Silverstone RV04-B Raven Full Tower Chassis Review

Peter Donnell / 11 years ago

Final Thoughts

Pricing

While it is far from cheap, the Raven RV04 is certainly competitive when compared to other chassis products in this price range. It’s crammed full of features that more than justify the $159.99/£120 price tag. You can pick it up from Scan.co.uk here in the UK for £109.25 + £10.98 shipping, while US customers can easily find it on Amazon.com for $159.99 (free shipping). US customers are getting a great deal here, given that £120 currently converts to just over $199!

Overview

Silverstone have done it again, just when I think they’ve pushed their chassis ranges to one extreme, they go that little bit further. The Raven RV04-B is easily one of the highest quality designs I’ve ever seen from a chassis. There are so many little touches that show a lot of thought has gone into the product, such as little cut-aways to allow easy access for your screw driver, high quality mounting brackets allow for easy installation, rolled edges so cables don’t snag, there is even a ruler engraved onto the motherboard mounting plate to help you work out motherboard sizes and installation methods. Attention to detail really makes the Raven RV04 stand out from the crowd and while I wasn’t expecting anything less than brilliant from this product today, I’m happy to see I wasn’t disappointed.

The front panel design is a stand out feature and it has a rather huge and funky look, but still leaves a massive amount of clearance for the front fans. You often find that front panel doors limit you to smaller side vents so having a big front panel door that is both cool and practical is no bad thing.

Air cooling isn’t dead yet and those two 180mm front fans prove it. There are a lot of benefits to large fans as you can shift a lot of air even at low RPM’s, helping you keep noise to a minimum. Of course if you really want to kick up a storm and put the fans on full, then even the hottest summer day wont stop you from maxing your system. Having two large high performance fans certainly adds to the overall value for money. I’m sure there are a few system builders out there who would have loved more room for water cooling, but having 120mm mount in the back for an AIO water cooler is more than enough for most high-end gaming systems, while the focus on air intake should certainly aid any GPU setup in staying cool.

Pros

Excellent build quality
Unique design
Two high performance 180mm fans included (with speed control switch)
Modular, and very versatile storage bays
Removable dust filters
Removable motherboard tray
Huge top section is ideal for large PSU’s and extra cable management space

Cons

Maybe a little complicated for non experienced system builders

Neutral

More room for water cooling would have been welcome

“This isn’t the easiest system to work with, which could put off beginners, but if you put in the effort to the build and do this chassis justice then it’ll pay off in a big way. The overall design is truly unique and the build quality is as premium as it can get. I really like this chassis; it’s not suitable for the kind of rig I like to build personally, but it certainly has an “X” factor among a crowd of often very similar chassis products we see in this price range.”