Silverstone Raven 5 review

[Thorium19]

Before we begin, a word from your reviewer:

image heavy, data capped people beware!

And now back to the review.

 

Unboxing and Overview
So around a year ago (august 2014 to be exact) I picked up the new Silverstone raven 5. I got it so early I'm likely to be one of the first few people in the UK to have received one. Specifically, as you can see in the image below, I have the 505th Raven 5. After all this time I've decided that it deserves a review, now that my system is complete  (shameless plug to check out build log that still hasn't been updated) http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/194325-wip-branwen-the-raven-rises/
To start with, it comes in a large, coloured box that details the case itself. It’s also red and black. Because red and black means powerful don’t you know? I'm not sure on how I feel with a coloured box, the pessimist in me keeps thinking that Silverstone have spent too much on making the box look nice, and the actual product won't be up to scratch.

Nextly (making words up now as well), when removed, which is very difficult because of the damn push handles in the box, it is held in some very thick hard foam which is unlikely to result in any damage, even after a couple of knocks and drops, so kudos to Silverstone for that. Not quite the Linus approved soft foam, but this is good enough for a sub £100, fairly lightweight case. It is also in a black cloth bag to keep it from getting scratched etc.

And so here we are, the Raven 5 by Silverstone, their latest in a long running series of aggressively styled, bird named cases that have become a major success story for them, even so far as to them making a website specifically for the Raven series.

It is made of steel and plastic, all in black. It is largely constructed of plastic on the exterior, due to the aggressive styling of the case being too difficult to make from just metal. Or at least too costly.
From the front of the case, you can see the beak-like design, with a large white V clearly visible. This bar is the power indicator light, so will be a bright white when turned on. You can also see a black slit on the side at the bottom, that’s for the slot loading optical drive that I’ll get to later on. However, the ability to have an optical drive at all is a nice thought from Silverstone, as I personally still use one every so often.

Now we come to the side, which has a clear, albeit very reflective acrylic window to let you see those smexy components inside, as well as your face when you look in it. I would have preferred a less reflective window, but for that you'd probably need to go for a glass panel, which would need to be done yourself. It is possible however, as the window is held in by screws, not rubber sealant.

The rear of the case doesn’t look like the normal rear of a case. There’s only one “fan mount” and no expansion slots. There’s a reason for this, you’ll see in a minute. Also, a very nice magnetic filter is provided that will help catch lots of that horrible mixture of hair, dead flesh and other bodily remnants. (dust, for those that hadn’t figured it out yet)

Now to the other side panel, this is very similar to the other side, just without a window. That’s kind of to be expected however. There is no bulge for cable management as you may see on other cases. This is to keep the front facing symmetry of the case, but as we shall see may cause an issue.

And so the top, which has an interestingly designed plastic “mesh” to cover over lots of secrets inside.

But before you get to see that, here’s one of the two integrated fan controllers that’re build into the case and are already connected. Sadly they can only control one fan each and are covered by the grille on the top, but they have three settings: low, medium and high. My suggestion is to put it in medium and leave it there if you don’t want to be fiddling around with it.

Now you see the top of the case, with something interesting up here. All of the expansion slots, and another fan mount as well. Now, why would all of these be here? Well you’re just about to see why.

And there it is, the reason for the PCI-E slots being up top. Those two, dinner plate sized 180mm fans blowing fresh air up the case. But these aren’t just any old 180mm fans, these are silverstones premium AP181 fans. (If anyone gets the reference to a certain advert there, you win an internet cookie) these fans have silverstones infamous multi bar grille on the back of them, designed to help channel air through the case in a vortex, instead of it being dispersed straight away like other, airflow based fans. These fans should create two columns of air rising up through the case and pushing them out the top, giving optimal cooling as it goes with the understanding of heat rising, so is pushing the hot air out in the direction it is meant to go, instead of making it go at angles like normal cases. Although in a case with fast moving air I'm unsure on how believable that is.

And here, you can see behind the motherboard tray, where there are two 2.5” SSD mounts, which initially stumped me on how they hold the drive in, but actually only require two screws as the other side is held by some pins that are sticking out. It’s a nice little design that makes good use of the MoBo tray. There isn't much room here, but enough for me to just about fit my fingers around when the panel is shut.

We get on to the main front now, where you can see a 3.5” drive cage, with room for a total of two drives. There’s barely any motherboard tray here you may have noticed, which is good in parts for the access to the backplate if a CPU cooler is fitted (I would advise having a tower air cooler in here, as it will have air from the bottom fans being pushed through it) however this also potentially weakens the structure, which is why there are handles on the top. Not for carrying, although they can be used for that, but to increase overall case rigidity. The PSU is mounted above the drive cage, which means that, with my own measurements, you can get away with a 160mm length modular PSU with the cage in, but any size one really if it is removed. Annoying yes, but that’s something you have to accept. I managed to squeeze a 170mm XFX XTR into here, however I would not suggest ANYONE do this, as the cables are at ridiculously tight angles that is putting unnecessary strain on the cable and connectors. I personally am looking to get a NAS and another SSD, so then I can remove the cage and allow more room for the cables.

And lastly, we get to the dust filter on the bottom. This thing is huge, held on rails, and is pulled out from the front with a little tug from grabbing the base of it. To remove this when you first get it, you need to remove two little screws holding it in on the underside, as otherwise it won’t go anywhere. It's also a rather fine mesh, which is far better than on many other cases that seem to use a loose "net".

 

And this is what a completed system will probably look like with the side panel off

And with the side panel on and running

 

Temperatures
The CPU is stress tested using the AIDA64 stress test for 10 minutes, and the GPU will be tested using unigene valley at ultra with 8x AA
The CPU is an i7 4790k running at 4.6Ghz, cooled by an alpenfohn brocken.
The GPU is a reference GTX 770 at stock core speeds using a 102% power limit in MSI afterburner. The GPU memory is overclocked by 253Mhz.
 

Fan speed |         CPU idle © |         CPU load © |         GPU idle © |         GPU load ©

Low                           37                           84                            35                           85

Medium                     35                           80                            35                           82

High                           34                           79                            34                           81

 

As we can see, temperatures are fairly impressive with an ambient of around 22C. From the results, medium fan speed is clearly the way to go, with it keeping within what I would consider the margin of error to high and all whilst putting less strain and wear on the fan bearings, and also being quieter.

Noise
This is entirely subjective, but at low fan speeds on idle, the CPU and GPU are clearly making far more noise than the case fans. At medium speeds on idle the case fans are audible but not intrusive, especially when having either headphones on or having speakers playing. At high speeds the fans are loud, even when playing games using headphones at times, depending on what is happening. I would not recommend using the high setting, as it is intrusive and unnecessary.

 

Conclusion
And so, in conclusion I think we can safely say that this case is an individual (almost). It bucks the trend of normal black boxes, instead going with a different internal layout that gives it improved air cooling, but this of course comes at the cost of space being wasted in the top section, with the top cover to protect the cables actually meaning that space that could be useful instead houses a bunch of cables and nothing else really, and the cable management space could be bigger with more cable tie points, but when you have thick side panels on it that have a fancy removal mechanism, then you have to accept things like that. Overall, it’s worth the compromises that are made in the space department for the effective and efficient cooling, which is unrivalled by anything other than Silverstone’s own cases.
 

My changes/afterthoughts
If I was to make any changes to this at all, I would probably make it a bit wider, so as to get some extra cable management space in the back, and the top would have a PSU bracket mounted higher up to support longer units with the drive cage in.
Personally I would like to get hold of a popular case like the define R5, as well as an airflow based case with a standard layout like the 450D, just to test how big of a difference there is between the motherboard layouts and cooling setups. I would also like to change the cooler to something like the Silverstone HE02 or NH-D15 to see what CPU temps are like with different fan layouts including passively cooled.

[X_Rated_Box]

Nice rewiew, I liked your detailful photographing showing off everything kind of refreshing;=)

[Thorium19]

Nice rewiew, I liked your detailful photographing showing off everything kind of refreshing;=)

 

I get frustrated at reviews with no images at all, or barely any, and are short with nothing about the overall look and feel, so that's where the detailed, image laden review comes from. I've more of this style planned, especially if I can get hold of some more fans, a larger CPU cooler and a number of thermal pastes.

[spwath]

Nice.

Didn't mention the (somewhat difficult) cable management.

Could just be my troubles with my non modular psu

[Thorium19]

Nice.

Didn't mention the (somewhat difficult) cable management.

Could just be my troubles with my non modular psu

I loosely mentioned it, because I actually didn't find it too bad, although it was a little fiddly. I was more focussed on the actual PSU size as that is a greater limitation in my opinion.

[spwath]

I loosely mentioned it, because I actually didn't find it too bad, although it was a little fiddly. I was more focussed on the actual PSU size as that is a greater limitation in my opinion.

I guess it was just me trying to shove every single cable on my non modular PSU behind the mb tray

[Thorium19]

I guess it was just me trying to shove every single cable on my non modular PSU behind the mb tray

I would use the HDD cage to fit cable in if I had a non modular PSU. Also, I really heavily recommend Silverstone PSUs if people are going to use the HDD cage, as they will fit and have loads more room to manage cables.