Modest Updates To The Silent & Dark Base Cases From be quiet! At Computex 2018

Some updates don’t have to be big and bold to improve a product, and while things might seem ‘boring’ from be quiet!, they are important and improve the overall quality of life for a product. The Silent and Dark Base cases are rather minimalist, and don’t hinge on flashy RGB LEDs and super aggressive design quirks, but instead goes with the philosophy of function is its own form.

The Silent Base 601 and 801 are the cases for people looking to build a quiet system, as it’s padded with 10mm thick sound dampening material on the panels. A quiet system usually trades in thermals, but the Silent Base still manages good air circulation, as well as PWM fans pre-installed. The 801 is just a bigger version of the 601 that can store more hard drives and fit larger coolers, as well as include a fan hub. The main purpose for the update is the ability to invert the motherboard tray and have GPUs and such installed facing up. There are other small tweaks such as buttons to unlock panels, rather than the old slide-locks.

The Dark Base Pro 900 also got an update with its rev. 2 edition. Being the flagship product for be quiet!’s cases, it has to have something for everyone. For some reason, the overwhelming comment to improve the Dark Base was to include a power supply shroud to hide the cables and hard drives. The fans have also been replaced with much faster 1600 RPM Silent Wing 3 fans, up from 1000 RPM, to account for more performance minded people.

The LED strip was also changed for a 12V system, instead of 5V, to make it more broadly compatible with other LED systems. There’s some minor cosmetic changes as well, such as more black paint to help hide screws in various locations. Also, the front-panel connectors have been updated to more modern standards, replacing the USB 2.0 headers with 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C connectors, and a quick charge port.

There is also some AMD love as be quiet! will be releasing a dedicated TR4 compatible Dark Rock Pro cooler. It’s a dual tower heatsink with a full-contact coldplate. This full-contact has been proven to be very effective when it comes to Threadripper, since the dies under the IHS are more widely dispersed, rather than under a central location, so the coldplate needs to have that extra area to cover all the dies.

A new set of fans will be coming soon, too. Shadow Wings 2 is meant to be the quietest fans that be quiet! has made, optimized for airflow, and will be available in 120 and 140mm versions, 3 and 4-pin PWM. Last on the list is also a set of PSU cables that are individually sleeved and highly flexible, meant to be compatible with be quiet!’s latest PSU series.