BeQuiet! Dark Base Pro 900 Orange rev. 2, Full Tower ATX, 3 pre-installed Silent Wings 3 fans, tempered glass window, RGB LED illumination BGW14

Product Information

It came as a happy surprise to me be quiet! equipped the Dark Base 900 with a removable bottom filter. It covers the entire length so you don’t have to move the case to clean the dust filters. Better yet, the case is protected on the bottom so it cna be placed on a rug and can move it out to blow dust from the innards. Of course, if you choose you can leave the feet on the bottom and leave the case in place. The next picture up shows the exhaust fan, the heatsink widow in the motherboard tray, the upper end of the removable HDD containers, the 5.25” ODD bay and the two front fans again. There doesn’t look to be provision for an E-ATX motherboard here. On the far right, you can see the tabs the holding the front tray to the case skeleton. The front panel has a brushed-aluminum door that swings open. It has an insatiable appetite for finger smudges too, so be prepared to wipe it down every so often. Like the right-side panel, there is sound-dampening material attached to the inside. Behind it are a pair of 140mm PWM intake fans that come with the case. These are protected by an easily removable dust filter. Mounting our test system’s motherboard, graphics cards, and storage proved simple enough. I didn’t realize that the motherboard tray’s default position afforded radiators on the top mount of the case just 40 mm of clearance, so I immediately ran into issues when I attempted to install the Thermaltake Water 3.0 Ultimate 360-mm liquid cooler we use with our Ryzen Threadrippers. The radiator ran straight into our test motherboard’s VRM heatsink. After some head-scratching, I decided to give the Dark Base’s adjustable motherboard tray a shot—even with a fully-assembled and fully-cabled system installed already.

The right side of the case is clear, aside from the removable panel that covers fan mounts and an additional filter, just in case you need some extra airflow. The left side houses the full tempered glass panel, while the top plays host to a Qi wireless charger, and a few minor vents to aid with heat dissipation from any installed fans and radiators beneath. Lastly, the rear of the Dark Base Pro 900 Rev. 2 is standard if you overlook the modular design (more on this in a moment). The middle spacer has a kingpin in it to allow for easier motherboard navigation. A case reviewer learns to appreciate those nice little touches. We’ll start off by mounting a motherboard on the tray. Then we’ll mount the motherboard tray in the case. I put in a couple of HDD cages too show you how it looks. You can see them to the right of the MB. Here we have one of the side panel’s subpanels. You can see the adjustable lands that hold the panel at a variable distance. A closeup of the PSU part of the rear we can see two grilled one-inch spacers above the PSU grill. Presumably, a PSU would sit with it bottom portion submerged in the case’s framework. From this we can guess that for a PSU to breath freely it must sit forward of the grillwork of the case. Note the vents at the bottom. These presumably contribute to the PSU’s air intake. PSU GrillCase considerations form the basis of every PC build. How many fan mounts? Will I still need lots of storage bays? Horizontal or vertical graphics mount? How many USB ports are enough? And do I want to maximise airflow with mesh or contain noise with sound-dampened panels? If the answer is “I’m really not sure yet,” be quiet!’s Dark Base Pro 901 could be the chassis for you. Completely sound insulated case with decoupled elements for motherboard tray, power supply and drives

Let’s look at the glass side panel. You can’t really call it a windowed side panel; it is more a pane of tempered glass that is used as a side panel. BTW – the object propping up the pane is one of the HDD cages. The glass side panel weighs 5 lbs. 6 oz. (86 oz. = 2.4 kg). Glass Side Panel Ample scope, and be quiet! gets users off to a solid start with three bundled Silent Wings 4 140mm PWM fans; one rear exhaust and two front intakes. These are high-quality blowers that can hit a top speed of 1,900rpm, generating 78.4cfm airflow while keeping noise level below 30dB. Much better than the bog-standard fans bundled with the majority of chassis on the market, and get this; both the front and top mounts are on removable trays, each of which is outfitted with its own three-way fan hub. It’s this level of attention to detail that enhances the build process. The included fan controller can have a total of 8 fans attached to it being split up into 2 channels of 4 fans. Each of the channels can be set independently into silence or performance mode using the front panel switch. The controller also contains connections for up to two 12v LED strips and can be synced with your motherboard using the RGB header or controlled using the LED switch on the I/O panel. Every contribution makes a difference and we thank you for your support. Inside the Belly of the Beast The screws that hold the motherboard tray in place are outfitted with orange rubber grommets. To lower the motherboard tray, you also must remove one or two mesh covers at the bottom rear of the case. You can then install one or both up top in the gap that is created by dropping the motherboard tray down one or two positions. It's a simple and clever design.In its most basic form, the Dark Base Pro 900 is a very large case with ample space for even the most bloated builds. If you want to shove an Extended-ATX motherboard inside and flank it with more than a dozen storage drives, you can. However, what is most intriguing about the Dark Base Pro 900 is the level of customization it affords. With most of its impedimenta stripped away here is the Dark Base 900 in all its glory, naked before the world. You might note that although the HDD cage holder is there and the motherboard tray is in place, nothing else is. This naked case weighs just over ten pounds (160 oz. = 4.5 kg). Our thanks to AMD, Gigabyte, G.Skill, Nvidia, and Corsair for helping to outfit our test systems with some of the finest hardware available. Our thanks as well to be quiet! for providing the Dark Base Pro 900 rev. 2 for review, as well.

Removable anti-vibration mountings minimize the transmission of vibrations to the PC case and its components How many fans will the top of this case fit? The first picture shows three 140 mm fans, the second four 120 mm fans. We also like the integrated Qi charger. Case makers seem to struggle with how best to make use of the top portion of an enclosure. Many of them settle on a compartment to hold your keys and loose change. Others use the space to include a hot-swappable drive bay, and some case makers do nothing at all. Be Quiet recognized that practically everyone owns a smartphone these days, and for those who own a Qi-enabled one, the wireless charging station is a subtle but appreciated amenity. Sorry, iPhone users! This MB tray has cushions. How come? The motherboard tray does not touch the side. Hmm, A mystery. But the MB tray seems to be fastened to the case skeleton with sound-deadened screws, also visible here. As you can see, even the non-Pro version of this case is expensive; but both versions earn their keep. They are fine cases that can accommodate the best heatsinks and didn’t forget about water cooling. The glass side and the LED’s show off your system to perfection.

If this default configuration doesn’t suit your needs, the Dark Base Pro 900’s motherboard tray and hard-drive cage can be removed from the case entirely and flipped to create an inverted interior layout, again with three different spots between the top and bottom-most mounting points. be quiet! also says you can use the tray as a test bench if need be, but more elegant options exist if you’re running such a bench full-time and not just as a trial run to ensure your new build is functioning. Given the complexity this design entails, it’s definitely worth opening up be quiet!’s lengthy manual and figuring out the full range of the Dark Base 900’s capabilities before embarking on a build. We’ll just unscrew those mounting screws with their sound-deadening grommets. And what do you know? The motherboard comes out. At the bottom of the MB tray, you can see a cable. That leads from a motherboard’s PWM header to that fan controller you saw on the bottom of this tray. But now we know what those cushions were for: they support the MB tray when it sits outside the case. The be quiet! engineers suggest that you can use this tray as a test stand. But why would you buy this huge case just for that? I’ll bet they would sell you the MB tray alone if you ask nicely.