SilverStone RAVEN RV02B-EW-USB3.0 Matte black reinforced plastic outer shell, 0.8mm Steel body ATX Full Tower Computer Case with Window Side Panel with 2X USB3.0 ports

Pros: Great airflow. Smart design. My 580 GTX at idle with the fan on Max will cool down to 34c vs 40c with my old case where the card was in the horizontal position.

Cons: Because of the layout I had to move my tower or I could have bought new cables or extensions to connect my monitor, sound etc.

I wish the case had a built in speed controller for the fans.

Other Thoughts: Bought the case from a competitor for a far greater price, sorry Newegg.

Overall happy with the purchase, great case.


MSI P-67 GD-65 Mobo Rev.3
i7 2600k OC @4.2 GHZ
Corsair H60Water Cooler
EVGA 580 GTX Black Ops Edition
16GB (4x4GB) GSkill RipJaw X DDR3 2133mhz
OCZ Agility 3 240GB
2x 250GB WD Caviar Blue
Creative X-Fi Platinum
Hiper M-HPU 1040W
Silverstone Raven RV02B-EW

Pros: Great airflow due to the 90 degree rotated motherboard.

Plenty of room for video cards.

Good cable management setup.

Nice HD setup.

Great setup for going watercooled.

Looks really good.

Cons: CPU cutout is a little too high for the two LGA 1155 motherboards I had.

SATA hot swap connector was not quite right - had to push the connector in one direction and the HD in the other to get them to connect up, which meant taking off the back cover too.

As mentioned in another review, the PSU cutout is a little low for some PSU's. I'm even using a Silverstone ST1000-P, which you'd think would work perfectly since it's a Silverstone, but that's not the case. My PSU sits to high and it's fan is partially covered. I don't anticipate any issues here in the long run, but it's slightly annoying.

While the sleeved fan cables are great, it would have been nice had they sleeved the front panel connectors too and used a black Molex connector for the front LED.

All in all, these are minor issues for me, but they do add up enough to deduct one egg.

Other Thoughts: The case wasn't actually as big as I expected. Coming from a CM Cosmos, it's actually much shorter, albeit deeper, than my old case. However, since the motherboard is rotated 90 degrees, my Raven sticks out the same amount as my Cosmos did from under my desk because with no cable connectors coming out of the back, it can slide all the way to the back of the desk frame. Granted, I'm using a metal frame and glass desk that doesn't have a back 'wall', so this wouldn't be the case if you were using a 'normal' desk.

All minor issues aside, I love this case. Since this was a new build, I don't really have comparable temps from the Cosmos, but on a stock clock, I have yet to get north of 58 degrees on the CPU with Prime95. I'm currently using a Hyper N520 until the Swiftech H220 cooler comes out. Once I have the Swiftech in place, I'll see how the temps go on a 4.7ghz OC.

It is a bit odd that everything is flipped 180 degrees on the setup with the window on the right side instead of the 'normal' left side. I had to rearrange my whole desk and space around it to change from the Cosmos.

Pros: I upgraded to this case after using an NZXT Phantom for two years, and I am so glad! The rotated motherboard configuration really does work, 7-10C cooler than in my Phantom (which had the extra fans installed). The case is also considerably quieter than the Phantom, I was expecting the "Air Penetrator" fans to be much louder, but they are very quiet.

I didn't read about this but one of the HDD slots has a pre-wired power and sata connection build in, so you can literally "plug and play". I really hope in the future, they allow the option to have every drive cage like this.

Overall building my system with this case was really enjoyable, and I took all day installing my components slowly. The system looks edgy yet sleek, has great metal build quality, is quiet, and you can tell the engineers really took their time in designing this case.

9.75/10 would happily buy again!

Cons: Ideally it would be great to have one more fan pulling air out of the top, but as it stands the case is amazing.

Other Thoughts: I purchased this via another popular retailer with named after a popular souuth american river...

Pros: Very Large, moves a ton of air. noticed about a 5-10 degree change in temps from a traditional style case.
great cable management and enough room to fit my GTX 260 wich is a huge video card. very well built, seems very solid and little features that are nice like any place you need to use a screwdriver there are notches in the case for easy access.

Cons: you have to remove the top cover to remove the side pannels. I have 1 of the bottom fans that hits the plastic on the slide rail. The vent on the back for the PSU doesn't seem to line up with my PSU fan, most of it does but it seems they werent thinking about people running smaller PSU's (antec 750)

Other Thoughts: Very nice case, in the future I will buy more of these. as long as I get this fan replaced.

Pros: -Big rectagular window
-Excellent airflow
-Great fans
-Very tactile, very easy to press power/reset buttons
-Dust filters for all 3 bottom fans as well as PSU intake
-Built-in fan controllers for the three 180mm air penetrator fans
-Can fit almost any size GPU, PSU, and CPU heatsink

Cons: -Have to remove the top grill to access the fan controllers
-Have to remove side panel to access dust filters
-Barely enough space for cable management
-Placement of PSU intake cut-out is too low for shorter PSUs as it covers part of the PSU fan
-No grommets for cable management holes
-Not enough tie-down points for zip-ties

Other Thoughts: The drive mounting system is SEMI-tool-less; i.e., the hard drives require screws to be mounted onto the drive rails before the drive rails can be slid into the drive cage.

This isn't a perfect case, nowhere near perfect at all. However, if you're buying this case, then more likely than not you're buying it for its direct, uninterrupted, stacked airflow design. There are many other cases out there that solve all of the issues that the RV-02 has. However, if you're one of those people who would rather have superior airflow & temperatures, then the cons of the RV-02 might be something that you can live with.

Pros: Has enough space for three large video cards (gtx680) without issues. Nice and quiet, even when fans are at max.

Cons: Comes with only one sata hot swap connector.

Pros: Love the layout. Lots of cooling capacity.
The Intel liquid cooler fit like a glove in the upper fan position, looks like a stock part when installed.

It even fit a slightly larger mainboard then indicated in the specs.

Cons: Bottom fans had some plastic overcast on the cages which the blades rubbed on, had to shave that off to make it quiet.
No PC Speaker, swapped one in from a old case.

SATA cages are upside down so the power supply cables are keyed in the wrong direction. THese days most PS SATA power are 90 degree oriented, so I had to find some Y cables to power the HDD. The PS cables wouldn't reach otherwise.

Other Thoughts: Build:
Xeon E5-2670 CPU
GIGABYTE GA-X79S-UP5
Kingston 64GB ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1600
Intel BXRTS2011LC Liquid Cooler
GeForce GTX 680
CORSAIR HX Series 850W PS
2x Western Digital RE4 Enterprise HDD
Mushkin Enhanced Chronos SSD

Pros: This thing is amazing to look at. I love the new mobo orientation that Silverstone has been offering. I was considering either the Temjin or the fortress but preferred the look and styling of this one, and was definitely not disappointed. Temps across the board are down ~5C and runs quieter than any other case I've had. USB 3 on the front is nice. I love the IO ports being up top, making them much more accessible. Plenty of space in the case for any of your hardware needs. Worth every penny

Cons: Well, best case IMO for the opinion. It is possible to find it cheaper if you know where to shop around, but then again, Newegg makes it worth the extra money for their customer support.

Other Thoughts: Very high quality case. Aluminum is solid. You can see quality in every detail of this case. From the rubber grommets in the HDD trays, to the substantially thick window bolted on, not riveted. This thing is nice!

Pros: Heat rises and this case works well to remove it. Three fan switches for fan speed. The stylish elegant look, this case look slick in any room. More Hdd storage than the lower model.

Cons: Although this case will do liquid cooling, it will be pretty cramp in space. If you have a long video card a 120mm triple radiator won't do just not enough room.

Other Thoughts: I was going to order the other model but it was sold out so I got this one instead and glad I made the right move. Just can't stop looking at it.

Build this case around mostly intel products.

Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) LGA 1155

Intel BOXDZ77GA70K LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

x2 Patriot Intel Extreme Master, Limited Edition 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit - OEM

Intel BXRTS2011LC Liquid-cooled Thermal Solution For the LGA2011 Socket

Intel 520 Series Cherryville SSDSC2CW120A3K5 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

COOLER MASTER Silent Pro Gold Series RSC00-80GAD3-US 1200W ATX

Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Galaxy 58NLH5HS3PXZ GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) 1536MB 384-bit DDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card