Silverstone's Raven RV04 Case Pictured

[N.Broekhuijsen]

Images of Silverstone's upcoming flagship chassis have been presented.

Silverstone's Raven RV04 Case Pictured : Read more

 

[DarkSable]

Wait, so this is a BTX form factor case? AWESOME!

 

[ksham]

Awww!! Silverstone! They kept the ugly Vs, just less of them.I would've liked there to be less lines.Maybe use a different pattern. On the upside, you'll get positive internal air pressure. 3 fan mounts only? I do like the bigger window.

 

[Matsushima]

What the... Why is it a BTX case? That was 8 years ago. IBM Thinkcentres with Pentium D's or Pentium Dual-Cores.

 

[Matsushima]

The I/O panel and power supply aren't BTX though.

 

[DarkSable]

What the... Why is it a BTX case? That was 8 years ago. IBM Thinkcentres with Pentium D's or Pentium Dual-Cores.

My apologies, it's not BTX, it's backwards-atx. Got the two confused.

 

[Matsushima]

*facepalm* I can't believe I got this confused.

 

[DarkSable]

*facepalm* I can't believe I got this confused.

Hey, I'm the one who first made the mistake; you just ran with my idea.

 

[ShadyHamster]

The case will weigh in at a massive 11 kg

Wish my case was that light.

 

[amuffin]

Less fans BUT more efficient setup. That means quieter and moar performance!!

 

[Matsushima]

*facepalm* I can't believe I got this confused.

Hey, I'm the one who first made the mistake; you just ran with my idea.

I worked with BTX machines (Pentium D, etc) for a long, long time. I was thinking the same as you, and I didn't even notice that my case was reverse ATX! Lol

 

[TonyCa]

This ain't no flagship... this is uglyship.

 

[nukemaster]

While the case may not LOOK great(to some users). It looks well designed.
The sideways design of the older Raven case may have had some issues with some video card cooler designs.

 

[Matsushima]

Some people may hate it, but it is what one would describe as 'modern' and 'contemporary'. For me, I still like the simple look of plain beige cases from ten years ago. But I also think that this case looks cool and is very functional.

 

[moogleslam]

The greatest thing about the previous Raven's was having the motherboard rotated 90 degrees. They've removed that? Now what's special about this case? Nothing. Plus it got uglier

 

[ingtar33]

its not a raven if the mb isn't oriented with the io panel up.
this is a sucky change. they should have called it something else.

 

[rolli59]

Perfect proof of beauty is in the eye of the beholder, functional but fugly.

 

[CaedenV]

Wait, so this is a BTX form factor case? AWESOME!

Not so much.
BTX not only has to do with the 'backward' mounting, but also has a lot to do with the board layout, as well as the mounting points on the motherboard tray.
The biggest thing about BTX is the focus on cooling. This was back in the day of the old hot Pentium 4 processors, and manufacturers were having serious issues with cooling things while staying under a specific dB envelope. So BTX came out which put the processor, NB, SB, sometimes feature chips, and the primary graphics slot all in a single line so that you could have 2 large fans in a push-pull configuration with as little obstruction as possible, and remove the need for specific CPU, northbridge, and GPU fans. RAM, while not in direct flow of this 'wind tunnel', was also mounted in a front-to-back configuration above the CPU and NB/SB chips rather than the normal ATX configuration which has RAM in a top-to-bottom orientation which breaks airflow.
While backward mounted, the IO was still on the top of the case, rather than the bottom like a backward ATX setup.

I loved the BTX standard, but it never really caught on for consumer use. Dell is the only manufacturer to really use BTX on a lot of equipment, but HP has used (or at least borrowed from) the layout on some things as well. Apple desktops (cheese-grater Power Macs) also borrowed a lot of things from the design philosophy, but still quite different in that they put all of the rear IO on headders which connects to the front of the board, and then they cram all of the CPU and GPU resources next to eachother more like a traditional ATX layout, while most of the rest of the layout follows BTX design.

As it stands now, I don't think you can get a consumer BTX motherboard that will run anything faster than a late gen Pentium 4, or perhaps an early Core2Duo because the format died out when die shrinks finally made things run cooler, and extreme cooling methods were no longer a necessity.

At any rate, this looks like a great case. Very glad to see high end gamer cases finally growing up a bit and looking cleaner and more professional rather than an odd hodge-podge of rectangles slapped together. Only question I have is why did they design a high end case with the PSU mount on top?

 

[DarkSable]

Thanks Caeden, matsushima and I already figured out my stupidity.

That being said, it is sad that BTX never caught on.

 

[asiaprime]

I dont' like btx/reverse atx. it leaves the video card fan facing up. it's easier for dust to collect on the fan. I'm lazy, I don't want to open up my case every few months to clean it out. mostly cause I have a case with tiny screws.

 

[twelch82]

I don't really get it. The point of the Raven case line was the vertical orientation of the motherboard, so they could pack that array of huge fans at the bottom for vertical airflow.
What does a 180 degree rotation get you besides making it so heatpipe coolers on graphics cards don't work? Silverstone had better have a big warning about using videocards with heatpipes.
Also, this new Raven is the ugliest one yet I think. The RV02 wasn't bad.

 

[bucknutty]

Whats the point of mounting an ATX board on the left side of the case rather than the right? Is this just for looks or does it serve a technical purpose. I have noticed almost all the HPs we have been using in the office for the past few years have been this configuration. They are not BTX , but upside down ATX?

 

[bystander]

The one thing that caught my eye was they removed the drive bays directly in front of the GPU's, so air can go directly through the case to keep the GPU's cool. I was expecting the 90 degree turn on the motherboard, but at least they are thinking about cooling the GPU, however the CPU will not have as good of cooling as the old design.

 

[ingtar33]

Whats the point of mounting an ATX board on the left side of the case rather than the right? Is this just for looks or does it serve a technical purpose. I have noticed almost all the HPs we have been using in the office for the past few years have been this configuration. They are not BTX , but upside down ATX?

temps/airflow. the hottest part in a performance gaming system is far and away the gpu(s). most gpus (even the blow types) leak a lot of heat into the case. in fact, the nonblowers basically blow the heat straight into the case.

heat rises... so you stick a few high end gpus in SLi, and the ambient air temps in the case will get very hot. by putting those parts under the cpu you're really gimping your air cooling for your cpu cooler. The ambientt air will be rather hot, raising the cpu temps as a result. lowering the overclocks you can achieve.

As a result, buy turning the board upside down they let "convection" (heat rises) work for them. now all that heat energy being vented into the case will escape up and out of the case, and not affect the air around the cpu, ram & nb too much... this will allow you to overclock on air more efficiently.

It's likely a change of only a few C, but it IS a more efficient design.

 

[RedJaron]

Nukemaster, what problems did past Ravens have with Video cards? The Raven 3 is one of the few cases that works equally well with centrifugal and axial fans on the GPU. Either way, the air around the card is getting blown up and out the case.
I agree with others, without the 90* rotation, this is NOT a Raven case. Looks like I won't be upgrading my Raven 3 anytime soon.