First Look: SilverStone Raven RV01

Finally someone dared to speak up against that thing.

It is made of the same materials as a 20£ case.

It is ugly (ok I amdit, that depends on presonal preference).

It has little to no cable managment.

A molex connector for a HDD? what did they smoke? I bet less than 1% of those who buy a 170£ case have IDE Hdd's.

Hotswap for one HDD? lol

While it does have its faults, I would not be surprised at all to see this 'vertical' Mobo design adapted for more cases. I can see it being a big hit with smaller cases that are placed in tiny areas so that the heat can escape up top (duh) rather than out back, toward a wall.

that's disappointing. A "vertical" case should never ever have any of these problems. Do the designers not sit down and ask themselves:

1) who is going to buy this case?
2) what do they want to see?
3) what kind of system will they install?
4) what are our competitors doing?

To be honost i was pretty excited about this case, as the vertical positioning really makes sense to me. I would want to see cable management taken seriously inside and outside, space for 6 or 8 3,5" HDDs, a bay for 2,5" HDDs (why does no case have this yet?), less wasted space on 5,25" bays, and a good build quality, be it alu or steel.

Silverstone people, if you read this: do those things first and THEN let the boys at the design office play with their complicated shapes. Please do not compromise on build quality for design. Clearly the plastic was chosen here to accommodate those shapes.

I would rather have Jade Goody sitting on my desk than that ugly POS.

was planning on trying out the vertical aligment myself, but with connectors downwards and modified heatsinks. i'd like to see if it really makes any difference. nice of bit tech to try out for me:d

not a horrible looking case design IMO. terrible cable management design. they should have the cables from the I/O port of the motherboard run down the back of the case inside another panel as well as having a small part that opens on the top to use the extra USB ports and such.

Window could be bigger to show off more.

Make the case out of aluminum!

Either hotswap on all hdd bays or none at all.

I still dont get the deal with make every single thing in a case tool-less. Its ugly!


cool idea for vertical mobo though!

What, no rating? No "conclusion"?

Originally Posted by Rexxie
What, no rating? No "conclusion"?

It's a "First Look" - i.e. Preview. We haven't had chance to install our standardised test equipment in the case yet, so we don't know how it performs comparatively against the competition.

DO NOT WANT

Sinfully ugly, hugely overpriced (to echo the article - £170 for steel and plastic - WTF?) and massively impractical. FAIL.

would consider buying the case to turn it into a big modding project, fixing everything that's wrong with it. ie. rip out the mobo tray and replace it with one from another case that has better routing etc. i quite like the "stealth bomber" inspired exterior, and the 90 degree rotation of the mobo tray is intriguing. might also make it inverted-atx so that the intake on the graphics card is facing the front rather than the rear (going from the pictures not much air is fed from the rear of the case?)

Originally Posted by Sebbo
would consider buying the case to turn it into a big modding project, fixing everything that's wrong with it. ie. rip out the mobo tray and replace it with one from another case that has better routing etc. i quite like the "stealth bomber" inspired exterior, and the 90 degree rotation of the mobo tray is intriguing. might also make it inverted-atx so that the intake on the graphics card is facing the front rather than the rear (going from the pictures not much air is fed from the rear of the case?)

The "back panel" is just smooth so you could easily mod a grill into there for GPU intake?

That's a very strange looking case! Props to them for trying something different though! Looks to me like there needs to be a bit more of a gap between the IO and top shield - that DVI connector looks to be in a badly bent angle!

Having all the connectors on the top is a good idea in itself, not just for cooling. Having to reach round the back of the case to plug stuff in is annoying!

Type 'Epic Fail' into ICHC

More fun than looking at that case....

I'd say they have definitely missed an opportunity to have a large slow spinning intake on the back of the case to provide extra cooling for multiple gpu setups, especially as the intake fans for the gpus are on that side too! I also agree, £170 for steel and plastic is very disappointing.

Does anyone else think:

OMFG, BATMOBILE?

I mainly want the best case for being quiet (for making music with Cakewalk),
cool (for getting the bargain from an overclocked Core i7 920), and keeping the
dust out. I wonder if this case or which could be the one?

Will it Blend? cuz i surely like it better that way :S

I actually like the design but there are areas that I would like to see in a v2.
Such as; brushed aluminium and the rear being able to house a large rad. and provide a mesh.
I might just get something else now...

Good idea and very bad implementation of that idea. It looks incredible big and yet there is no space inside at all, seems they wasted the space on fancy plastic design junk and a motorized door witch is done before and also epically failed in the history of failed PC cases.

Man I really really need to design my own case...

Originally Posted by glenster
I mainly want the best case for being quiet (for making music with Cakewalk),
cool (for getting the bargain from an overclocked Core i7 920), and keeping the
dust out. I wonder if this case or which could be the one?

Look into the Lian Li Tyr, due to the fact that there is nothing blocking the airflow in the mainboard / cpu / gpu area (everything else is stuffed away above / below) the fans can be incredibly slow while still providing enough cooling.

it looks crazy.

i like it.

i dont mind the looks, although i'd never have it in my room.

one thing i will say is that i doubt this will be the last 90degree case, nor will it be the best. the formfactor just makes sense thermally, particularly for sli set ups

Originally Posted by naokaji
A molex connector for a HDD? what did they smoke? I bet less than 1% of those who buy a 170£ case have IDE Hdd's.

Hotswap for one HDD? lol

Yeah, why only one? The hot-swap connector is for a SATA 3gbps HDD, but the power cable coming off it is Molex. I'm not entirely sure why - perhaps it's to link up with the Molex power for the front light (which doesn't show up very well in photography). But it does mean that if you use it, you have to connect the Molex cables for your modular PSU; a bit annoying if you've got a SATA optical drive just to avoid this problem.

Also, what happened to my hilarious pun of using Caw instead of Core? As in, Raven case-raven bird, caw-caaw, Core i7-Caw i7? No?

Hope Tim doesn't think I just can't spell!:D

Originally Posted by Claave
Also, what happened to my hilarious pun of using Caw instead of Core? As in, Raven case-raven bird, caw-caaw, Core i7-Caw i7? No?

Hope Tim doesn't think I just can't spell!:D

I was tired yesterday, I'm sorry. :o

It's Clive who should be sorry for a pun like that. :p