the beauty of a full-tower enclosure as flexible as this is you get to try every possible permutation. The Dark Base Pro 900 Rev. 2 looks just as premium as the price suggests. The company utilized a strange set of materials, including ABS plastic, steel, and aluminum throughout, but the end result is quite something. The front panel is actually a door that's held on by two latches and magnets, hiding the front panel dust filter and Silent Wings 3 fans. Case 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. 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).

Over on the other side is a more traditional metal side door with sound-dampening material glued to the inside. Be Quiet calls this a "2-in-1" side panel because there's a section in the middle that can be removed. Behind that removable slab are two 140mm fan mounts with a dust filter wedged in between. How about a 180 mm fan? The case was advertised to hold them. But alas, I have given mine away so I cannot show you. How about 200 mm fans? Here is one. See the slots in the top? That tells you that rads should fit up there too. 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. Reach to the ends of the slot covers and squeeze those tabs. The cover comes free from the outside and you can see into the case. Behind the 5.25” bay we see a bunch of on space closed off by the exhaust fan at the rear of the case.

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be quiet! Dark Base Pro 900 Orange rev. 2is the perfect case for all who expect the highest standards when it comes to modularity, compatibility, and design. The first step to inverting the Dark Base Pro 900 is pretty much removing all the internals one-by-one. We start the process with completely detaching the motherboard tray from the system by taking out the 9 screws holding it in position. be quiet! touts the flexibility of the Dark Base Pro 900’s interior, and I have to agree that this is one of the most adaptable cases I’ve ever seen. The motherboard tray, rear fan mount, and rear expansion slot panel are all a unit on this case, and they’re joined to its frame by six rubber-dampened screws. The tray can sit in any of three positions on the frame to balance space above the motherboard with room for expansion cards. Since our tests today are simply functional rather than competitive, I’ve chosen only to present minimum and maximum temperatures during each of our test phases. Looking into the case’s main chamber, we can see the other major change be quiet! made to the design of the Dark Base Pro 900 rev. 2 versus its first-gen forebear. A full-length PSU shroud now runs across the bottom of the case for a cleaner look, in keeping with most other cases these days. Plastic covers on top of this shroud can be removed to allow for better air flow to the power supply and storage devices underneath. be quiet! will make this shroud available to those who already own a Dark Base 900 and want to cover up their cable nests.

Here are the end pieces from the rear or the case. The solid piece comes from above the exhaust fan. The large piece is the PSU carrier face down, showing its bottom screw-holes.Given the largely screw-free approach, we’re surprised be quiet! hasn’t opted for a more user-friendly side panel mechanism. As it stands, the heavy tempered-glass panel is notched at eight points and has to be perfectly aligned before being slid into position and secured by captive thumbscrews. Far from a deal breaker, but in our experience, such notches can bend over time. On panels as big and heavy as this, we’d prefer a swing-to-open hinge. Another dust filter can be pulled from the bottom of the case, but unless you install fans down there, it's not likely to accumulate much grime. With its fan hub in quiet mode, the Dark Base Pro 900duced a pleasingly smooth noise character under load that belied the pair of GTX 1080 Tis and 180-W CPU cranking away inside. All of the fans I could hear sounded mostly like moving air, and I couldn’t hear a single stray vibration or rattle from the case. The absolute noise levels produced by the system in this configuration were loud enough to be consistently noticeable, but they didn’t annoy me or otherwise cause me to seek aural relief. Here we have one of the side panel’s subpanels. You can see the adjustable lands that hold the panel at a variable distance.