- Enhanced Cooling Performance Due to Inverted Design
- Unique Design Stands Out
- Tool-Free and Modular Construction Makes Builds Easy
- Limited Custom Water Cooling Loop Support
- Removing HDD Cage Deletes 3.5 inch HDD Mounting Options
- 180mm AP Fans Are Married to This Case for the Most Part
Installation
Installing the listed test system went without issue. The SSD and hard drive fit perfectly in to the cage as well as behind. More importantly, the motherboard and the large CPU cooler were really easy to install. Routing wires requires the usual amount of patience for any enclosure. For giggles, I installed a 240mm Black Ice and 360mm Koolance 1050 radiator at the bottom after removing the two 180mm fans. That is where things get interesting.
There isn’t a lot of room inside the enclosure for a custom liquid cooling system. A dual or triple radiator needs a pump which most likely means removing the drive cage and mounting the SSDs to the back of the motherboard tray. However, an all in one liquid cooling system, like the Thermaltake Water 3.0 Ultimate, will fit much more efficiently. Keep that in mind when you pick your parts.
Cooling and Noise
The test system was left to idle for an hour and then pushed to full load for an hour. That gave the case a chance to heat up representing a more real world system load. The three hottest components which include the motherboard, CPU and video card were monitored. At the same time, any fan noise from any of the component coolers was also monitored.
Idle temps are nice and cool. Load temps didn’t climb very high. The reason is that the Silverstone RV05 blows cool air from the bottom up directly on to the video card and CPU cooler. That means, the air also hits the heat sinks where motherboard temps are recorded.
Thanks to all that cool air, fan noise wasn’t a problem for the performance system. The stock Intel cooler didn’t get too loud either. The video card was the loudest component which was expected since it’s a single fan GPU cooler. If you have a dual or triple fan GPU cooler on your card, you’ll likely never hear it. You could build one very silent and high performance system with this chassis.
Quality Control
The metal chassis feels quite solid all around. There aren’t any bent or unmachined edges. Everything lines up as it should including the Stealth Locking panels. The plastic bezel and top are made from very light weight plastic. While we didn’t have any problems, we recommend care if you removed the top panel often. Additionally, we did see some unpainted corners on the back side of the motherboard tray. However, Silverstone has assured us that they have corrected the issue on all current batches of products moving into production after our review unit was produced.
Final Thoughts
The Silverstone RV05 is a slight shift in traditional “Raven Series” case design. Instead of boasting a large cavernous interior, designers focused on a slimmed down chassis as well as form and function, leaving out often unused 5.25″ and 3.5″ drive bays. However, it still offers good cable management, removable fan filters, triple speed 180mm cooling fans and space for standard liquid cooling.
The Silverstone RV05’s 90 degree design continues to make cooling high performance components easy simply because hot air rises. That means the air wants to naturally rise up and out the top of the chassis. Our hot Devil’s Canyon gaming system revealed that one could easily build a silent system inside the RV05. There are a couple things that enthusiasts should consider though if picking this chassis for your next build.
For starters, the Silverstone RV05 is setup to support one standard sized 240mm or 360mm radiator. Any customized radiators will need a little modification. The bundled cooling fans won’t work with standard radiators which is a shame. Due to limited space, there’s no real location for a water pump so be prepared to get creative. And finally, if the SSD cage is removed, there’s no place left for a standard platter hard drive. That said, an all in one liquid cooling system would fit nicely without issue.
The Silverstone RV05 can be found from the more popular online retailers for $110-125 US which is an extremely good price for this level of thought and engineering. Given the features, cooling performance and good price, we have no problems recommending the Silverstone RV05 to enthusiasts looking for something that truly stands out.
