More Pics of SilverStone's Kickass Raven Case

By Tuan An Nguyen
published

We seriously can't get enough of SilverStone's new line of Cases: the Fortress and Raven 2 series.

There are endless cases you can choose from, and to be honest, a lot of PC cases are just terrible. There are some that merely look good on the outside, but the insides are poorly designed. Bad air flow, bad internal structure, poor quality craftsmanship--there are a lot of companies out there that just want to make a quick buck.

We're not about cutting corners here.

After my last article about SilverStone's Fortress case, some of you asked for more pictures of the Raven 2 case. Here there are, including a shot of how air flows out of the unit. The motherboard's backplane faces upwards in the case, and there is a standard 120mm fan that provides exhaust flow.

Both the Fortress and Raven 2 have an upwards cable management system. Both cases have a top lid that covers the cables and they're routed to the rear of the case through an opening. The top lid provides roughly 3 inches of moving room, so you won't have to worry about over bending thick cables. The motherboard mount actually seats the board an inch down from the top surface of the case.

The back side of both the Fortress and Raven 2 case contains mounting braces for a 2.5-inch HDD or SSD drive. On the Raven 2, you can see that SilverStone has mounted an SSD from OCZ.

Internally, the Fortress has a vertically mounted HDD SATA back-plane system whereas the Raven 2 does not. While the Raven 2 looks great in stealth-black, the Fortress has a slightly better internal design. Nevertheless, these two cases would win our Computex's Choice award, if we had one. Instead, we're giving SilverStone the Tom's Hardware 2009 Excellence award.

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Tuan An Nguyen
Topics
Cases
Components
18 Comments Comment from the forums
  • scook9
    didnt the first raven model come out like 2 weeks ago, and they have already replaced it....way to go silverstone. The backplane model looks nice, but frankly, for what this will most likely cost, I think I'd still prefer the Corsair case. I just havent had significant enough heat issues to warrant this orientation.
    Reply
  • Excellent at being cool and quiet, now with a hole behind the motherboard tray, cable management, etc., and a lot less expensive than the Corsair. I probably won't need so many places for hard drives as the Fortress was made for. I hope Silverstone releases them soon so we can see acoustic and thermal test results.
    Reply
  • ta152h
    These look like bricks with faceplates on them. They're ugly.

    It's like a woman, (or a man, if you're a woman). Even if she's quiet and cool, you still don't want her if she's ugly. It's reality. They need to spend more time on making cases attractive, since we tend to look at them more than our significant other (or about the same if we hide the computer under the desk).
    Reply
  • glenster
    The Fortress supplies a conventional silver look reviewers have particularly admired, and the new Raven is subdued in that direction and admired, too. If you want a bargain from the Core i7 920 or such, you want it quiet and cool, and these should excel at it. You don't want to spend a lot more for something hotter and louder for the privilege of having something made of the same thing they make beer cans out of that says "I spent too much to show I find beauty in banality." Besides, I tend to look at the monitor myself....
    Reply
  • Ogdin
    The Fortress looks very nice,but the brain dead setup they have for the top air filter kept me from buying one.And the Raven is just fugly.
    Reply
  • redgarl
    4 120mm fans? Does anybody who doesn't own 2 295 GTX really need that?
    Reply
  • JeBuSBrian
    "We're not about cutting corners here."
    Hah! How about running your articles past a proof-reader before publication, then?
    Reply
  • rockerrb
    Ty for this article. I have long argued that the case is the most important part of the computer. Buy a good case and you can upgrade it for life whenever you can.
    Reply
  • one-shot
    redgarl4 120mm fans? Does anybody who doesn't own 2 295 GTX really need that?
    I have 5 120mm fans including the one 120mm fan on my CPU cooler. I think it is necessary as my case stays cool and the noise is down with low RPM fans which move lots of air.
    Reply
  • doomtomb
    I bet the cooling performance on the Raven 2 is awesome with those 120mm fans pointed straight at the graphics cards and CPU
    Reply