A Closer Look - Inside

To access to the interior, you will first have to remove the top cover to pull each side panel up and out. SilverStone embedded a toolless mechanism to do so without having to take off any screws, which is great, but I had to use considerable force to pry each panel off the chassis. Subjectively speaking though, things did get better as I repeated the procedure.

The interior is quite unique. SilverStone actually uses very little metal for the motherboard tray by leaving a large gap inside its top half. This allows for easy access to the board's backside without sacrificing any of the mounting points for a full ATX board. But there are also hardly any points to which cables can be secured behind the motherboard tray, which makes routing them properly difficult - even though there are around 30 mm worth of space to work with behind the tray.


Both the slimline ODD tray and the HDD cage are made of plastic. You may also install two additional 2.5'' hard drives onto the back of the motherboard tray, which brings the total sum of such units up to four - while enough for most, four may not be enough for some.


The two aforementioned Air Penetrator fans are of the 180 mm variety and can be considered a signature feature of SilverStone enclosures with a motherboard tray that has been rotated by 90°. Out of the box, each of their cables is left to loosely dangle around within, which allows you to improve on their cable management by rotating them a bit to hide their colors from view.


Aside from a large opening through which all the chassis' cables are routed, the RV05's front is completely solid. This bit can also serve as an area to hide cables in during the assembly process. The 3.5" hard-drive cage is made of plastic for a reason as it has been designed to eliminate the need for screws or tools. The side panel - held in place by little clips - will also act as a "safety stop" for any of the drives installed into the cage.


To give you proper images of the top, the chassis was tipped on its back, resulting in a much more familiar angle. The mounting possibility for a 120 mm fan in the ceiling is protected by a honeycomb grill that has been pushed outward a bit to give those fan blades a bit of room - just to make sure. Each of the seven motherboard expansion slots is protected by its individual covers. These come with traditional screws. It would have been a nice touch of SilverStone to go for thumbscrews instead, though their benefit would have been negated by the protective cover that is also held in place by screws. The ceiling-mounted PSU bay suddenly looks pretty traditional, once the chassis has been flipped on its back. This particular angle should also make apparent that you will have to watch the length of your power supply so long as you do not want to sacrifice the 3.5" hard-drive cage.


All the leads within the RV05 are sleeved black and of the standard variety. The sleeving does not include any of the fans' cables, just those of the chassis itself.