Silverstone Raven RVX01 Mid-Tower Chassis Review

Peter Donnell / 9 years ago

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The Silverstone Raven RVX01 is available from Scan Computers for a very reasonable £64.99 for the non-windowed version, the very same one we reviewed today. The windowed version isn’t much more, at just £68.95. That’s a strong place to be for a stylish gaming chassis, but great value for money given the design and the three high-quality fans which come pre-installed.

Overview

I absolutely love this chassis, although I must admit that it isn’t exactly perfect, I can see why Silverstone have made certain design choices to help balance the overall price and practicality of the RVX01. I like a chassis that I can quickly open and clean, maintain, remove and install hardware in, but the RVX01 isn’t quite one of them. To get in, you need to remove the top panel thumb screws, then that panel, then it’s time to get out the screwdriver and lift the panels out; hardly a deal breaker, but a little more cumbersome that I’m used to. On the interior, there’s a huge hard drive mounting panel fixed in place, which is handy for drives, but it leaves little moving room inside for installing your hardware, of course, there’s just enough room to do so. Decisions like this have their plus side though, as they’re design to reduce the size of the chassis, and there’s no doubt that the RVX01 is the smallest Raven mid-tower to date. The fact this chassis can mount a pair of high-end and extra-long graphics cards, a good size CPU cooler, a full ATX PSU and more, given its compact size, is certainly impressive.

The price is certainly a big win for the RVX01, given that previous entries in the Raven series have commanded prices in the triple figures, and overall the design is still on par with previous entries, as this is one fantastic looking chassis. I would quite happily have this as my own for a gaming build and even better that the windowed model is only little more expensive, making it perfect for showing off your shiny new graphics cards.

The cooling setup is obviously focused on air vs water, but that’s no bad thing. With a bottom to top airflow design, it benefits from the fact that heat rises. Three powerful and rather superb fans cover the entire base of the chassis, blowing air right through the graphics cards and other hardware, finally exhausting the heat at the top of the chassis. Three fans aren’t cheap, so having them all pre-installed adds to the overall value.

Pros

Excellent value for money
Great gaming-focused design
Bottom to top airflow design
Three high-quality fans pre-installed
Three colour options available
Support for large graphics cards
Dust filters

Cons

Installation can be a little tricky (but you typically only have to do it once anyway)
Not a huge amount of storage bays
Limited cable management

“The Silverstone RVX01 is one of the best looking and more compact gaming chassis in its class, but it can still handle a high-end gaming rig, with some not so compact graphics cards. A perfect start to any high-end gaming system at a very reasonable price.”