Introduction

Early in my career with TweakTown, I was asked to review a chassis for SilverStone, and with it being only my fourth go at reviewing cases, I remember feeling like I wasn't covering all that the case had to offer. The case I'm reminiscing about was the original Raven chassis design, the RV01. While it had the outer dimensions of a typical tower chassis when comparing to other chassis' being released at that time, the similarities ended there. It was the first in using a motherboard orientation that took advantage of convection and was aligned so that the rear I/O faced up in the chassis. It had a cool drop down cover for the drive bays, and from what I remember, as it spent some time in my personal use, it was a great case overall.

Almost a year later, I was asked if I would like to take a look at the second incarnation of the Raven, and I jumped at the chance. Things like cooling were gone back over and improved while the outer look got stretched in length and shortened a bit in height. A huge change from the RV01 to the RV02 was that SilverStone reversed the side of the chassis that the motherboard got installed in. With the RV01 the window was on the left panel when looking at the chassis from the front. The RV02, with the tray swap, has the window placed on the right side of the case. The only real reason to swap it was to offer yet another chassis in the Raven series that could stand on its own while using dome old ideas mixed in with some really innovative designs.

That leaves us where we are today, almost exactly on the two year anniversary of me getting the original; SilverStone has again sent me another Raven. The old adage says "the third time is the charm", and I certainly was sold on the FT03. It seems the ball is rolling for SilverStone with the series of thirds. Let's get a look at the specifications and pricing and see if the old adage rings true here as well.

Update: Since this review had been published a couple things have changed and SilverStone would like me to address these points. First of all, I guess I had accidentally typed that the RV03 only has seven expansion slots, while the chart reads eight. Eight is the total number of slots in the chassis; the chart was the right thing to follow there.

But the most important reason for this update is to tell you that as a result of this review, SilverStone has now added details about what the foam in the kit is for. Not to any of the instructions themselves, but rather in the Q&A section of their site, here.