Outside

So the Dark Base Pro 900 is a beast. This isn’t the biggest case I’ve had in the office by a long shot, but it is still a big one. Large cases typically feel old to me as a lot more companies have moved to more compact designs and to shorter double wide designs for their larger models. This one though has a nice modern styling. It has a very slightly tinted tempered glass side panel and on the outside a brushed aluminum finish. The shape has contoured edges all around the front of the case and a really defined orange stripe that goes around the case starting at the top, to the front, then around the bottom. The orange accent also comes in black, this is the orange model and frankly, this is LanOC why wouldn’t we get the orange model. Orange is one of Be Quiets colors, with black being their main color. The overall case color is more of a black than the picture below shows, the front panel just looks grayer with a reflection on it.

So here is the main side of the case. The glass side panel obviously takes up most of this side. I love tempered glass in cases and for the most part, this looks really good. You can tell that they added it on here though. You can see the steel frame around the outside edge, cases built with glass in mind normally don’t have this. I don’t mind it, but painting a small ring around the inside of the glass to block it out might have looked better. The glass also gives full view of the power supply area as well, this is partially because there isn’t a cover inside and I will talk about that later, but the full glass window makes it more obvious. The glass is held on with four thumb screws. They also used a rubber grommet around the peg to keep the glass safe. Beyond the window, the side panel does have that orange accent and next to it there is a metal mesh as well. The mesh areas are intakes for the bottom mounted fans including the power supply.

From the back of the case, we can finally get a better idea of the overall size. There are 8 PCI slots meaning this is an e-ATX case and if you look there is a lot of room above and below the motherboard areas. The bottom is especially interesting because while we don’t have a power supply in the case we do have a power plug. The power area is as tall as a standard power supply, but Be Quiet! actually mounted the power supply just inside and used a power pass through. This is because the Dark Base Pro 900 is very modular. You can actually slide the motherboard tray down an inch and just have the power supply inside covering up the last few slots on a long motherboard. Doing that gives more room up top for water cooling. For ventilation, there is a 140m exhaust fan just next to the rear I/O and then vents above the PCI slots and in the entire power supply area. The screws that hold the side panels on look like your normal thumb screws but they are locked into the side panels, so you never have to worry about losing them.

So the top of the case has an interesting angle shape on both the front and the back of the case. On the back, they used the angle to slip in two slot vents along with three more near it. Then on the front, that same angled design is where they put the front I/O. Be Quiet! went crazy on the front I/O. You have a large power button in the center with a status LED ring around it. On the left of the power are the microphone and headphone jacks and to the right is a small reset button and a hard drive status LED. You get two USB 3.0 jacks on the left side and two USB 2’s over on the right. I love having four USB ports on the front panel and I don’t mind that they aren’t all the fastest, not everything needs USB 3.0. It’s the rectangle up on top that is the interesting part though. They actually integrated a wireless phone charger right into the case. They use the Qi standard and there are a lot of devices that support it. Sadly my current phone doesn’t have wireless charging built in. If every phone had Qi charging having it built into the case would be huge but sadly it does mean people who don’t have it also have to pay to have it in their case.

The right side panel has a traditional panel rather than the glass like the left side. This panel is steel, just like the base frame to add strength to the overall case construction. They then used aluminum on the top and bottom panels as well as on part of the front. Then plastic in the front, top, and bottom to add shape to the case. This side has a plastic panel in it as well that can be popped out to open up more venation. When closed it has the Be Quiet! logo on it.

The front of the Dark Base Pro 900 has a clean looking front door that is held in place with magnets and can be opened using the top left corner by pushing on it. Behind the door, there are a few things going on. For starters, there are two large 140mm fans pulling in air here. They are using the mesh vents on the sides of the front panel for air flow when the door is closed. They are covered by an intake filter that can be removed with a tab right at the top for quick cleaning. The bottom fan filter also pulls out from the front for cleaning as well. Then up top, there are two removable 5 ¼ panels should you want to use a disc drive or any other bay devices. The front door itself is also pulling double duty. The back of the door has a thick sound absorbing material on it to help keep the two front fans quiet.

The bottom of the case doesn’t have too much going on. But remember we have a bottom mounted power supply how is that. Well, they used the mesh vents along the side of the case along with a small chamber above this bottom panel and below the bottom of the inside of the case. The end result is a solid bottom panel and less noise because the sound can’t go straight out the bottom. The four feet are really solid as you would expect from a big case like this. They have 2 inch wide and 1-inch tall rubber pads on each foot, once you get some weight in this baby it’s not sliding anywhere. This bottom view also gives us a great look at the aluminum finish that Be Quiet! went with.