SilverStone Raven RV02 Case Review

SilverStone Raven RV02B-W

Manufacturer: SilverStone
UK Price (as reviewed): £108.04 (inc VAT)
US Price (as reviewed): $189.99 (exc Tax)

Like the dire film Batman and Robin, the original Raven RV01 was an expensive mess of plastic with many flaws. However, SilverStone has persevered with the idea of pointing a PC’s exhaust fans upwards, and has also heavily revised the basic design of the RV01 in light of the heavy criticism that most publications levied on it.

The new RV02 looks far better from a thermodynamics and system building point of view, and has the bonus that the exterior looks like something Lucius Fox forged in his lab.

Rather than sucking in air from the front of the chassis and pushing it out through the back, the RV02 sucks in air from the bottom of the case and expels it through the top of the case. In order to help nature play its part more effectively, the motherboard mounting position has been rotated 90 degrees clockwise so that expansion cards are fitted vertically. This ensures that the CPU and graphics card coolers also blow vertically upwards, and the air sucked in from the three 180mm floor fans can slide past expansion cards and vent out the top of the case. A single 120mm fan in the roof of the RV02 helps your CPU cooler vent its hot air.


Fox (the Morgan Freeman character of the Christopher Nolan Batman films, in case your memory or IMDb failed you earlier) and SilverStone have done a great job of adding desirable features too. In between re-fitting the BatTank, Fox has fashioned some easily removable dust filters for each of the three floor intakes. The RV02 sits on four feet that lift the floor of the case by a good inch or so, giving the intake fans a chance of sucking a decent quantity of air into the main chamber.


The hard disks are mounted at the front of the chassis in a removable caddy that sits in the 5.25in bays. There’s room for three 3.5in drives, with a 2.5in bay elsewhere for an SSD. By using the hard disk caddy, you reduce the number of 5.25in external bays from eight to five. Hard disks are suspended by vibration-dampening rubber grommets, and are cooled by the foremost 180mm intake fan beneath. The front I/O ports are mounted on the top of the case, at the front, and you’ll find two USB 2.0 ports plus headphone and microphone sockets.