The best be quiet! Dark Base PRO 900 Orange Rev. 2, 3 Pre

The best be quiet! Dark Base PRO 900 Orange Rev. 2, 3 Pre

The best be quiet! Dark Base PRO 900 Orange Rev. 2, 3 Pre

Permission denied

OUTSTANDING FLEXIBILITY AND SILENCE

be quiet! Dark Base Pro 900 Orange rev. 2 is the perfect case for all who expect the highest standards when it comes to modularity, compatibility and design.
Motherboard tray and HDD slots with enhanced possibilities for individual requirements
Three Silent Wings 3 PWM fans
Stepless dual-rail fan controller is switchable between Silence and Performance modes
Ready for radiators up to 420mm
PSU shroud and HDD slot covers provide a neat interior
Side panel made of tempered glass
Eye-catching RGB LED illumination
Three years manufacturer’s warranty
German product conception, design and quality control

RELOCATABLE MOTHERBOARD TRAY

Flexibility for individual requirements

The decoupled motherboard tray adapts to suit individual requirements, being completely relocatable and usable as a test bench. You can adjust it to three different heights or install it alongside the left panel in an inverted layout with redefined airflow. It is fully compatible with E-ATX and XL-ATX motherboards.

SILENT WINGS 3

Impeccable cooling and silence

The three preinstalled Silent Wings 3 140mm PWM fans offer virtually inaudible operation. They are equipped with a smooth-running 6-pole motor, durable fluid-dynamic bearing and airflow-optimized fan blade design. The frame has funnel-shaped air inlets that generate high air pressure.

MODULAR HDD SLOTS

Generous space for your setups

The installation options are flexible thanks to repositionable single HDD slots. Supports up to 5 HDDs, 10 SSDs and 2 optical drives out of the box. The practical slot covers serve to hide any unused HDD slots and keep the inner workings neat and tidy. This enables you to create systems that are just as individual as you are yourself.

VERY FUNCTIONAL PSU SHROUD

Offering unexpected possibilities

The PSU shroud offers you a variety of solutions – not just for hiding the PSU and to keep the system neat and tidy. The cover plates are separately detachable, making it possible to install a fan or an SSD on the top of the PSU shroud and leave enough space for a radiator in the front.

FULL CIRCUIT AIRFLOW SYSTEM

A silence concept by the silence experts

With its smart silence concept, Dark Base Pro 900 rev. 2 is the perfect case for the extreme requirements of overclocked systems and super silent water-cooled PCs. It can carry up to seven additional fans, up to four radiators and has noise-reducing vents all around the case that provide ultra-effective full circuit airflow.

DUAL RAIL FAN CONTROLLER

Creating separate cooling zones

The eight PWM fan connectors are divided over two rails, and each is switchable between Silence and Performance Mode. This makes it possible to create two cooling zones that can be controlled by just the front panel switch. If you want all fans to run at the same speed, you can switch both channels to the same mode.

TEMPERED GLASS AND LEDs

A perfect view inside your PC

The case is equipped with an elegant, fully windowed side panel that is made of tinted and tempered glass. The eye-catching internal LED illumination comes in six switchable colors. You can locate the LED strips freely inside the PC case.

its dark Bass Pro 900 high-end flagship now offering a revision to that for the record largely offers changes we didn't ask for still apparently a lot of people wanted a power supply shroud and some wanted faster fans for this largely silence focused case today we're back with the dark bass pro 900 revision 2 to see how its performance and build have changed since the first revision the new revision is more expensive than the original DBP 900 but we'd expect price will eventually fall closer to the original price point of the dark bass pro 900 case that we reviewed last year before that this review is brought to you by the EVGA CLC 280 liquid cooler

people ask me how I keep cool during the summer with all this hair well I've tried a lot of different products and few do exactly what I need many of them cause tangles or worse EVGA CLC 280 helps keep my core temperatures low they're in hot benchmarking sessions the CLC 280 is price competitive and focuses on performance for value offering a 280 liquid cooler at an affordable price get yours at the link in the description below hair mounting kit sold separately this is the dark base Pro 900 rev 2 if you remember the original we actually liked the case overall the dark base pro 900 had excellent build quality it has interesting features not all of them are useful like the Qi charger for instance a lot of people probably don't care about that

but if you wanted it it was in the top front of the case still is so it has some interesting features it does things differently it's terribly expensive but the price wasn't all that unfair for the original dark base pro 900 it's just it's high not unfair but it's high the case overall has always built itself as primarily a silent focused case the name of the company is be quiet X my exclamation point so the name pretty much explains what they're going for with all their cases given that nice exclamation point at the end of the sentence so with the be quiet dark base pro 900 the primary change that we're interested in the one we're testing is the fan speed change

they've gone up from a thousand rpm to 1600 rpm quite a significant change in our PM but because the front panel is still ultimately pretty closed off it's hard to say how much that'll matter because you can put the fastest fans in the world in there if they don't have access to a lot of air and they're fighting to pull air in through the sides you're ultimately relying on static pressure the power of the fan when most of it's blocked off and ultimately you will be bottlenecked by that front panel but the question is one of a greater discussion on fan RPMs versus attempting to silence a case it's not thing we've discussed before where they're kind of

two ways to achieve silence you either open the whole thing up which of course exposes it to dust as well another fault of the arguments you can open the whole thing up and run lower rpm fans that's gonna be pretty damn quiet because they're running in slower speeds or you close it all off and around higher rpm fans and try and fight the enclosure to bring air in and either way can work it just kind of design depends on the design how well it's been done be quiet designed the dark Bass Pro 900 exceptionally well the foam padding used first of all giant sheet of tempered glass is great for dealing with the low frequency noises low hums and things that

noise that fans often make the padding on some of the paneling in the case helps with the higher frequency noise it's like coil wine because the idea is that tiny the sound wave is going to hit the foam break into some pieces bounce around a whole bunch and hopefully not really much of it will escape and get to the end user so they always did well with that but now we're looking at the changes one of the other big changes we'll talk about here is the power supply shroud the major difference in this revision is the addition of a PSU shroud someone asked for this it

wasn't us the only mention of a power supply shroud in our original review was to point out that there was enough room for cables elsewhere so it was actually unnecessary to even have a power supply shroud the shroud must be removed in order to install the power supply and the process of replacing it is annoying enough that it's easier just to leave it out however it's optional to install it can be purchased separately to add to the revision one cases if you wanted and it's understandable that be quiet wants to offer as many features as possible in their flagship case that said power supplies roads always pose a bit of a problem potentially for airflow this case is mass enough that it might not matter as much we'll see in the thermal

section but we never asked for the PSU shroud as noted there's so much space in the backside that you really almost just don't even need it and you probably have a modular power supply anyway if you're spending on the case so not something we cared about but either way it's not harmful to offer more options so there's that let's talk about the LED and the fan controller the functionality here is basically the same as revision one but there are also performance - silent toggles like the controller and the DB 700 it now supports up to 8 fans rather than four LEDs are 12 volts now and can be connected and synched with other standard 4 pin strips and can be controlled via a button on the front panel formerly the reset button fans

the fans are still 140 millimeter silent winds threes but they're sixteen hundred rpms rather than 1,000 that has implications as noted for both thermals and noise which will look at momentarily hard drive bay has changed a bit to the original dark bass pro 900 had nine available ports for seven free-floating hard drive baits while the revision 2 has 5 ports for 3 Bay's the lower two ports the upper two since this case is invertible have been converted to fit a 2 drive hard drive cage instead so that the power supply shroud will fit as well and to summarize that's up to three single slot hard drive bays above the shroud and 1/2 slot hard drive cage underneath the shroud USB is changed as with the dark bass 700 be quiet has filled

one of their USB 2.0 ports with USB 3.1 instead type C and the other USB 2.0 port has been replaced with a USB quick charge plug panel attachments also a bit different the thumb screws that hold on the glass panel have a weird not quite flathead not quite Phillips cross on them and they thread on two posts rather than screwing into holes so not technically screws I'm kind of are but the front panel now has two spring-loaded magnet attached turns one at the top one at the bottom rather than just one and the screws you can just use fingers if you want or if you do want a screwdriver flat head or Phillips both work some owners of the original dark base pro

900 wanted these upgrades obviously and if you want to buy them separately from be quiet you can so that's an upside from the be quiet design document they said the following the new power saw crowd and hard drive slot covers will be available for customers using the first dark Bass Pro 900 version the windowed side panel and additional hard drive cages will be offered separately as well alright let's get into the thermal testing here this one's kind of interesting so the primary comparison for this case will be revision one we have plenty of other cases on the chart but we're gonna focus on the dark base Pro 900 revision 1 because we already focused the revision 1 versus everything house and it was ok overall for what it is so revision 2 has faster

fans it's got a fan control that works a little bit differently and the results between the two cases should be different but the amount of improvement seen for example opening the front panel would approximately be the same so check your check our previous review to see temperature deltas from other scenarios like opening the front panel or taping off the mesh trim shot on the front this mesh right here in the front the only mesh on the front we taped that closed in the original test and just for fun and we have that in the original dark base Pro 900 review well kind of cover it briefly here but check the previous coverage basically for more of that and also check the previous coverage for overall build thoughts or thoughts on installation ease of

installation build features all that stuff we talked about there absolutely no point going over it again because the inside of the case other than the stuff I've already mentioned it's all the same so if you want to know what we think of the case build quality stuff like that just watch the first review and we're gonna focus on thermal today for revision 2 we focused on testing with the fan controller we plugged the case fans into the motherboard and configure them to 100% speed for baseline stock testing and then for additional tests we tried a few things one setting the controller to performance mode and the slider to maximum because it is a slider and another

one was performance mode and slider its minimum silent mode of sliders maximum silent mode with slider to minimum and so forth so the fan speed slider in the front panel is stepless so maximum and minimum settings are pretty easy to replicate and that's what we used we're starting with only the dark base pro 900 then we'll move on to comparative numbers this includes the old model for the dark base pro 900 revision 2 CPU temperature was 56 degrees Celsius over a min during the torture test and 55 degrees Celsius with the fans plugged it into the controller inside the performance mode then maxed out judging by the tempered since we

can't log rpm using a controller it seems like the controller really does allow the fans of speed up at the full new speed and for revision two of the nine hundred results using the controller from best to worst were as follows performance mode with maximum speed was best silent mode with maximum speed performance mode with minimum speed and in silent mode with minimum speed even just in performance mode going from minimum to maximum brought CPU DT to sixty three point nine degrees over ambient versus fifty-five silent mode minimum rpm was by far the hottest test and the only reason it didn't go higher than seventy one point

seven degrees is that the CPU is hitting 100 C and throttling hard that's because seventy one point seven is over ambient and it's also averaged so we were actually hitting a hundred in the middle of the test when it's the most torturous this mode would only be advisable for lower TDP systems with low load levels ie for browsing or desktop use compared to the old 900 stock 4 stock temperatures are improved from fifty eight point six degrees to 56 degrees not a huge change and our other tests were specific conditions like removing the front panel entirely and inverting the layout comparatively with other cases the original stock DBP 900 reached fifty eight point six degrees Celsius over ambient towards the warm end of our scale with its higher

fan speeds the revision to blazes more toward the middle alongside the define R six and s 340 Elite Four how closed off the front panel is that's okay the DPP at 900 is overall unimpressive for cooling but it is also targeted more to the noise sensitive audience and makes no claims to be a top-class cooler the changes be quiet made are not significant enough to upset the charts particularly because the front panel is so blocked off that the higher-speed fans aren't able to get enough access to air to improve coin in any substantial way this is a matter of diminishing returns and starts boosting noise levels beyond what might be worth to begin with cooling is okay but not impressive for just the DVP 900 GPU torture test GPU dt average forty seven

point six degrees celsius during the torture test with fir mark and almost exactly the same using the controller at max speed and performance mode the best to worst order of performance is the same as the cpu temperatures performance and max is the best silence and max performance and minimum silence and minimum and you get the idea the range of temperatures was smaller however and even the silent and minimum average CT was only fifty six point five degrees over ambient moving on to comparative GPU data we were surprised how well the revision two provided GPU cooling especially since it added a power supply shroud to the case that could potentially restrict airflow anyway a small part of this could be that we

intentionally flipped the power supply over when reviewing the original because of restrictive ventilation on the bottom of the case which may have caused the power supply to compete with the GPU for air more importantly there's the higher rpm fans and the lack of pre-installed hard drive bays to block the airflow path from the front of the case whatever the reasons the revision to has some of the coolest GPU temperatures we've logged it recently well below the originals average of 54 point nine degrees Celsius and a lot of that is just because of how hugely open the front of the case is so even though the fans are blocked all of the air is going straight to the GPU whatever the error is that the fans can bring in it's not obstructed by anything that's going into the GPU the power supply shroud isn't designed in such a way that it doesn't eat too

much of the performance and also the case is so gigantic that the power supply shroud to video card distance is great enough that it's not really interfering much with the GPU coolers ability to exhaust air so that's why we're seeing the results we are next up 3d mark GP temperatures were slightly higher in 3d mark stress testing that in the torture test averaging forty eight point eight degrees Celsius over ambient that's even farther below the original DBP 902 average of fifty seven point five CDT and impressively below most of the other cases on our chart as well GPA coolant is genuinely good in revision to something we wouldn't necessarily expect from a

noise damage case but one that is a result of that higher rpm fan and just how damn large the case is rendering on the CPU with blender CPU DT was 38 point four degrees in the blender test that's fairly average and below but within margin of error of the original DBP 900 when utilizing the GPU gbzt there in the render was 24 c beaten by both the PMO one and half X but cooler than everything else noise levels are next even with all of be quiet annoys dampen running fans at 1600 rpm reached forty three point two to forty two point four DBA as loud as the DB 700 was dark bass 700 at max speed or the Silverstone RL zero six the quietest level we achieved using the 32.4 DBA only slightly above the n1 303 with no fans in it but keep in mind

that the cooling is so bad that you really wouldn't want to use this setting for any kind of performance the main advantage of having silent and performance toggles on the fan controller is that there are two channels so two different groups of case fans can be set to two different speeds while being controlled by a single input the way we used it with both controllers flipped the same way it should just be set to performance mode that's because silent and minimum was that effectively the same noise level as performance in minimum about 33 DBA for performance and minimum scored better in most thermal testing and fan rpm can be maxed out in performance mode which is a huge bonus so again this becomes a greater discussion on do you go the noisier fan route with a more open case or do you do something more stifled and

go a slower fans or faster fans to try and overcome them which is what be quieted so they stuck with the original silent paneling focus stuck faster fans in it and the result is that the case is actually really freaking loud when the fans are maxed out it's towards the worst end of the chart for noise if you consider noise bad but you can control it pretty easily it's got a fan controller there are two different sets of toggles you can do so if noise is a problem for you but you're okay with it when you're gaming maybe you have headphones on or something like that then it's not bad it's just that the case does a weird thing where performance is good actually overall yes but they're mixing both silence and performance in weird ways that ends up with

either you have kind of mostly okay performance and good GPU performance when maxed out but not great noise performance or you have fantastic acoustic performance with not great thermal performance and it's gonna be up to you to set it the way that makes the most sense it's just it's one of those things where it's not really set it and forget it unless you're okay with noise or you're okay with awful thermals it's maybe you can set it in the middle and it'll tend to be towards the loud around but it does deviate from the original silence focus of the case and that's different different for be quiet it's not a bad thing necessarily it's just that the case is trying to

do two different things simultaneously when it can really only do one at any given time and it's up to the user to figure out which one that is so just keep that in mind in performance the revision two has much better GPU cooling results than revision Wanda that's because revision 2 has faster fans and the layout is still huge 140 millimeter silent winds fans sell for a piece or more on new eggs so upgrading an original DBP 900 to match revenues performance is an expensive proposition and cooling performance is the single best argument for purchasing the newer one versus the older one but only if it applies when fans are running above a thousand rpm if you're planning keeping them there or lower then don't bother basically revision 2 is a

better performing case with a few more features than its predecessor which we already liked it's just altogether is it worth more and making the power supply installation even more annoying than it is to get the revision 2 and we still like rev 1 for what it does watch the original review for that it's definitely not for everyone but it's really damn good when it is for you when it does fit your use case revision one's a good case and it's cheaper so this one's not bad it's just if you were basically if you're dying for the power supply shroud sure is worth it or if you wanted the faster fans but you don't want to buy your own seperately or don't

already have some that I guess maybe it's worth it because the value proposition is there for the better fans so that's it for this one very high in flagship case we know not a ton of people buy cases in this price class .

The best be quiet! Dark Base PRO 900 Orange Rev. 2, 3 Pre

Pro 900 revision to I say interesting because the 900 has six different internal layouts you can configure to meet your needs I say big because well I had to scoot my camera back about two feet to fit this in the shop today let's set out with my initial impressions when getting this out of the box this thing is absolutely massive now I know it's a full tower instead of a mid Tower but this thing absolutely Dwarfs my current workstation case the in wind 303 and quite honestly on first look I didn't like the dark base Pro construction wise and quality wise it's absolutely lovely but I was confused by the feature set with the sheer scale of this thing it's a given you can fit just about any component you want to throw into it including dual 420 millimeter radiators as

many full length graphics cards as you'd like a power supply they can be about a foot deep and a CPU cooler that can be well about as tall as the building to me at first glance this looked less like a modern case layout and more like an upgraded chassis from around 2008 but the more I started digging into it the more I honestly fell in love with it I think most of my initial thoughts rested with the dual five-and-a-quarter CD drive bays up front and the case door that covers the front intake fans I decided in this review to go for broke and to do a full inverted build one of five alternative layouts this case supports and sorry you won't be seeing all of those layouts

today but you will be seeing how easy it is to completely disassemble the 900 R to the front and top panels pop right off with four latches on each side the power supply shroud comes next with three screws on the outside panel and two more hidden away in the basement next up is the motherboard tray with I think nine screws and total holding it in place I lost count midway through but easily rotates out of the case when it's all freed up and finally the front support and the drive cages reassembly was pretty straightforward other than me installing the power supply incorrectly for this particular case layout which resulted in the shroud resting on top of the power supply a quick set change later though and everything slotted together quite nice

sleeeeep the power supply for today's build is also from be quiet it's the pure power 11 it's a 600 watt 80 plus gold unit and is semi modular there's a 24 pin and single 8 pin EPS cable hardwired in modular connectivity for up to 4 8 pin PCIe connections and a host of SATA and molex devices the design is fairly attractive and with it's orange rim fan inside it's the perfect match for the 900 r2 chassis with this case in its inverted orientation it did make plugging in cables along the top there bottom of the motherboard a little bit difficult I opted to plug in the 8 pin EPS connection before even putting the board into place as there was no way I was going to be able to do it once the board was screwed down another difficulty was getting the case fan

lead plugged in I did eventually get it but there was more luck than skill involved there you may have noticed the 900 r2 comes with a trio of silent wing 3 140 millimeter fans pre-installed I really appreciate be quiet including a premium set of fans with this case and even more so the a port pwm fan hub the fan hub also doubles as an RGB controller for the 2 LED light strips that are also included in this case you can control the RGB lighting either from the button at the front of the case or connecting the 4 pin RGB header to your motherboard and let your software do its job you are going to notice the theme to this case review today and that's it doesn't shoehorn you into only using the feature set in one way you get to choose how to

implement the RGB lighting the drive placement CD drives or no massive custom water cooling loop or kick-ass air cooling support it's all here on a side note is this be quiet case going to burst into flames because I put knock to a fans alongside these silent wings it hasn't so far but I wouldn't trust this long-term when building in cases that support a reversible layout cable management can suffer pretty quickly and it's one reason I wanted to try the 900 r2 in the inverted layout as the standard config I saw no immediate cable management issues there are cable tie downs of plenty along the backside of the motherboard and the orange grommets are well sized and positioned for this case aside from the difficulties with plugging in the EPS and

fan connections along the PSU shroud everything had no trouble reaching where it was supposed to go nor was it difficult to keep everything tidy around back like I said my initial impressions of this case was that it looked like a modernized full Tower from around 2008 but I think that's what gives the 900 r2 a lot of its charm the i/o on the front is simple and retro with a giant square power and a fairly large hard drive activity light but surrounding that is an RGB controller USB 3.0 type-a and a USB 3.1 type-c ports along with a dedicated USB power port the top and front door of this case feature a beautiful black brushed aluminum finish and

there's also a qi wireless charging pad for your compatible mouse and keyboard up on the top the door swings open on front revealing twin intake fans and those CD drive bay facades this is also where you have access to the two removable dust filters inside this case the upright support in this case has a couple features that does help the empty space up front make a little bit more sense at second glance those plastic rectangles can be removed and replaced with three and a half inch hard drive trays up to nine if you stack from basement to ceiling there are three single trays and a double tray included in the box for a total of five meaning that for a high-capacity workstation this case should be on your shortlist especially with as rare as high quantity three

and a half inch drive support is becoming as of late it's funny that the most flashy part of this build has nearly faded into obscurity these days as recently as four years ago tempered glass side panels were kind of rare just starting to replace acrylic windows from the previous decade yet here I am kind of brushing over this absolutely massive piece of glass that dominates the entire side of the case although I did have to remove it because it was causing too much glare on the camera but trust me when I say the 900 r2 is stunningly beautiful when outfitted with the right hardware heck even just my test build this is a darn good looking system so is everything

sunshine and daisies with this rather premium case well I do have a couple nitpicks if you're planning on picking one up the power supply shroud for instance has modular plates on the top that can be removed to provide easier access to equipment down to the basement such as a water cooling pump or you can swap up the plates for two and a half inch hard drives let's my gripe here is the shroud doesn't reach quite far enough back in the case for my liking and there's a bit of a gap between it and the motherboard tray that doesn't sound like that big of a deal but when you have a couple of dangling SATA power connectors for the Qi charger and

the PWM header it doesn't look all that great in such a premium case I do have the exact same complaint for the top of this case although if you do have a full length radiator or at least all three fans installed this is going to be less of an issue for you but that's that the front IO cabling is completely exposed up in the attic it's not a huge eyesore if you have CD bays installed but you could argue that having CD bays are nice or ended up themselves in 19 also if you do plan on installing a radiator or even all three fans along the top you are going to lose the top two three and a half inch drive trays and in my particular build the USB 3.0 header is probably gonna have to go away behind the door the twin fan intakes look absolutely awesome but the

CD drive links look a little bit out of place and there's no getting rid of them if you wanted to even if you have a radiator installed in the front of this case those CD drives are just going to kind of be there and that's really it as far as my complaints go in fact for a case that has so many options on where you can put components it doesn't make you choose between two components all that often really the only conflicts that I see is you can't use this top fan slot if

you want to use that top three and a half inch hard drive tray also you're limited to 45 millimeter thick rads up front if you want to use the rest of the hard drive trays in the system everything else seems to be fair game on placement and fit and that's a very unique quality in a case so it is my final opinion on the be quiet dark bass pro 900 revision to my initial impressions were overall matte it seemed too big and bulky for the feature set that it was offering but

building in the system and seeing how easy it all goes together noticing all of the thoughtful design elements it has completely won me over now this is a premium case and a does fetch a premium price coming in on Amazon at the time of this review plus an additional if you want the pure power 11 power supply to go with it but it also comes with a whole host of accessories three solid winged 140 millimeter fans RGB LED strips eight port PWM fan controller and a sandal and RGB controller construction quality and looks are absolutely second to none and the versatility and different orientations of this case mean you can change up the look of your bill at any time and the 900 r2 absolutely lives up to the company name

when the system is pushed to its absolute limits the case remains quiet as a mouse if you're interested in picking up the 900 revision to the pure power 11 power supply or any of the other parts I featured in this build today I will have Amazon affiliate links down in the review description make sure you click on those links as every dollar you spend there really does help me keep the lights on around here make sure to follow me on twitter