PC Components

Sharkoon REV300 – Airy high-rise with twisted layout in review

Sharkoon has around 50 cases of the ATX form factor on offer at the time of testing. One of them is the REV300, which, as the newest member of the REV series, not only offers more space than its predecessors, but is also several points ahead of them in all other respects, be it with a total of 7 built-in fans, 5 USB ports on the front panel, including a USB Type-C port, or compatibility with oversized E-ATX motherboards. However, at 10.4 kg, it is also the heaviest piece of the series.

A 90-degree rotated motherboard and the glass panel mounted on the right instead of the left are other special features compared to most other cases from Sharkoon. At €144 (currently € 149.98 *), it’s priced in the mid-range and offers plenty of space for 2.5- and 3.5-inch drives and convenient cable management in addition to fancy RGB lighting. It is geared towards performance and allows for maximum airflow and cooling in return, the latter especially due to the option of installing large 360 or 420 mm radiators.

We have summarized what else distinguishes the case and how it has proven itself in practice for you in this report. We installed a complete system including a 360 mm radiator in the case and then tested the cooling performance. For the alternative installation of the graphics card, we also used the optionally available Angled Graphics Card Kit (price currently € 42.24 *), also from Sharkoon and available especially for the REV300.
And now we hope you enjoy reading!

Specifications

General
Shape factor ATX, E-ATX
Expansion card slots 8
Interior paint Yes
Cable management system Yes
Page part Toughened glass side panel with hinges and magnetic closure
Weight & Dimensions
Weight 10.4 kg
Dimensions (L x W x H) 50.1 x 23.8 x 55.0 cm
RGB compatibility
Type addressable
Connection options 8
Manual color control: RGB control with 20 addressable modes
Mainboard compatibility: MSI Mystic Light Sync, ASUS Aura Sync, Gigabyte RGB Fusion Ready, ASRock Polychrome Sync
RGB pinout: 5V-D-G & 5V-D-coded-G
Max. Drive installation options
3.5″ 4
2.5″ 5
I/O
Type-C (USB 3.2 Gen 2) 1
USB 3.0 (top) 2
USB 2.0 (top) 2
Audio (top) Yes
Fan configuration
Case front 3x 140mm PWM fans with addressable RGB LEDs (pre-installed) or radiator (optional)
Back panel 3x 120mm PWM fans with addressable RGB LEDs (pre-installed) or radiator (optional)
Chassis top 1x 120mm PWM fan with addressable RGB LEDs (pre-installed)
Compatibility
Mainboard Mini-ITX, Micro-ATX, ATX, E-ATX
Max. Length graphics card 34.5 / 33.3 cm*
Max. Height CPU cooler 17.7 cm
Max. Length power supply 27.0 cm
Max. Height radiator incl. fan (front) 7.4 cm / 5.7 cm**
Max. Height radiator incl. fan (rear) 6.5 cm
Packaging Contents REV300
Accessory set
Instruction
Notes * When using the Angled Graphics Card Kit.
** When using a 420mm radiator
EAN code 4044951032129
Price € 149.98 *

Scope of delivery

REV300

  • Housing REV300
  • Accessory kit
    1. Mounting screws
    2. Mainboard speaker
    3. Cable ties
  • Instruction

Angled Graphics Card Kit (optional).

  • Graphics card bracket
  • PCIe 3.0 x16 riser cable
  • Mounting screws

Design and finish

Front Panel

Sharkoon’s REV300 is strikingly unobtrusive at first glance, definitely appealing to lovers of sleek shapes. An air- and view-permeable metallic grille, clamped into a plastic frame, covers the entire front of the case and is relatively easy to pull out to the front for cleaning the dust filter behind it. Four angled corners made of plastic with a brushed surface texture attached to the frame are otherwise the case’s most striking visual feature.
Behind the front plastic frame, three 140 mm fans are pre-installed, which could be replaced with three 120 mm fans or a radiator up to 420 mm long. The latter only requires the removal of the drive cage.

I/O Panel

Well-equipped, the REV300’s front panel features power and reset or RGB buttons, two audio ports, and 5 USB ports, two of which are USB 2.0, another two USB 3.0, and a fifth USB Type-C (USB 3.2 Gen 2).

Top and bottom panels

The top grille panel, also made of plastic, partially adheres magnetically in its trough and also holds a dust filter for the air that escapes there. A total of three easily removable dust filters at the front, top and bottom ensure that dust cannot enter or leave the case as easily.
In addition to a dust filter, there are also four rubberized feet underneath the case, which give it an extremely good stability.

Interior

The interior of the REV300 can hold extremely large components. For example, graphics cards up to 34.5 cm long can be installed, power supplies up to 27 cm long, or CPU coolers up to 17.7 cm high. For mounting work behind the CPU socket, the area there has been provided with a generous opening towards the cable compartment. It is also possible to use E-ATX mainboards with dimensions of 305 x 330 mm.

Left side panel and cable compartment

Otherwise, the REV300 belongs to the relatively small group of Sharkoon cases that have the viewing window installed on the right side. The tempered glass pane closes very tightly thanks to two elongated magnetic strips, and it can also be lifted off its hinges for more clearance during assembly, allowing it to be removed completely. The opposite left side of the case, facing away from the view, is covered by a simple metal panel, as is mostly the case. It can be loosened and easily removed with two screws that can be turned by hand, and in this case it doesn’t offer any stylistic means. Behind it is the generous area for the hidden cable management, RGB hub, drives and access to the PSU bay.

Back

One of the most unusual features of the REV300, as well as its predecessors, is the 90-degree rotated mounting direction of the motherboard, which, among other things, makes it possible to place up to three 120mm fans on the rear wall of the case for good airflow or a radiator up to 360mm long. On the top of the case there is another pre-installed 120mm fan, which leads heated air out of the interior to the top.

Cable tray top

Since the motherboard connectors are now located on the top of the case and would be a delicate touch to the overall look, the case has instead been allowed to grow in height to hide the entire connector area inside. The case owes its considerable height of 55 cm to this circumstance, which is reached by the fewest ATX cases of the manufacturer, let alone exceeded. The cables connected to the mainboard can be fixed with the help of a plastic sleeve and led out of an opening in the rear panel. They can then be neatly routed along the outer back panel with two additional Velcro fasteners if necessary.

Power supply bay

The bay for the power supply does provide enough space for the power supply and cables when the drive cage is removed. However, if you want to install up to two 3.5-inch drives there, the available space dwindles, which means a somewhat awkwardly fiddly PSU mounting or cabling, especially in the absence of a mounting frame for PSUs. A well thought-out order in which the components are installed can provide relief here.
The power supply can be mounted decoupled in one or two directions if necessary.

Except for the missing mounting frame for power supplies, we liked the design and construction of Sharkoon’s REV300 very much. The unusual orientation of the motherboard is an interesting departure from the norm, and the benefits associated with it outweigh the drawbacks in our opinion. Compared to other ATX cases, the resulting greater height (55 cm) can of course be problematic depending on the on-site space situation and should be considered in advance.

We did not notice any flaws in the build quality. All edges and corners were perfectly deburred and felt smooth and accurate. Surfaces were all cleanly painted. The materials used, metal, plastic and glass, come in handy depending on the purpose. The hinges for the glass wall, for example, are made of metal, as is the case.

Installation

Our test system:

Mainboard and 360mm Radiator

First, we inserted the motherboard, already equipped with CPU, AiO heatsink, RAM and M.2 SSD, into the case on edge, using all 9 available standoffs to secure it. Additional spacers are optionally included for installing oversized motherboards (E-ATX).

Immediately afterwards, we attached the radiator of our AiO water cooling system, whose cooling head was already connected to the CPU, to the three 120 mm fans of the rear case wall, which were virtually ideal for this purpose. We were even able to save removing the fans beforehand by just gradually removing the fan screws and replacing them with the extra-long radiator screws from our AIO until the radiator was fully attached.

Drives

This was followed by the installation of the drives in the rear hidden area. For this, both 2.5″ and 3.5″ drives can already be mounted on three previously removable mounting plates or in a drive cage, each of which can then be quickly secured in the case with just one screw. We installed a total of 5 drives in this convenient way and thus almost exhausted the maximum capacity. The HDDs in the drive cage could be mounted decoupled.

Graphics Card and Angled Graphics Card Kit

We were eager to install our graphics card right away using the angled mounting kit provided by Sharkoon, and immediately stumbled upon the instructions that didn’t seem to quite apply to the REV300. First, we had to remove 6 of the 8 slot plates starting from the left, insert the new mounting frame in its place and fasten it there with three case screws, so far so good. However, contrary to the instructions, fixing it with two more screws to the intermediate bottom of the case was only possible from the back panel with two mainboard screws, not the other way around.
We then had to do the necessary cabling to the mainboard first, as the very wide PCI-E extension cable would have covered these connections. The insertion of the graphics card was then a little sweaty, as the tolerances here were apparently very tight and it was not immediately clear in which way this had to be done best. In the end, however, it held perfectly.
It should be considered that the other PCI-E slots of the motherboard might be covered by the graphics card and are no longer usable.

Power Supply

As mentioned in the design section, installing the power supply (NT) was a bit fiddly due to the lack of a removable mounting frame, although our NT was fully modular. Due to the hard drive cage already in place for the 3.5-inch HDDs, space for handling and attaching the NT cables was limited, so we had to attach the bulkiest cables to the NT prior to installation, which unfortunately negated some of the advantage of full modularity.

Cabling

Cable management throughout the chassis follows the industry standards that are common today. In this regard, the REV300 offers several Velcro fasteners inside and outside the case (8 in total), in addition to the included cable ties, to group and secure multiple cables together. There are also the usual passages around the motherboard to reach all components inside the case over the shortest possible distance from the cable room, which is very conducive to a tidy look.

The cable space on the upper side of the case is partly very constricted due to the 120 mm fan that is also mounted there, which is why plugging and unplugging the cables there was little to no fun for us. Especially network cables with barbs can only be removed with a lot of effort.

RGB Lighting

RGB fans will get their money’s worth with the REV300. Not only are all 7 pre-installed fans equipped with addressable RGB LEDs (ARGB), they are also already functionally connected to the case’s control unit, which can control a total of 8 LED elements.
For our test, we used the last free one of the eight ARGB connectors to light up our AiO water cooling, which then played the current lighting mode in sync with the installed fans.

If your motherboard doesn’t have a suitable connector for controlling ARGB LEDs, you can also select the lighting mode by pressing the reset button from the front panel and thus manually switch through 20 lighting modes, which would, however, also mean that a system reset at the push of a button would no longer be possible. By default, the case is already pre-configured for manual LED operation, otherwise the cable for the “reset switch” would have to be connected to the motherboard as usual.
For our test, we used the manual LED control since our used motherboard, the MSI X470 Gaming Plus Max, did not have a suitable LED connector. Like some incompatible ASUS motherboards, it has LED connectors with a [12V-G-R-B] pinout.

In terms of compatibility, the REV300’s RGB hub can connect to all motherboards that have connectors for addressable RGB LEDs and [5V-D-coded-G] and [5V-D-G] pinouts. The name of this technology varies from manufacturer to manufacturer (MSI Mystic Light Sync, ASUS Aura Sync, Gigabyte RGB Fusion Ready, ASRock Polychrome Sync).

In the end, we are completely convinced by the RGB features of the REV300 and enjoyed the colorful changes of the complete light spectrum.

Cooling performance

In order to be able to evaluate the cooling performance of the REV300, we ran all connected case fans as well as the pump of our 360mm radiator for 20 minutes each, once at full power and once again at half power, determining the maximum temperature reached by our test CPU, the Ryzen 7 3700X. Of course, we did not do this without generating a suitable load and ran Prime95 in “Smallest FFTs” mode for all 16 threads. The ambient temperature was 22 degrees Celsius.

The results of both tests looked like this:

performance.

Fan/pump temperature idle Maximum temperature reached Fan RPM Pump RPM
100% 32°C 71°C 1500 4000
50% 35°C 82°C 750 2000

It should be mentioned that the system’s noise at 100% fan power was considerable and scraped hard along the border of what was bearable in the long run. The final temperature-controlled operation, on the other hand, was pleasantly quiet and still managed to provide acceptable temperatures. We suspect that placing the radiator for the CPU in the front of the case would have improved CPU temperatures even slightly.

Conclusion

The REV300 promises an innovative design, plenty of room for large components, maximum airflow, and a colorful light show, and in our opinion it mostly delivered on those promises.

We had mostly fun assembling our test system, but here and there it got fiddly and we felt reminded of the space constraints of much smaller cases. The upper cable compartment was one such case. If you want to move cables from the motherboard there frequently, you have to be patient or you run the risk of frustration. Power supply mounting could have been made even more convenient for our taste with a mounting frame.
The installation of the components inside was otherwise pleasant, and the ultimately good cable management could not be marred by the occasional tight spots.

We only tested the RGB properties manually, which already worked absolutely satisfactorily. The advantages of the 90-degree rotated motherboard outweighed in the test. The cooling properties of the case turned out good overall in the test, with a lot of room for improvement. There are plenty of connectivity options on the front panel, all dust filters as well as the top and front panels were easy to remove, and new drives were quickly installed thanks to the mounting frame and cage.

At a price of €144 at the time of testing (currently € 149.98 *), we recommend the REV300 for lovers of RGB, elegant design and expansive case ventilation for powerful components. Those who want to invest another 35 € (€ 42.24 *) can show off the same better with the installation kit for graphics cards.

Sharkoon REV300

Workmanship
Structure
Features
Cooling
Value for money

94/100

The REV300 allowed us to mount our test system in a mostly pleasant way with good cable management. LED and cooling capabilities are generous with 7 pre-installed ARGB fans and connectivity options on the front panel are plentiful. While it comes across as visually elegant and minimalistic, its unusual layout still offers a lot of unused room for cooling and thus the installation of large and powerful hardware.

Simon Lüthje

I am co-founder of this blog and am very interested in everything that has to do with technology, but I also like to play games. I was born in Hamburg, but now I live in Bad Segeberg.

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Sharkoon has around 50 cases of the ATX form factor on offer at the time of testing. One of them is the REV300, which, as the newest member of the REV series, not only offers more space than its predecessors, but is also several points ahead of them in all other respects, be it with … (Weiterlesen...)

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