I rarely post any reviews since internet is usually full of them, and i see no point in posting things that end with “but overall it’s fine”. However, when some kind of horror technology turns me in rage, here i am. Today’s victim is SilverStone RVZ-03 with addressable RGB support, which i bought because it’s white and flat to only deeply regret my purchase. This shit is done so bad like nobody in SilverStone even tried to assemble a build using it.
Duh
Abhorrent suffering starts from the very beginning. During unboxing you’ll see a “oh wow such unusual product, please read included manual first” note on the box cover. Guess what — there is no manual inside the box, it’s available on SilverStone website instead. While i’m quite supportive for not including any unnecessary things that will go straight into trash can, it is quite a surprise when you search through and can’t find anything. Also it comes with three vents, but two fans, because CPU cooler may render installation of one impossible. Guys, are you saving money on me?
Assembly
K, let’s move on to the build. Manual tells to install motherboard as first step, and i fell for that.
Do you see a problem here? Mini-ITX motherboard is tightly packed with a lot of connectors, and both RAM modules and various headers like front panel pins are facing PSU installation space. And when you’re going to install PSU on the next step, you’ll have a hard time not damaging the MB — upper ledge on front panel doesn’t allow you to install just by moving it down vertically, you have to slide it inside from left to right:
And then the fun part starts. PSU sits in special bracket.
One may see classic 6–32 screws in bag coming with case, and, obviously, i fell for that as well. There are only three of them. I counted the screws and thought i’m losing my mind, then it turned out i need to use different screws. Very intuitive, SilverStone!
But challenge just starts when you put the PSU inside at specified location. As in all SFF cases, PSU is connected using internal cable:
Which way should i lay down power cable, along the front panel or wrap it around between PSU and motherboard? After couple of attempts it made itself clear that cable length is somewhat in between for both options: too long for along-the-panel, too short for wrap-it-around (however, since PSU is mounted in special bracket, you can pass it underneath PSU, which is hilarious). But when you pass it along the front panel, you’re restricted to do a 90° bend, and, well, neither cable or me likes that, i’m not even sure it is safe.
And after that you’ll find out that cable plug restricts you from moving PSU in place just by something like a millimetre. You have to blindly force PSU to the side grill holding case upside-down, hoping that you will align the hole and use the only free hand to screw the thing. And when you do… turns out, bracket is not of perfect [-shape, and it springs a bit outwards, so when you’ve screwed left side (it’s actually right on the picture above), you have to pull the other in place, screwing it from the bottom at the same time. But oh-huh, the springing thing is under fucking front panel ledge:
Seriously, SilverStone, was it that fucking hard to mount couple of slides on bottom to prevent the alignment horror?
But let’s move on. You have your PSU in place, you’ve screwed your motherboard, so it’s time to connect all the front panel headers, and, before that, lay down the cables. The most reasonable placement is just below PSU cables, right?
See that tiny hole just under center supporting brace? Well, now imagine you have to fit there all front panel headers, twin USB3.0 cable, audio cable and two PCI Express power lanes for GPU. Since i myself is stupid as fuck, i had to rearrange cables several times, and
every
fucking
time
i had to dismount that little fucker just because SilverStone couldn’t just make hole a bit bigger. You may ask, what’s the problem here? You have your screwdriver, right? It’s just a several whirls, no?
No, you don’t get the thing. This product is perfect in it’s complete unfriendliness. Everything here is done shitty, and brace is done as shitty as everything else. It holds aRGB splitter:
To unscrew the brace, you have to deal with those two screws on the bottom just behind the fan. To access them, you first have to dismount aRGB splitter above (note screws direction). Let’s get a view from the top:
Again, do you see what’s wrong here? Distance between bracket and other side is just a bit larger than 120mm fan sitting below, let’s say 150mm, and screws are facing that side.
A decent screwdriver has length somewhat proportional to screws you’re gonna work with. I have ~100mm Orico screwdrivers for tiny phone screws. I have a beautiful Xiaomi Wowstick, that is more 200mm in length, for regular, non-microscopic maintenance. The screws are quite standard philips ones, something you would work with using PH00.
WHO THE FUCK ON EARTH HAS SUCH A MIDGET SCREWDRIVER AT HOME?!
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
I had to loose screws a bit using screwdriver at an angle and then work by hand. And screwing it back was even worse, since you can’t use screwdriver at all. I had to pull out the bit and use it by hand. SilverStone is a fucking troll company that humiliates it’s customers.
Yeah, and right at this point i found out that motherboard should be connected before installation, and PSU limits access to headers. I had to unscrew PSU, plug in front panel headers into motherboard, screw down motherboard, and then go through fucking PSU hell once more.
But that’s not the only pain i had. Plug in front panel headers, sounds simple enough? Everything went good with power up and “i’m on” led, then i took the USB 3.0 plug. Aaaand… It doesn’t fit. It nearly fits, so you have to carefully poke it here and there, align a bit, gently push, if you feel that it refuses, repeat those steps, just like if you’re handling a lady. And praise yourself if you were smart enough to guess that is better to leave motherboard outside before plugging case connectors.
Speaking about “carefully” and “gently”, i had to rearrange cables later, and thought that i can unplug USB 3.0. As you probably already guessed it, that was a huge mistake. When i tried to plug it back, i wasn’t gentle enough and connector bent one pin all the way down to the motherboard.
Yes. $150 case. $150 motherboard. State-of-art design, polished by many engineers for last twenty years, when computer industry sprawled enough to start thinking about conformity, not just functionality. And one fucking pin.
Seriously, have you ever had trouble plugging in header connectors into motherboard? I just hope that i can unbend it once i pull that thing out to install my beloved Intel’s AX200.
So at this point half of the outlets on the front panel don’t work. Screw this (pun intented), i say, at least i have audio and i already have USB hubs, so plugging USB devices won’t be a pain. So, the audio. It… simply doesn’t work. I hope — it’s the only thing one can do with RVZ-03 — that i misplaced connector one row, since it was covered by CPU cooler and i couldn’t see well under it.
GPU installation went surprisingly well, with the only exception of installing support stand. It’s totally unclear which screws you should use, and obviously SilverStone doesn’t put any references in images in their manual — later i’ve found mention that i need to use those 6–32 somewhere in the start, but seriously, do they expect that person will jump forth and back during assembly? So i’ve guessed, and guessed correctly, but it was a bit scary experience. Because 6–32 screws are just a bit longer than others and don’t reach nut baked into stand. Instead, it just carved into plastic behind nut, so i was totally sure i’m doing something wrong. Yet again, SilverStone shines in it’s excellence.
The last thing here is just to connect the fans. Mini-ITX motherboards obviously lack space and it should be expected that they don’t have too many fan headers, right? So, i’m looking for fan splitter inside the included box, and the only plastic bag with cables i see contains aRGB cables. Heartsore, i just close the case connecting only one of two bottom fans. But guess what? Later i decide to put the build in vertical position and pull out corresponding stands out of the box.
Fan splitter is in the plastic bag with rubber stands.
No, seriously. They fucked it up even there, at plastic bag level. This is beyond any absurd.
ARGB
Previous section doesn’t mention connecting the main case feature, shining LED on front panel, to the motherboard. For the simple reason it’s not possible.
Whole LED story started as fashion feature vendors provided for their product lines, and it’s quite expected that it went through shitstorm being standardized. It’s hard to find specification about connectivity even now, when nearly every “gamer” motherboard has corresponding connectors, and obviously any decent case manufacturer would put a thorough section of do’s and dont’s in theirs manual. But yeah, SilverStone is just like Russia, with it’s own “path” and “vision”, which concludes just to disregard and fuck anybody else, even theirs customers, while pretending they deeply concern.
So, digging the net i found out that manufacturers went down to two LED standards: one requires four electric lines (+12v and separate channels for R, G and B), and other one only three (+5v, Digital, which actually controls the light, and Ground). As you can understand, they’re not interchangeable — i don’t know anything about voltage, but surely you can’t just convert digital signal into three separate analog ones or vice versa (may be they’re digital as well, but anyway you’ll have a hard time splitting one digital signal into three without a chip). So, i bought MSI’s MPG Z390I, SilverStone’s page clearly states that it’s compatible with “MSI Mystic Light”, everything should work, right?
No.
RZV03 is designed for Mini-ITX form factor, and MSI puts 5v/D/G only on larger motherboards.
Update: i was curious so i’ve plugged in led strip through supplied controller. And that what i got:
Do you see it? One of the leds shines in purple. And it’s not just a faulty one that doesn’t emit other colors. It’s fucking blinking every second, from purple to white and back.
What a wonderful piece of complete failure.
Ventilation
The RVZ03’s positive air pressure design is an effective
configuration that will reduce dust buildup inside the case.
MARKETING BULLSHIT
INANE HORSESHIT
PRANK THAT WENT TOO FAR
Ok-ok, let’s go with some theory first. Hot air travels upwards, and that’s pretty much the whole theory. Perfect cooling system would blow air through radiator out, so it doesn’t stay around and is replaced by fresh air, maximizing the efficiency.
As for flat cases, most of them, if not all, are designed so GPU coolers are placed in opposite direction compared to CPU cooler: looking from perspective of manual images above, GPU coolers suck air from below, and CPU cooler sucks air from above, so if placed horizontally, one of cooling systems would prevent air from leaving the natural way and will force heat to build up under the cover, with hot air being subtly pushed through the side grills.
I don’t know why there are no cases known to me that use extended riser to flip the GPU so coolers would look into same direction, but that’s a topic beyond this post.
And then there is also a PSU, which is another fan-supplied source of heat, designed to take air from below and blow it out through the side.
If you think that SilverStone fucked up PSU design only with installation details, then you are absolutely wrong. They never stop. Remember that bracket?
99% of above-the-cheapest PC cases would place PSU directly on a vent that would supply cold air. But our bracket friend has those bottom stands, which push up PSU up for something like 5mm. Which means that it sucks air not from vent, but from all sides, i.e. from case itself. And since cold air doesn’t travel upwards, once the case starts heating up, this space between vent and PSU will fill with warm air, resulting in the same air being endlessly rotated inside the case without any use. This is not something that couldn’t be engineered differently — all that is needed is to extend bracket walls all the way down, so air couldn’t be sucked from sides, and create some solution for PSU back, since it’s length may vary. Ok, even without it there could be just a wall to prevent air flow between PSU and motherboard — but it’s too much for SilverStone engineers.
And obviously air sucked in PSU is blown out after. It is meant to be blown out through the side grill, but since there is space between grill and PSU due to cable plug, hot air is actually blown out into case, and, if one is lucky, only then it goes through grill. Yes: they fucked up twice in identical way. And obviously, solution would be the same: create a separate cage for PSU and don’t let air travel inside the case.
But no, there is more. PSU vent is not aligned to PSU itself. Seriously, it’s center is 10-20mm off, so 120mm PSU bottom grill is not fully open. Again, an image straight from manual:
It would be a shame should ventilation problems be limited by PSU only. Getting back to CPU & GPU cooling, one will heat another regardless of positioning. This is common to all flat cases: if placed horizontally, one of two cooling systems will take cold air from below and spread it horizontally, while the other one would try to suck air from duct facing upwards, preventing the air from leaving case through that vent, and because that’s the only vertical opening in case, hot air will collect under the cover in fast fashion. If placed vertically, one of the systems would be below other, and hot air travelling up will impact the other one. This is usually addressed by separate cages, which, and that is hilarious, was a part of RVZ03 predecessor design, RVZ02.
At this point my build is complete (at least i thought so), it has two fans directing at GPU with three fans in it’s own cooling system, and lonely convenient CPU cooler over large grill without extra fan above it, because i believe that would only make things worse, completely preventing hot air from leaving. I’m trying different places and different positions, but my GPU and CPU temperature is 55–60 °C in idle state, and up to 85–90 °C under load. While it works and GPU doesn’t even spin a fan at 60 °C, i wasn’t quite comfortable with that, and the case itself felt hot when i touched it.
So, where i’m getting at? Remember that positive pressure quote? SilverStone implies that all fans in all vents should suck air, which then is allowed to leave through side grills. Even when you open the box, they are installed in this very way: one blows at GPU, another one at CPU:
So i google for more interesting solutions, and see some CPU fans that may blow air both to and from CPU, depending on how you attach the spinning thing to radiator. They are sophisticated and usually have heatpipes travelling to radiator, and fan is attached below the radiator, so air blows through radiator just as in usual cooler (see Noctua LH-L12S or ID Cooling IS-47k). My current cooler doesn’t have this feature, it is designed to blow air down in CPU direction through giant radiator.
At this point i already have zero confidence in SilverStone ideas, so i think “why don’t i just invert CPU fan and attach another one blowing air out of case above it?”
As soon as i do it, GPU temperature goes down ten degrees, CPU down twenty, case is barely warm when i place my hand on it even after a nice load, and all of that with a fan sucking air out of radiator, not blowing it through.
Conclusion
This was longest time i’ve spent assembling the build, ever. Four. Four fucking hours, manual that tells you everything except the actual tricky things, broken USB 3.0 connector on the motherboard, non-working front panel audio, useless aRGB LED that pushed price up for something like $25 and a whole adventure maintaining decent temperature. Two steps forward, one step back, disassemble brace, assemble brace, two steps forward, seven back, return to start, just lie down and cry. I spent less time writing this huge post rather than assembling “console killer” which is surely way bigger than any console. Yes, it looks fancy, it’s much smaller than convenient cases, but no way it’s slim and tiny.
I’m a software engineer. I deal with bad design daily. I know sometimes it requires a lot of attention and patience to do everything nice and consumer-oriented. If you work is timeboxed, usually you emit something dirty. Dirty, but useful and working as expected. And so daily i get over it, and i got used to it, i learned to love it and try to not do any negative valuations, knowing that nearly everything is done through hard work. But this? Last time i was so fucking enraged over bad design was years ago. The only thing worse i have to deal daily is my TV attached to this build, but at least i don’t have to disassemble it.
To be honest, i’ve assembled RVZ02 a few days earlier for my parents. That went not very romantic as well, but wasn’t such a pain. However, i learnt my lesson, not once again. Even given all the criticism on Node 202, now it seems much better option to me.
