iSTORYA.NET - Fine Upgrades http://www.istorya.net/forums en Sun, 22 Nov 2009 06:38:14 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.istorya.net/forums/images/zistorya/misc/rss.jpg iSTORYA.NET - Fine Upgrades http://www.istorya.net/forums <![CDATA[T-Shirt Design & Tagline Competition]]> http://www.istorya.net/forums/fine-upgrades/239236-t-shirt-design-and-tagline-competition-new-post.html Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:50:58 GMT To All Istoryans:

We will have a T-Shirt Design & Tagline Competition starting this week.:thumbsup:

The Mechanics:
1. The tagline must be in relation with SilverStone PSU.
2. Post your T-Shirt design with the tagline here.
3. Use single color only, if the T-shirt is black, use white design & tagline, if the T-Shirt is white, use black design & tagline.
4. You can send as many entries you want.
5. There will be only one design to be declared as winner.
6. Deadline of submission of entries will be on November 7, 2009. - Extended until next week!!
7. The winning design will become FU's property.
8. The winner will receive a SilverStone PS02B-W case.:cool:

The price:
]]> Fine Upgrades fineupgrades http://www.istorya.net/forums/fine-upgrades/239236-t-shirt-design-and-tagline-competition.html Silverstone Raven RV02: The Second Renaissance http://www.istorya.net/forums/fine-upgrades/239215-silverstone-raven-rv02-the-second-renaissance-new-post.html Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:19:12 GMT There’s only so much you can do when it comes to computer cases. Sure you can add more fans and make cable management modifications but without science behind it, you’ll probably do more harm rather than improving your computer’s thermals. While most manufacturers go with form over function, Silverstone created the Raven series. Its sole purpose is to create a chassis that has both form and function. Science tells us that warm air is lighter than cold air so it goes up. If applied to a computer chassis, it’s a lot easier to push out warm air if its direction is going up. Most computer cases at this generation follow the design where cold air is usually taken in from the front or the side and is exhausted towards the back. While this design has been with us for years now, it is by no means efficient when it comes to cooling the components of your computer. The first Raven has the principle; it was a ground-breaking launch, capitalizing on one of physics basics – stack effect. Sadly, in my opinion, it failed to deliver what was promised. It contained way too many plastic parts which resulted to it being a lot heavier than your usual chassis; the sliding front panel was a little loud and the two fans at the bottom were not enough to push cold air through the system to obtain a significant difference in temperature. Because of the excessive use of plastics and the full-tower specification, the chassis was a little bit on the expensive side. I’ve had Fine Upgrade’s road show rig for a week before I had to send it back because there’s just no way would the system run for a few minutes before shutting down due to overheating. We are now going to take a look at the Raven 02 and see for ourselves the changes that SilverStone made to the Raven. Let’s find out what they have to say about the Raven 02. Image: http://i631.photobucket.com/albums/uu39/pjconoso/Silverstone%20Raven%20RV02/intro-1.png?t=1256183221 Obviously, the Raven 01 can’t be tweaked much to improve performance so they redesigned the chassis so that it would be easier to produce and more importantly, perform much better. Before we dig in to my simple review, let’s take a look at the chassis’ specifications so we’ll know how it differs from its predecessor. Image: http://i631.photobucket.com/albums/uu39/pjconoso/Silverstone%20Raven%20RV02/specification-1.png?t=1256183327 *Featured Photos and a Closer Look* As you can see there is only 1 exhaust fan and it’s in an odd location – the top. Fear not my dear friends, as I’ve said regarding stack effect, you simply need to push the warm air up with cold air through the gigantic 180mm fans at the bottom. Another thing worth mentioning (although you were probably expecting this) is the motherboard orientation, if this is the first time you’re reading about the Raven series, the motherboard isn’t exactly standing up. We’ll check it out later. Unlike motherboards and other computer components where they’re a lot easier to photograph, chassis are a lot bigger so they require a good source of light, an excellent background and an awesome camera to capture their image. With my cheapo (and borrowed) digital camera, I’ll save my personal photos of the case for the installation and use the featured photos available from Silverstone Raven RV02’s official website. Image: http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/163/rv0202.jpg Image: http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/6135/rv0204.jpg Image: http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/3706/rv0203.jpg The top panel contains the signature LED from the Raven RV01, a v-shaped led that turns on blue when the computer is turned on; a little too bright for some people but it works just fine for me. Front bezel is a uniformed look from top to bottom and later on you’ll find that there’s a tricky way of removing this. Top panel also contains 2 USB ports, a microphone jack and a headphone jack. The RV02 is a little too conservative in here if compared to the RV01 but personally; I’ve not known anyone who uses the eSATA port on front panel before, for mainstream users at least. The tool-less 5.25 bay makes a comeback here, it’s very simple and yet works flawlessly. Only one side is available though, the other side needs screws if you really want to secure the drives for transport. There is one serious drawback to this chassis one should take note; the RV02 is only capable of supporting up to 3 hard drives through the designed hard drive cage. What I don’t understand is that Silverstone could’ve easily created a second cage which should take up the upper 3 5.25 bay. Who fills up their 5 optical drive bay, anyway? You also have a mounting mechanism for your SSD drives on the opposite end of this (not shown). Only 1 SSD is supported which means, there’s no way you can run RAID with your SSD which is a bit of a bummer but considering the price of SSDs, it’s not worth it…yet. Image: http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/5240/rv0206.jpg Image: http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/8779/rv0205.jpg From this angle, you’ll find the top panel where the warm air is exhausted; again, removal is a bit tricky because the cover uses a snap-on locking mechanism where you simply have to pull it up to release which will then give you access to the back i/o panel. The bottom of the RV02 contains the cold air intake holes and the respective rubberized holes for you water-cooling aficionados. There is a very good clearance from the chassis to the table/floor which is about 1.5 inch – enough to provide the system with cool air. Image: http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/2015/rv0207.jpg Image: http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/6154/rv0210.jpg Image: http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/8062/rv0208.jpg This is the heart of the RV02 cooling system, 3 180 mm fans capable of pushing 100 cfm of air at a very quiet 18 decibels at 700 – 1000 rpm. Should you wish to upgrade to a higher-cfm fan though, Silverstone has 180 mm fans with 1300 rpm pushing in 150cfm of air with a static pressure of .48~2.38 mm H2O – whatever that means. The nice thing about the optional fan though is that they come with a fan controller and is colored white which basically matches the black overall color scheming of the RV02. These huge intake fans have removable and washable dust filters to keep everything inside, nice and clean. The honeycomb grills are not only there for protection from the fan blades but also for an efficient airflow. Without the honeycomb grills, air would be inefficiently exhausted to the case where the grills provide a straight exhaust all the way towards the top of the chassis. The lone 120mm fan on top is a reinforcement to exhaust warm air generated by your CPU; however, this fan is only rated at 950 rpm maximum which clearly, isn’t up to the task if you wanted more performance. Image: http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/2413/rv02insidstucture.jpg Image: http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/647/rv0209.jpg Image: http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/4013/rv02back.jpg This is how the internals of the RV02 looks like, as you can see, there are numerous holes that are used for cable management; even the installation of a CPU bracket is simplified due to a hole provided for easy access. Last featured photo is the back panel where it only contains a filtered intake holes for your PSU if you can mount it in this position. The filter is once again, removable and washable for easy maintenance. If you haven’t noticed, the motherboard is not only mounted on a 90 degree angle but is on the left side so the windowed panel is the right side cover. The reason for this is that most ports are on the lower left hand side of the motherboard near the southbridge chipset so if you keep the same 90 degree orientation but mount the hard drive to the right side, you’re going to have problems with connecting those cables from the front of the computer. Silverstone has clearly thought of this obstacle hence the right-side mounting. That pretty much sums it up for the quick tour around the Raven RV02. The next pages will show you how your system would look like during installation. There’s only so much you can do when it comes to computer cases. Sure you can add more fans and make cable management modifications but without science behind it, you’ll probably do more harm rather than improving your computer’s thermals. While most manufacturers go with form over function, Silverstone created the Raven series. Its sole purpose is to create a chassis that has both form and function. Science tells us that warm air is lighter than cold air so it goes up. If applied to a computer chassis, it’s a lot easier to push out warm air if its direction is going up. Most computer cases at this generation follow the design where cold air is usually taken in from the front or the side and is exhausted towards the back. While this design has been with us for years now, it is by no means efficient when it comes to cooling the components of your computer.

The first Raven has the principle; it was a ground-breaking launch, capitalizing on one of physics basics – stack effect. Sadly, in my opinion, it failed to deliver what was promised. It contained way too many plastic parts which resulted to it being a lot heavier than your usual chassis; the sliding front panel was a little loud and the two fans at the bottom were not enough to push cold air through the system to obtain a significant difference in temperature. Because of the excessive use of plastics and the full-tower specification, the chassis was a little bit on the expensive side. I’ve had Fine Upgrade’s road show rig for a week before I had to send it back because there’s just no way would the system run for a few minutes before shutting down due to overheating. We are now going to take a look at the Raven 02 and see for ourselves the changes that SilverStone made to the Raven. Let’s find out what they have to say about the Raven 02.

Obviously, the Raven 01 can’t be tweaked much to improve performance so they redesigned the chassis so that it would be easier to produce and more importantly, perform much better. Before we dig in to my simple review, let’s take a look at the chassis’ specifications so we’ll know how it differs from its predecessor.

Featured Photos and a Closer Look

As you can see there is only 1 exhaust fan and it’s in an odd location – the top. Fear not my dear friends, as I’ve said regarding stack effect, you simply need to push the warm air up with cold air through the gigantic 180mm fans at the bottom. Another thing worth mentioning (although you were probably expecting this) is the motherboard orientation, if this is the first time you’re reading about the Raven series, the motherboard isn’t exactly standing up. We’ll check it out later. Unlike motherboards and other computer components where they’re a lot easier to photograph, chassis are a lot bigger so they require a good source of light, an excellent background and an awesome camera to capture their image. With my cheapo (and borrowed) digital camera, I’ll save my personal photos of the case for the installation and use the featured photos available from Silverstone Raven RV02’s official website.

The top panel contains the signature LED from the Raven RV01, a v-shaped led that turns on blue when the computer is turned on; a little too bright for some people but it works just fine for me. Front bezel is a uniformed look from top to bottom and later on you’ll find that there’s a tricky way of removing this. Top panel also contains 2 USB ports, a microphone jack and a headphone jack. The RV02 is a little too conservative in here if compared to the RV01 but personally; I’ve not known anyone who uses the eSATA port on front panel before, for mainstream users at least. The tool-less 5.25 bay makes a comeback here, it’s very simple and yet works flawlessly. Only one side is available though, the other side needs screws if you really want to secure the drives for transport. There is one serious drawback to this chassis one should take note; the RV02 is only capable of supporting up to 3 hard drives through the designed hard drive cage. What I don’t understand is that Silverstone could’ve easily created a second cage which should take up the upper 3 5.25 bay. Who fills up their 5 optical drive bay, anyway?

You also have a mounting mechanism for your SSD drives on the opposite end of this (not shown). Only 1 SSD is supported which means, there’s no way you can run RAID with your SSD which is a bit of a bummer but considering the price of SSDs, it’s not worth it…yet.

From this angle, you’ll find the top panel where the warm air is exhausted; again, removal is a bit tricky because the cover uses a snap-on locking mechanism where you simply have to pull it up to release which will then give you access to the back i/o panel. The bottom of the RV02 contains the cold air intake holes and the respective rubberized holes for you water-cooling aficionados. There is a very good clearance from the chassis to the table/floor which is about 1.5 inch – enough to provide the system with cool air.

This is the heart of the RV02 cooling system, 3 180 mm fans capable of pushing 100 cfm of air at a very quiet 18 decibels at 700 – 1000 rpm. Should you wish to upgrade to a higher-cfm fan though, Silverstone has 180 mm fans with 1300 rpm pushing in 150cfm of air with a static pressure of .48~2.38 mm H2O – whatever that means. The nice thing about the optional fan though is that they come with a fan controller and is colored white which basically matches the black overall color scheming of the RV02. These huge intake fans have removable and washable dust filters to keep everything inside, nice and clean. The honeycomb grills are not only there for protection from the fan blades but also for an efficient airflow. Without the honeycomb grills, air would be inefficiently exhausted to the case where the grills provide a straight exhaust all the way towards the top of the chassis. The lone 120mm fan on top is a reinforcement to exhaust warm air generated by your CPU; however, this fan is only rated at 950 rpm maximum which clearly, isn’t up to the task if you wanted more performance.

This is how the internals of the RV02 looks like, as you can see, there are numerous holes that are used for cable management; even the installation of a CPU bracket is simplified due to a hole provided for easy access. Last featured photo is the back panel where it only contains a filtered intake holes for your PSU if you can mount it in this position. The filter is once again, removable and washable for easy maintenance. If you haven’t noticed, the motherboard is not only mounted on a 90 degree angle but is on the left side so the windowed panel is the right side cover. The reason for this is that most ports are on the lower left hand side of the motherboard near the southbridge chipset so if you keep the same 90 degree orientation but mount the hard drive to the right side, you’re going to have problems with connecting those cables from the front of the computer. Silverstone has clearly thought of this obstacle hence the right-side mounting. That pretty much sums it up for the quick tour around the Raven RV02. The next pages will show you how your system would look like during installation. ]]> Fine Upgrades fineupgrades http://www.istorya.net/forums/fine-upgrades/239215-silverstone-raven-rv02-the-second-renaissance.html