[English Review] Tecnofront RAVEN Benchtable / Showtable

[bundymania]

Hello,

 

it's time for yet another review.

Today I take a look at the new benchtable Tecnofront Raven,

coming from beautiful Italy.

After having tested the first Tecnofront benchtable, the Hardwaredock,

for you, it's the successor's turn today. A benchtable isn't only good

for bench sessions, but also very useful if you replace components

regularly, prefer an open setup for watercooling or just want to use it

for presentation.

 

The Tecnofront Raven comes well packed in a rather inconspicuous

box, sparing us from a gaudy retail box. The parts are seperated in

several layers in the box, each part being packed seperately and

protected against any damage that might occur during the shipping. The

benchtable also comes with an illustrated, English manual and the

required M4 screws for assembly.

Sadly, the screws required to fixate the drives aren't included.

 

The Raven's material is made out of black acrylic glass in a high glossy

optic, looking very appealing and classy. This is also the reason why

you should always keep a duster at hand.

The assembly was rather easy, even though it would have been easier if

every kind of screw would have been packed seperately. Overall, I was

done in about half an hour, as there aren't that many parts.

 

 

 

 

The screws used are mostly M4x16 and M4x20. Some elements are only

suspended, allowing even faster switching of components. Here you can

see the parts in an overview:

 

 

 

To let you get a better idea of how assembly went, I took a few pictures

while at it:

 

 

 

Material strength:

 

 

 

The mount for the radiator and fans is only suspended, simplyfing

assembly a lot.

It's made for a triple radiator with 3 120mm fans.

 

 

 

 

On each side, you can mount a 120mm and/or a 80mm fan:

 

 

 

 

You can also add another mount that you can use to install a reservoir,

for example:

 

 

The spacers for the motherboard are installed from below the top

mounting plate:

 

 

 

Hard and optical drives are screwed to the side plates and afterwards

fixated on the floor of the benchtable:

 

 

 

Additionally, you can also intsall a 80mm fan in fron of the HDDs:

 

 

The PSU is only put in position.

 

 

Another tip for watercooling enthusiasts: You can only use radiators

with the usual 15mm space between fan screws. In this example, I used an

Alphacool Nexxos radiator with Noiseblocker PL2 fans:

 

 

 

 

The motherboard plate comes with two holes on each side, which aren't

mentioned in the manual. You can put tubing with a maximum size of

11/8mm through there:

 

 

Further to the front, there's enough space to get bigger tubing to the

lower level:

 

 

 

The Raven's looks without a radiator mount from the back:

 

 

 

A power- and reset-button, or other cables, aren't included in the scope

of delivery. These are available at a low price, though.

 

The Raven's price is around 140EUR.

 

Technical data:

 

Material: acrylic glass

Color: black

Size:

Height: 370mm

Table height: 230mm

Width: 420mm

Depth: 320mm

 

Scope of delivery:

Benchtable

Illustrated, English manual

Assembly material

 

 

Conclusion: An optically appealing benchtable with good features at an

affordable price. There are a few things you could improve, but the

performance at this price is good.

 

For the appealing design and the moderate price, the Raven earns my

Silver Award:

 

 

Thanks go out the the following companies for supporting me with this test:

 

Tecnofront ,

Aquatuning ,

Phobya ,

Alphacool ,

XSPC ,

Gigabyte ,

Noiseblocker ,

Aqua Computer ,

http://www.kingston.com ,

EVGA ,

seasonic

Endret 29. mai 2011 av bundymania