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Ah yes, the good old chassis, ever evolving despite following a standard that was ratified back in 1995 and nothing much has really changed with regards to the base specs. That said, many a case manufacturer has come up with its own twists on the standard and SilverStone is one of the best when it comes to making the most out of a chassis.
We got to spend some time with a couple of new models from SilverStone late last week, namely the new Raven RV04 and Fortress FT04.
Although these are early prototypes, the company is planning on making both models.
We’re looking at a pair of chassis that share the same basics, but differ vastly in some ways.
Starting with the internals, you can see that SilverStone has gone away from its unique way of mounting the motherboards with the ports facing up, to simply flipping the motherboard up-side-down with the CPU being at the bottom of the chassis. Both chassis are very similar internally with room for five 3.5-inch drives and a pair of 5.25-inch drives as well as a couple of bottom mounted SSDs. There’s also a card support in both the front of the chassis for full-length cards – which also doubles as an air guide – and one further in the chassis for heavy graphics cards.
There’s enough room for eight expansion cards and the chassis have space for a rear 120mm fan as well as a pair of front mounted 180mm fans. The PSU mounts in the top of the chassis and can have its fan point up and out, or down and into the chassis. Both models have space for an EATX board as you can see in the pictures, although the hard drive cage might have to be removed for some really large boards like the duals-socket AMD board used to demo how roomy these cases are.
The main difference between the two models is that the Fortress FT04 is built for quiet operation and as such comes with foam padding, full manual fan control and a solid door with side air intakes for an overall lower noise level. The Raven RV04 on the other hand is designed to offer improved air flow and as such is has a very unusual door design that lacks sides entirely and a more basic two-step fan controller.
Both models have air filters for the PSU, an air filter for the front fans, as well as two side mounted USB 3.0 ports and a pair of audio jacks.
No word in pricing or planned production of either model and we’re fairly certain some of you will be disappointed by the shift away from the previous design with the fans in the bottom that was blowing cool air up through the expansion cards, but SilverStone assured us that the new design will offer even better cooling, despite only using a pair of fans.
Kitguru says: These should prove popular.
Case has same interior design as most OEM builds. CPU down, GPU up permitting hottest part to exhaust hot air better, ( non reference GPU’s ) Cant wait to buy this with a new haswell build
I just purchased my second Silverstone Fortress FT02 (this time the black version with window as my first from about two years ago was silver with a window) and have no regrets. I really like the 90 degree rotated motherboard design and it is vastly superior to the traditional or inverted ATX layouts as video cards, CPU’s, motherboards, and other hot running components get unrestricted airflow as there are no drives in the way. I have a feeling that the revolutionary 90 degree design of the FT02, TJ11, and RV02/02E is going to be missed as it is no longer featured with the new FT04 or RV04 chassis.
The new FT04 and the RV04 are in my opinion a step backwards as Silverstone went back to the inverted ATX/BTX layout that was made popular during the early to mid-200’s, a time when we had really hot CPU’s (Prescott) and before very hot video cards. Inverted ATX layouts can make video cards run hotter, especially in SLI/CF so it will be interesting to see how these new Silverstone cases perform. I find these new Silverstone cases lacking in terms of functionality (only two 5.25″ drive bays, limiting things such as fan controllers, optical drives if needed, and other devices), plus I don’t like the new aesthetics either. Unless the ATX standard becomes obsolete any time soon, I will certainly be keeping my FT02 Fortress for a very long time to come. 🙂
As a fan of the Silverstone FT02, I’ve been waiting to see what they’d do as a follow up. This is disappointing. It looks like a logically mangled FT02 that was robbed of an intake fan and then placed on its backside. Gone is the ingenious air management solution and massive positive pressure. The case now only has a single exhaust fan placed low in the chassis… where is all the heat going to go? Pooling up near the PSU and slowly venting out the PCI slots? The FT02/FT03 take into account the fact that heat rises, and give that heat an easy path out of the case with tons of positive pressure to keep it moving. Why mess with the rotated mobo design if it brought them so much success? Also, I know its a prototype, but the construction and aesthetics look cheap. Major step back.