Computex: SilverStone unveils the Raven RV04 and Fortress FT04

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.

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