Silverstone Raven RVZ01 Mini-ITX Chassis Review

Peter Donnell / 11 years ago

Final Thoughts

Price

The actual retail price has yet to be finalised as the product isn’t actually available for order from any retailer. After speaking with Silverstone at CES 2014, we can confirm that they’re trying to target $100, although dependant on the retailer I would expect that to be up to $120, or £80-100 here in the UK. It’s expensive, there is no doubt about that, but you every bit the premium quality chassis that you’re paying for.

Overview

I have no intention of building myself a new small form factor gaming build any time soon, but if I were I would happily throw my money down for the RVZ01 without a moment’s hesitation for anything else on the market. I really love (almost) everything that Silverstone has done with their latest Raven chassis and it’s another prime example of just how great their Raven series can be. The only downside I see in my mind is the SFX power supply, they’re a little expensive and often not as powerful as their bigger ATX counterparts. Because of this, the overall hardware you place in the system has to be picked with a little more care. Of course the plus side of the SFX form factor is that it’s super small, leaving the chassis slim and leaving a load of space inside for our other components.

The small PSU is my only niggle with the RVZ01, beyond that I found that there is a whole lot to love about this chassis. First of all, the design is superb and mixes aggressive angles and cool styling flawlessly, there are few situations where this chassis wouldn’t look great sat under your TV and in vertical stand mode it looks great no your desktop too. It’s small enough to be convenient for LAN gaming events, but still big enough inside that you can fit a mighty gaming rig inside. Room for 2 x 2.5″ hard drive and 1 x 3.5″ hard drive means that it’s not completely incapable of a being a decent HTPC, and the option of a large capacity mechanical hard drive for storage paired with two SSD’s in Raid is very tempting.

The capability to hold a large graphics card thanks to the clever GPU mounting bracket and motherboard adaptor is easily the best feature of the RVZ01, one of the biggest issues with SFF chassis is that they’re often limited on GPU size, especially on slimmer cases such as this one, as you can often only install a half width card, which aren’t exactly common place these days. If you’re looking to build a compact gaming system, SteamBox, LAN gaming rig, or you just want something compact and cool looking for your desktop, then the RVZ01 is one superb solution.

Pros

Compatible with larger graphics cards
Three hard drive bays
Great air cooling capabilities
High quality fans and filters included
Can be mounted vertically or horizontally
Durable build quality

Cons

SFX PSU can be limiting for some high-end systems, as they’re often limited to around 400-450w max.

“This chassis ticks a lot of boxes and it’s pretty versatile in what kind of system you can build with it, but the real winner here is gaming. If you’re looking to leap into the world of gaming on your big screen TV, with your own SteamBox, or even just a cool LAN gaming rig that’s easy to move around, then the RVZ01 is one of the best choices on the market”.