SilverStone Raven RV03 Case Review

The Front, Rear, and Bottom Panels

The Raven RV03 has seven external 5.25” bays, and six of them come with adapters inside for you to use as internal 3.5” bays for hard disk drives.

Figure 5: Front panel

The bay covers look solid, but you can remove their front to make them meshed. This is the first time we’ve seen a case where you can choose between using solid or meshed 5.25” bay covers. Removing these bay covers is somewhat tricky; you need to push their latches from inside the case.

Figure 6: Bay covers can be converted into meshed covers

The bottom six 5.25” bays come with two fan holders attached, allowing you to install two 120 mm fans on the front panel. If you decide to install a fan on the front panel, you will need to remove the front of the corresponding bay covers, so air can flow inside the case.

Figure 7: Fan holders

Since the motherboard is installed rotated 90°, its connectors are located at the top panel. The rear panel, therefore, has only a mesh for installing an optional 120 mm fan. If this fan is installed, you “kill” the eighth expansion slot.

Figure 8: Rear panel

The bottom panel comes with two huge air filters for the two 180 mm bottom fans that are located inside the case and for the power supply fan. This is a major change, since with the first and second versions of the Raven the air filters for the bottom fans were located inside the case. Therefore, you don’t need to open your case to clean these filters. These filters don’t use a very good retention mechanism, because during our review they fell several times.

Figure 9: Bottom panel