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The Raven 3 is undoubtedly a stunning case, and a worthy addition to the tower family for Silverstone. On a design level, the simple yet undeniably effective vertical airflow system has always helped reduce ambient temperatures, and the new 180mm Penetrator fans deliver huge levels of airflow to control high performance gaming systems. Our 990x processor at 4.8ghz was held at the same thermal zone as within the Lian Li X2000F.
Visually, the chassis will not appeal to everyone, but the same could be said for the previous version. At least with the champagne stripes, Silverstone are trying to make it look a little more regal, and while it will certainly divide opinion, I ended up liking it, after an initial period of doubt.
We would appreciate a little more metal and less plastic to be honest, but it is a minor complaint considering the target audience and pricing.
While the looks may be questioned, the cooling performance certainly will not be. On high settings, it is capable of outperforming the stunning Lian Li X2000 which is at a completely different price point, costing over £400 at time of press. For £130 the Raven 2 design is going to be hard to beat. The only proviso I need to make is that on high fan settings the noise emissions can become rather intrusive. Low fan settings are much more tolerable and only reduce cooling performance a little.
Internally, the layout is clean, and the engineering quality is excellent, there are no sharp, or unfinished edges to ruin the appearance. We appreciate the side mounted power supply fitting and it works well to isolate the unit from the rest of the system. The design also ensures that cable routing is as painfree as we have experienced, being able to run the power supply cables behind the motherboard plate with minimal effort. Installing hard drives is easy enough on the side of the case inside drive bays, but if you have many drives to fit then the front mounted system isn't quite as intuitive.
Pros:
- Penetrator fans are immense
- case design is well thought out internally
- cooling performance is class leading
- good value for money
Cons:
- looks won't appeal to everyone
- high fan settings are loud
- hard drive fitting at the front is messy
KitGuru says: At £130, this is one of the best performance, gaming oriented cases on the market.
Well im glad they changed the spiky monster design from last year into this. I think its rather fetching.
The fans are nice, the overall design isn’t ugly but I am not sure im sold on some of the internal designs. the PSU at the front from the side? its rather hard to get used to that.
I like it, good airflow, like v2
The gold stripe is a bit different, wasnt it blue originally
I likethe routing arou d the back of the case but i dont like the looks at all.
To me this seems like a bit of a mish mash of a case – nobody likes the racing stripes down the front and whilst it may look nicer in the flesh, very few people will get the chance to view it in person before purchasing.
I think if they had simply updated the superb Raven Evolution then they would have been on to a dead cert – I can see where they are coming from though because adding a 3 to the party probably attracts a lot more attention and therefor more sales.
If they do ever bring the Evo up to date with front intenal usb3.0 headers then I will be on it like a flash.