Silverstone Raven RV05 Case Review

The Raven RV05 supports a variety of motherboards including the larger SSI-CEB form factor.  As you can imagine this encompasses a good majority of enthusiast motherboards but, not all of them.  The case only comes with seven expansion slots and while SSI-CEB is used on many overclocking motherboards you will have a difficult time running 4-way video card setups in this case. 

In terms of CPU cooling there is plenty of room for a single 120mm AIO watercooler however given the lack of 5.25” drive bays adding a custom water loop will be rather difficult.  Of course the standing assumption with many Raven designs is that you will be aircooling everything and take full advantage of the included 180mm air penetrator fans.

With that said there are a few limitations that should be recognized.  The first is the PSU.  Silverstone made it clear that the Raven 5 has a power supply limitation of 180mm which includes the cables and any modular plugs.  This means your PSU needs to be no longer than 160mm and lucky for us Silverstone has a Strider Gold available measuring in at 150mm long!  It is no wonder they dubbed it the world’s smallest fully modular power supply.

To get an idea of the limitation we have placed a Thermaltake 1050 Grand next to the Silverstone Strider 850 Gold and you can clearly see the size limitation you will be facing. 

Another limitation is in CPU cooler size and if you stick with any of the 120mm tower style coolers you will have no problem running an aircooler in the Raven 5.  However, if you are looking to use any of the new 140mm designs, like the Noctua NH-U14S, you’re going to have a bad time as both the tower and fan extend beyond the chassis.