Silverstone Raven RV05 Case

Benchmark Reviews has published a review of the Silverstone Raven RV05 case today. For comparison purposes, you can see our evaluation here.

Drawing it’s design straight from the RV01, the Raven RV05 continues a trend started by the NZXT H440 with the removal of all 5.25″ drive bays. Without the bays, the RV05 is smaller than many mid-towers while still retaining compatibility for a full range of standard features such as ATX motherboards and power supplies, bays for dual 3.5″ drives and 2.5″ drives, and even water cooling support.

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couple things I noticed, even though as usual the design is something I am very keen on.

The expansion slot area did not need to have something you need to remove before you can add/remove parts.

Case could have been a bit wider so one could use either larger cpu cooler, or add that extra wiring room preferably with a dedicated wiring "tunnel" to keep things tidy. I had a raven 3 and wiring the thing honestly was a major pita.

I understand they wanted to get rid of the 5 inch drive bays, but some of us still use those occasionally and by shrinking the size to much, they end up impeding things that most folks who would but this cost of case use, counter productive is it not.

Would have been a great addition to make the top fan area a 140mm and also add a 2nd fan over the expansion slot area to give extra cooling to the gpu area.

for the mechanical hard drives I suppose they could have went single thick rack all the way up the back wall looks like you should be able to fit 3 of those dual cage things they have there, mechanicals get quite hot if left in a constrained area with no active airflow, open the "cage" up and make it specifically for the use of these while maybe the "front" of the case could have the ssd type cage double thick all the way up the front which seems to not be used much at all with the removal of the 5 inch bays.

Finally I would love to see them do an adaptable design at some point as in it can be rotated 90 as it is now, or, rotated to standard. 8 slots, or even 9 slots would be great as well. At least with mine had issues keeping 2 cards well cooled always the one near the cpu area was quite a bit cooler idle/load then the card that was not airflow impeded 10-25c, swapped cards, same thing.

Anyways, it is a nice case, and overall as usual well thought out design, instead of micronizing it, why don't they go back to the 3 fans on bottom, add 2 to top, and maybe give a way to externally mount rads on the backwall with clips?? and give a bunch of thumbscrews for everything as it is much easier to use these then some of the tight areas many small dainty screws need to fit in.

FINALLY! The trend of removing those stupid 5.25" optical drive bays from cases is finally happening.

Anybody else get a fake Java DL window hijack on the "BenchmarkReviews" site? Pain in the ass.

but as I pointed out, by removing ALL 5 inch bays, they tend to shrink the case from front to back at the same time, which then becomes a PITA for wiring room, even total expansion size, not a good move. For a MATX case, or ITX sure, but a "mid tower" should have roughly the same overall dimensions and possibly even standardize certain specifics like needs to have wiring cutaway for the mains power, and such.

Lovely case really, but there are issues that any maker need to address to have a better product, funny, as there is few cases that seem to look at what others make/offer and rectify the issues to make a better experience for those who would purchase the end result.

A wiring room/ability
B proper cooling design
C proper filtration that is EASILY accessible
D proper tooless designs when they say tooless (like more thumbscrews and get rid of that stupid antec overhang by the expansion slots that makes it look cheap)