SilverStone Raven RV04 - A Flight of Fancy?

SilverStone Raven RV04: A Flight of Fancy?

The SilverStone Raven RV04 is the latest full tower casing from the Raven series. This long-running series from SilverStone has witnessed much change. From the first RV01 to the RV03, the hallmark feature of the series is the 90-degree mounting of the motherboard that the company deemed as "revolutionary". From our experience with the Raven RV02, the vertical mounting of the motherboard allows it to work in tandem with the chassis' top exhaust fan to draw out hot air. Nonetheless, the unique orientation of the motherboard has caused quite a lot of debate among DIY PC enthusiasts, including long-time HardwareZone members in our very own Hardware Clinic forum.

Now, for the Raven RV04, the company has decided to do away with this defining feature; instead, the latest casing from the series offers the option to mount the motherboard upside down, effectively rotating the board by another 90 degrees in the clockwise direction. According to the company, it has decided to adapt the winning design features from its popular mATX chassis, the Temjin TJ08-E, so that extra long graphics cards can be fitted with no issue and that these cards will get dedicated cooling from the large front intake fans.

This casing features a front-to-back air flow cooling system, courtesy of a single 180mm front intake fan. The motherboard is mounted upside down on a removable motherboard tray. The Raven RV04 has adapted the two unique features of the Temjin chassis and doubled the cooling capacity, while sporting a handful of other distinguishing features. Read on as we examine the Raven RV04's new features to see if they run more than skin deep.

Exterior Design

The immediate exterior of the Raven RV04 is made from reinforced plastic while its main body is made from steel. The color of the case is matte black and sports a concave facade, in the form of a hinged front cover. Although the front cover appears simple, the company has paid attention to the little details of the cover. There is a fastening magnet , which is hidden behind the plastic panel, located at the bottom of the chassis. This allows the hinged cover to latch somewhat securely to the chassis.

The cover opens to reveal two external facing 5.25-inch drive bays, together with a pair of its bundled 180mm front intake cooling fans. There is a fine mesh dust filter located in front of the fans to reduce internal dust accumulation. Their operations are controlled by a pair of switches that are found below the last 5.25-inch drive bay.

One of the fan control switches is seen below. It is a three-speed control switch and the other switch is located to its left.

The top plastic cover of the chassis features a rather intricate design, with an embossed pattern that resembles the barbs of a bird’s feather. The ventilation holes are meant for the intake fan of the power supply unit that will be mounted at the top. Near the front, there are two buttons; one for power and the other is the reset button. With the cover open, the actual buttons are revealed beneath.

Next, we move to the side panel of the chassis where there is a large clear acrylic window. The casing's I/O ports are located at this side as well. They consist of two USB 3.0 ports, together with audio and microphone ports. Some may balk at the lack of easily accessible USB ports; these days several casings offer four USB ports. However, this minimalist approach is in-line with the Raven series. The Raven RV02 has two USB 2.0 ports too, on top of the same audio ports. Perhaps it's time that Silverstone revised their design code to appeal to its customers and today's heavily USB-focussed peripheral connectivity?

Moving to the rear of the RV04, we can see that the power supply unit (PSU) will be mounted at the top. There is an option to mount a rear 120mm outlet fan. Other notable mentions are support for eight expansion slots and a removable dust filter at the top panel.

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There are no dust filters at the bottom; instead, we were greeted by the rubber padded feet of the chassis, and numerous options for securing screws. These can be used to secure 3.5-inch drive enclosures, or a pair of 2.5-inch drives. We will see these options in detail in the latter sections of the article.

Interior Design (Part I)

We removed the side metal panels as well as the top plastic panel to have a clearer look at the interior layout of the Raven RV04. According to the manual, the chassis is able to accommodate graphics cards that measure up to 13.3-inch (25.4mm) in length. Due to the upside down mounting of the motherboard, there isn't a need to remove the 3.5-inch drive enclosure in order to fit such long graphics cards. And because of that, one of the intake fans has a direct path to cool the graphics card.

From this side of the chassis, we can see the removable motherboard tray that features a number of cut-outs for cable management. The largest cut-out is for the mounting of customized CPU coolers. The tray has markings to indicate the relative positions for the different positions of the motherboards that it supports. There are also measurement markings in centimeters. Interestingly, the Raven RV04 supports two formats of motherboards that are commonly featured in value servers and workstations - they are the SSI-EEB and SSI-CEB formats. The rest of the supported motherboard formats are the usual fare from Extended ATX, ATX and down to the increasingly popular mATX format.

We mentioned earlier that the cooling options of the Raven RV04 are limited to its supplied front intake fans and an optional 120mm rear outlet fan. In order to examine the front cooling fans, we had to remove a section of the front panel, as well as the 3.5-inch drive enclosure. We can see the bottom 180mm intake fan will provide cooling for the storage drives, especially those mounted in the 3.5-inch drive enclosure. The top fan will provide cooling for the expansion cards installed on the motherboard.

The other cooling option is the rear 120mm outlet fan. As a result, in the event of choosing a closed liquid cooling system for the CPU, the user is limited to one that features a single 120mm cooling fan.

Interior Design (Part II)

To kick off our installation process, we started by examining the 3.5-inch drive enclosure that we had removed earlier. It has foam padding but it doesn't have any rail guides for the 3.5-inch drive. So get ready to bring out your screwdriver should you install drives here. There are also no drive adapters that will allow us to mount 2.5-inch drives. Besides this enclosure, there are two other bottom-mounted 3.5-inch drive enclosures; however, each can only accommodate a single 3.5-inch drive. One of them even has a CPU cooler support arm that is adjustable.

Next, we take a closer look at the drive enclosure with the CPU cooler support arm. The drive enclosure is secured to the bottom of the chassis with four screws. The CPU cooler support arm is fairly adjustable as its fastening screws require the use of a screwdriver. The installation of our 3.5-inch drive was hassle-free; we pushed a front plastic stopper out of the way before sliding the drive into the enclosure. 

According to the manual, these two bottom-mounted 3.5-inch drive enclosures support hot-swappable drives; however, the CP05 or CP05-SAS will be required as additional purchases in order to enjoy this feature. To support this feature, the drive bay has a woven strap that allows the drive to be released quickly, after the plastic stop has been unlocked.

After removing the two 3.5-inch drive enclosures, we installed our 2.5-inch drive at the bottom of the chassis. This area supports up to four such drives. We are surprised by the lack of foam cushions at their mounting options, as well as 3.5-inch drive adapters. The latter should have been supplied in the event we decide to mount our 2.5-inch drives into any of the seven 3.5-inch drive options. After all, SSD drives are getting popular in enthusiast DIY systems.

After the 2.5-inch drive's installation, we proceeded to put back all the 3.5-inch drive enclosures and carried on with the installation of the rest of our test components. One pleasant surprise was due to the company's attention to details. There are allowance holes near the expansion slot covers, which enable us to use our long screwdriver to secure our graphics card. Usually, we would have to opt for a shortscrew driver in order to secure the screws from the interior of the chassis; however, with these allowance holes, the length of our screw driver didn't matter.

As expected, the hardest part during installation was the connection of the power and data cables for our 2.5-inch drive. It involved a fair deal of squeezing before we could attach both cables to the drive. This is because of the narrow space between the two 3.5-inch drive enclosures, as well as the cut-out of the enclosure that allowed us to connect the cables. This could have been avoided if there were adapters for 2.5-inch drive that would have allowed us to install our drive into any of 3.5-inch drive enclosures. Alternatively, pre-prepare your cable routing prior to mounting the 3.5-inch drive cage over these 2.5-inch drives.

From the other side of the chassis, we bear witness to the effectiveness of the cut-outs of the motherboard tray for cable management.

There is also a bundled "VGA supporter holder"; it functions as a buttress support for your high-end graphics card that tends to be heavy. It will help to prevent your motherboard from warping due to the weight of the card.

There are a total of three bundled VGA support claws, enough for a 4-way graphics cards configuration. The claw is screwed onto the support holder while the graphics card will rest on the horizontal portion of the claw.

After installing the VGA support holder, we installed the side panel and the support holder didn't pose any obstructions.

Conclusion

The SilverStone Raven RV04 has clearly broken away from the design tenets of the previous Raven casings. The two major changes are the upside down orientation of the motherboard (due to mounting the board on the opposite side) , and the liner front to back airflow system. This design departure seems to have limited its target audience somewhat. It will only appeal to users who aren't too particular about the limited cooling options. Besides the bundled pair of front intake cooling fans, there is only an additional option for a rear 120mm outlet fan. Hence, for users who want to exercise other cooling options, the Raven RV04 simply doesn't meet their requirements. We are also concerned about the difficulties faced when installing the full load of 2.5-inch drives. The connection of their power and data cables would be severely restricted by the pair of bottom-mounted 3.5-inch drive enclosures. The only way to reduce congestion would be to remove the enclosure with the CPU cooler support arm. But such a move would deprive the user of utilizing the cooler support arm (which is more of frill than a necessity). Some 3.5-inch to 2.5-inch drive adaptors would have solved this concern for most users who don't intend to use all drive bay options, but none were bundled.

We are impressed with the attention paid to the little details of its construct; the magnetic latch that allowed the front panel door to be secured, and the allowance holes that are used during the securing of graphics cards. Apart from these nice small touches, the overall good build and respectable form, in our opinion, such these aren't sufficient to overcome the somewhat restrictive nature of the Raven RV04. For the lack of a better word, the designers seemed to have "narrowcasted" the Raven RV04, restricting its appeal only to a select group of users. These users are likely DIY enthusiasts who enjoy the option to build their own servers and workstations thanks to the ability of the Raven RV04 to accommodate SSI CEB boards. At the same time, these users shouldn't be too perturbed with the lack of additional cooling options. From our guess, such users may be few and far between - especially when you have to fork out over S$200.

For the more level-headed users, you might realize that the simple linear airflow design of the case is more than sufficient to cater to most general needs; more so with twin 180mm front intake fan. The problem really is that of insecurity where DIY users generally feel the more cooling options the merrier, but whether they are utilized is another question altogether. For the extreme overclockers at heart, the limitations are quite likely a big no-no. Then you have the more casual DIY users looking for form and functionality and while the Raven RV04 appeals aesthetically, the minimalist front control options and just two USB ports might not be what one's after. Also, its interior functionality could use a little improvement as mentioned earlier. All in all, the Raven RV04 is more of an acquired taste at the moment and it could have appealed to a much wider audience with just a few tweaks and considerations.

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