I clicked on the link for the forum post and was surprised to see so many posts so soon after the article came out... Then I noticed it was the discussion on the Raven, not the Raven 2. Also, on the first page towards the bottom, the paragraph just ends...



Always exited to read another SPCR review and the detail you guys find. That was an interesting read about the 180mm fans.

So, they really "twisted" the ATX layout around -- 90 degrees in one direction and 180 degrees in another! And it looks like it works: the video cards are able to get good passive air flow, the air flow is straight up from the bottom to the top.

I like it. Though it is bigger than I need.

BillyBuerger --

Not sure what happened there... fixed.

As for the 18cm fans and the honeycomb grill & dust filter, I'm going to be posting a followup, after experiments with some other fans to see if the effect is the same. Ditto with different types of grills and filters. It may change our basic advice about fan vents -- perhaps wide open & unrestricted is NOT the way to go for lowest noise.

This bodes well for the FT-02 given the overall design similarities and much better hard drive cage. Mike - do you know if you will be reviewing the Fortress soon?

Don't have one yet but it looks so similar to the rv02 that there'd be little risk in going ahead and getting one before our review.

I'd be curious about a FT-02 review as well.

It's clear that the engineers who designed this had thermal properties as their number 1 priority...it seems excellently designed in that area.

but who, in god's name, would need THAT many optical drives?!?!1

Well, I use three optical drives when all is good. A blu-ray and 2 dvd/cd burners. Copy to copy no disk imaging, quicker stuff, I get less errors too. I also WANT but cannot fit an LED digital control bay device, never fits in my SLK3000 series. It has a bunch of bays, but using 3 knocks out the other 2 shown. Also, having drives on top of each other causes a lot of heat in my slow moving case. I like having gadgets on my front, if I could add another I would

Heck, I even still own the ciggarrette (forget which letters are doubled in that word) lighter from Sunbeam that holds cups *smoking and dust filters dont mix I found out*

For me, I have gpu and cpu on a Reserator loop. I have a fanless psu. THis really looks neat as my mobo and vga mosfets are not actively cooled. I like the natural direction of air flow and the upwards thrust of air. I actually am going to buy this thing due to this review. That's why I love spcr

MikeC or anyone: being that my phantom 350 needs air DRAWN into it and not pushed through it as its typical design, how would this work in such a case? It seems like its towards a positive pressure system.

IMO, it doesn't really matter which direction the air flows through the PSU as long as it does. Of course, the direction of flow can have an impact on cooling in the rest of the case... I think it would work fine in this case, it is positive pressure. Even with the fans all on low (and top fan on like 7~9V), there's plenty of airflow all around.

btw, if you're interested in a deal on the review sample, send me an email.

nice review, it looked like you guys put a lot of time into it.

silverstone is really coming out with some innovative ideas.

Hm. I might get the unique chance of buying a high end case at a discount.

*cackle*

They're really going all-out with this positive pressure cooling. I have a Raven 2 running next to me right now as well, and I'm really liking the case. Also I DO start to like the 180 mm fans, they're sturdy, quiet and get the job done. Some huge fans seem flimsy and ridiculously flashy, cheap.. Eww.

Good work as always!

I guess it makes sense to not fight convection.

Any idea if they're planning on a mATX or even a mITX case that vents upward like this? I grabbed an SG05 after the review here, and can't help but wonder what a mini-raven would be like. Maybe they wouldnt' have to make their mITX cases out of swiss cheese that way.

My raven 2 arrived on the 3rd and my Seasonic x650 on the 4th. I don't have a motherboard yet for the system so no real testing. First "mod" I did was remove the honeycomb grill from the top of the 18cm fans. Now I may have to reconsider.

I want the dust filters to help keep the system clean but I had considered clipping the plastic supports running through them until I noticed matching plasic both above and below where they slide it. Those too would have to be clipped to change anything with airflow.

The second thing I did with the case was put some foam padding in the front of the case between the plastic and metal popouts. Idea was to help block noise coming out of the front. I also completely removed the hard drive cage.

With the x650 the honeycomb exactly matches the raven 2's honeycomb at the back of the case after I slightly adjusted the screw location holding the x650.

I think it helps that the project leader for this case is also a fan of SPCR.

Out of curiosity, can we install 120mm fans onto Raven Two's bottom to replace 180mm fans? As 180mm fans are very scarce on the market, it would be more cost-effective and quieter to replace them when something goes wrong.

Hi loimlo, if you look at the pic on page 3 I think there are 120mm fan mounting holes in the fan filters. As a 120mm fan has half the area of 180mm fan and that missing half is no longer intake but open it's going to mess with the intended air flow pattern. (Unless you get creative )
Replacement 180mm Silverstone fans are available, e.g. this one or this one.
Not cheap but not out of this world compared to "premium" 120mm fans.
Regards, Seb

Also, you'd be able to fit four 120mm fans (if you mod creatively)

Thanks for all of yours reminder! This case is terrific judging by SPCR review, making the decision of pulling the trigger for a friend in the near future, probably Chinese new year, seems natural. After all, I'm tired of P18x case anyway.

As for fan, since I live in Taiwan, I guess I'll have to find local retail availability. But 120mm mounting holes comfort my worries, thank you.

How much room is there for a cpu cooler? Im looking for something silent with enough clearance for all the ram slots on an AM3 790fx board.

I notice the case has 8 slot cutouts for video cards. I wonder if this would make it appropriate for CUDA supercomputers using 4 double-wide GPUs.

But I also wonder if the case, as big as it is, can handle a full length GPU.

The build uses Radeon 4870 GPUs, but those are only 8.7 inches long. A dual GPU board is usually 10.5 inches long, and from this photo, looking at the distance from the card PCB (not the card's cooler), I doubt a full length card will fit without removing those bottom fans.
However, I may be wrong, it may just be the angle of the camera... hard to say.

From http://www.silverstonetek.com/raven/pro ... 2&area=usa

"Compatible with expansion card up to 12 inches"

I know 10.5 fits without removing fans no problem. Also the bigger cards have been coming with top mounted power supply pins so that they are easier to fit.

I have no idea what pixelfairy is asking because ram clearance for CPU cooler is a motherboard issue. Would have to be an extreamly tall CPU cooler to not fit in this case.

Yep, it will definitely hold 4x GTX 295s. I found a pic showing 4 full size cards (and a water cooling radiator at the bottom!)





I wonder if it would help to mod that side window to add a single 120mm fan pointing at the card tops? Sort of like the p193's (ugly but useful) side fan.

Remember I live in the weird CUDA world where I expect to put 4x GTX295s in this and run them at 100% load for weeks at a time.

I want to get the Raven 2 for its ability to cool quietly , but I'm new to
watercooling and want to know if there's a way to add the Swiftech H20
220 Apex Ultima I recently bought to it without blocking two of the fans as
shown above.

Hello Glen & welcome to SPCR,

You might want to ask this in the Watercooling section?

1. The Seasonic X-650 review at SPCR says it has 31dBA@500W, but the review says the case has less than this with two video cards fully loaded so PS is at 500W. Is this because of PS being inside the case?


2. The Zalman ZM-1000 review says it only has 26dBA@500W. How much quieter would the Silverstone be @500W load with this PS? How much worse @idle (I am guessing still significantly less tha 23dbA since the ZM1000 has 20dBA open in air at idle, should be much less in the case if this is why the case is <31dBA @ 500W load)

3. Why choose the 4870 for the review? SPCR's review of the Asus ENGTX260 says it performs similar at lower noise. How much quieter would the system be with two of these cards (the PS would still be maxed out on fan RPM, but video cards significantly quieter). There seems to be even higher perfomance cards available now with 45nm process technology for lower power consumption even with better performance.

If you look at some of the pictures, you can see quite a bit of venting at the top above the drive cage.
This venting would not seem to be necessary...CD burners do not get very hot, and hard drives mounted lower in the cage would get some air flow directly from the front 180mm fan.
So why not block this off? It can only increase the flow rate over the mother board and the video cards even though the total flow rate may be reduced.
Similarily for the vents parallel to the motherboard plane above the cards...block this off, maybe open up slot cover next to video cards to get the air flow closer to the video cards.
This concept seems to be employed for cooling the components around the CPU...there appears to be an open slot under the 120mm fan to have air flowing close to the surface of the MB here.

Maybe blocking off "unwanted" air exits as described above could get similar coling performance with another of the 180mm fans set on low.

Wouldnt there be less noise if, rather than having one or two fans set on low and the other(s) set on high to have them all set at same speed using a different fan controller that gives the same cooling?

Also the article mentions that a HD can be mounted in the optical drive section...so why not do this, get rid of the HD cage, which should improve the air flow for the second (front) video card, again maybe giving the possibility of same cooling at lower front fan speed?

I saw where someone complained about the case being top heavy since all of the heavy items end up at the top of the case. Was this noticed? BTW, love the scientific design in regards to air flow and heat removal.