can't accommodate the 24-pin ATX power connector, this has to pass into the main chamber via the large slot in the floor of the main chamber. This leaves a lot of cabling to tidy in the PSU chamber - these cables need to be tied down, otherwise they'll interfere with the two 180mm fans.

As the manual suggests, you should avoid routeing cables through the hole in the top rear of the motherboard tray. The rear wall of the case bows inwards at this point, leaving no room for a cable between it and the edge of an ATX motherboard. The way in which the drive caddy section is joined to the motherboard tray also makes it tricky to deal with cables. If you plan on using more than the single hot-swappable S-ATA II hard disk connector, you'll probably end up bundling spare power cables into spare hard disk bays. Power cables for optical drives are best routed up the right-hand side of the main chamber. The Raven is very restrictive in how you build your PC.

<strong>Cooling</strong>

As the Raven sports such an unusual design, we wanted to test it thoroughly, so we begged time with Intel's thermal test chamber. This is the test chamber we used for our recent case Labs test. We also used the same components to build a PC in the Raven, which allows us to compare the temperatures of components in the Raven to those of previously tested cases. As with the Labs test, we heated the thermal chamber to 35&deg;C before running four threads of Prime95 and looping the Canyon Flight test of 3DMark06.

The Raven is only slightly above average at cooling. All four key components ran hotter in the Raven than in the Antec Twelve Hundred. The CPU was 10&deg;C hotter at 100&deg;C and the GPU 4&deg;C hotter at 100&deg;C. This is hardly the 'excellent cooling potential' that the Raven marketing fluff would have us believe.

Even the labs-winning Antec Nine Hundred is better at cooling than the Raven, and it costs half the price. The Nine Hundred showed a maximum CPU temperature of 92&deg;C and a maximum GPU temperature of 95&deg;C.

There are obvious flaws in the design of the Raven regarding its cooling ability; there's only 11mm of clearance between the desk and the floor intake vents of the case, and the rear 180mm fan blowing air into the main chamber is less effective than the other fan, as there's only 30mm of clearance between it and the PSU.

<strong>Conclusion</strong>

The basic concept of the Raven seems to be sound - to suck in cool air through the bottom of the case and expel hot air from the top. However, the case design is confused. The rear of the case should tidy DVI and speaker cables, and building a PC in it should be an easier procedure.

The Raven's cooling ability is also only mediocre. Raising it higher off the desk, and giving the fan above the PSU greater access to cool air might improve this. It's an interesting design, but the fact is that the Antec Twelve Hundred provides better cooling, is easier to work inside and costs less.