be quiet! Silent Base 800 Window Orange review – beauty, silence and great cooling

Today we are going to present you a computer case – a product by the renowned German manufacturer be quiet!. The company is famous on the market with its high-quality products, and as we can see from the name – their silent operation. The model in question is Silent Base 800 Windows and it is available in orange and black (in our case), silver and black, and entirely black.

Be quiet! says that in manufacturing this computer case their main goal was to reach a high cooling efficiency and a perfect air circulation with low noise levels. It has three factory-installed Pure Wing 2 fans and solutions for noise reduction such as panels with noise insulating material, rubberized openings, and fasteners. For enthusiasts who like to enjoy interesting components in their computers, there is a side panel with a “double glazing” window.

In this review, we will take a look at the design, build quality and case’s construction. We will check the cooling capabilities and functionality of the case in assembling our system, as well as some results from our tests.

You can buy be quiet! Silent Base 800 Window from here.

Contents


Specs sheet

 


TypeMid Tower
Choice of materialsmetal, ABS plastic, polycarbonate and rubber
Motherboard supportATX, M-ATX, Mini-ITX
Optical drive3 x 5.25-inch
HDD/SSDseven 3.5-inch slots and four 2.5-inch
I/O panel
  • 2x USB 3.0 and 2x USB 2.0
  • HD Аudio (microphone and headset jacks)
Factory-installed fans
  • 2x 140 mm (front)
  • 1x 120 mm (rear)
Optional fans
  • 2x 120/140 mm up
  • 1x 120/140 mm down
  • 1x 120 mm side panel
Optional liquid cooling
  • 2x 140/120 mm in front
  • 120 mm behind
  • 120/140/240/280 mm up
Features
  • CPU cooler with height of 170 mm
  • GPU with length of 290 mm (with HHD cell) and 400 mm (without HHD cell)
  • Power supply unit with length of up to 290 mm (without lower fan)
  • Noise insulating material on the front and side panels
Dimensions495 mm x 266 mm x 559 mm
Weight9.31 kg


Video presentation


Retail package

Silent Base 800 comes in a box with impressive dimensions – 651 x 305 x 572 mm (length x width x height) and weight of 11 kg. We would like to stress on this to save you some unwanted carrying around if the delivery of the case is not directly to your home. For those of you who are enthusiasts, we can say that there are two openings on the two sides of the cardboard box, which will help you carry the product to your home.

The box is wrapped in a fabric cover and placed between two styrofoam pieces which protect it from breaking during transportation. The product comes with a user manual, which you can find on the bottom of the box and a cardboard box with accessories, attached with tape to the cell for 5.25-inch devices inside the case itself.

 

The accessories are located in separate bags and they are: cable ties – helping for arranging cables in the case; rubber rails –  used for the installation of the hard drives; different size and type of screws; spacers and cable holder.

be quiet! Silent Base 800 on the outside

In spite of the fact that it is offered as a Mid Tower case, Silent Base 800 is with impressive dimensions – 495 x 266 x 559 mm (length x width x height) and it weighs 9 kg. That provides the ability to install a big air cooler for the CPU, video card with big sizes and to hide cables behind the motherboard panel.

The case catches one’s eye with its simple, stylish and nice design, thanks to its side lid with window which is highlighted with orange lining and curved edges. Additionally, the discreet logo of the company makes the bottom part of the front panel and the other side lid look beautiful. The top, bottom and side panels are made of ABS (acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene) – plastic with high build quality and pleasant to touch.

The two highlighted with orange nets on the front panel, providing the front fans with air, make the case looks beautiful. We like the combination of orange and black and perhaps it is not by chance that be quiet! chose precisely those colors as its trademark.

 

And so, the front panel is separated by two hinged lids that can be opened – one above the other. The top one is opened sideways (in our case to the right), with a light pull on the upper section. Thanks to its suspension and its special openings in the front panel, using a philips screwdriver we can change the direction of its opening, depending on which side of the desk the case is positioned. To avoid unpleasant vibrations when the computer is working, there are small integrated magnets, which keep it still. To reduce the noise levels coming out of the case, there is a layer of noise insulating material on its inner side, and rubber stoppers that protect the plastic when closing it. After we open it, we can see the four lids of the cell for 5.25-inch devices. Actually, they are three because the upper one (the fourth) is decorative and it hides the cables for the On/Off and Reset buttons, as well as the I/O panel.

To open the bottom lid we need to push it in the middle of its upper part, which releases its retaining mechanism. It falls forward and its inner part is also covered with materials that reduce noise. Behind it we can see a dust filter, protecting the two be quiet! Pure Wing 2 fans which provide the fresh air of the box. They are 140 mm with maximum rotational speed of 1000 rpm and maximum noise levels of 18.8 dB. Despite their silent work, they are fastened to the box by means of rubber bushings, eliminating the possibility of any negative noises at any vibrations.

On the top panel you can see the Power button, as well as the I/O panel of the case. You can find jacks for headphones and a microphone, as well as four USB connectors –  2 x USB 3.0 (blue) and 2 x USB 2.0 (black).

The Power button boasts a beautiful orange backlight, which is quite fascinating once the computer has been turned on. Furthermore, the LED which reflects the performance of the hard drives is elegantly integrated into the Reset button – it also turns orange.

On the back part of the top panel there are cut vents helping to draw hot air out of the box.

According to be quiet!, the ones on the top are specially designed to reflect sound waves back in the case.

On the back part of the box, except the factory-installed 120 mm fan, we can also see three rubberized openings which are provided for an external liquid cooling or cables.

The case has seven metal detachable lids for the motherboard expansion slots. A dust filter is available and it is located below the dedicated power supply unit place and that for an additional fan. The filter is removed by pulling.

Also, the side lid with window looks great. It is metal while the window is made of two polycarbonate layers with some distance between them. They form a “glazing” which provides good noise insulation.

The window is positioned on a rubber seal (in orange of course) and it is held by 12 screws to the lid. When it comes to the strength of the cover – do not worry – in our attempts to bend it, it turned out to be “a harder nut to crack” compared to the entirely metal one.

As we mentioned, the other lid is metal and it has a dust filter and plastic “stopper” carrying the company’s logo. In addition to its beauty, it also serves as a valve which we can open to different degrees, if we want additional fresh air into our system. If we want to, we can remove it and we can install in its place a 120 mm fan. Just like the front panel, here on the inside of the whole lid and the plastic part we have noise insulating material.

The U-shaped edges of both lids make them easy to mount/dismount and at the same time they reduce vibrations and increase the stability of the case.

The case has two elongated legs shaped as ski. They are very easy to mount (by pressing until it clicks) in the specially cut openings in the lower panel.

 

Additionally, the feet are made of plastic and rubberized in their both ends – this adds stability to the case.

Silent Base 800 on the inside

Despite its relatively big dimensions, Silent Base 800 is offered as a Mid Tower box, which means that the maximum motherboard size that can be mounted is ATX. be quiet! play it safe with the conventional design of the interior and they have made some improvements. At the top of the motherboard panel is cut a wide opening which makes possible mounting / dismounting the processor’s cooler (requiring back plate), without taking out the motherboard itself. In this train of thought – the inclusion of a P8 12V ATX / EPS connector through the small opening (we assume that it is defined for it) at the top of the case and its attachment to the motherboard – was not particularly easy. The case’s width allows the use of a large air cooler with a height of 170 mm such as be quiet! Dark Rock 3. The maximum length of a video card that we can put in the case is 290 mm without removing the HDD cell against it. If it is longer, as the one that we’ve used – ASUS Strix GeForce GTX 1060 6G (a review is coming soon), after the removal of the HDD cell, this length is increased to 400 mm.

For easier and nicer cable management, the case is supplied with four rubberized openings of the panel for the motherboard. They are also orange to match the overall color style. The distance between the back side of this panel and the side lid is around 2 cm which is enough to accommodate the hidden cables.

We like the opportunity for mounting two 2.5-inch SSD (Solid State Disk) on the back of the box. And this is easy, thanks to special frames that are held by just one bolt.

Removing the top panel of the case is done (first you need to remove the front panel in a similar manner) by pressing the plastic clips on the bottom side toward the inside of the box and pulling it up slightly. When it is released from the chassis, it is necessary to remove the connectors which connect cables from the I / O panel with those of the buttons for starting and restarting the computer.

After opening the top panel we get access to the place which is provided for two additional fans sized 120/140 mm, or heatsink for liquid cooling with length of 120 to 280 mm. The height of the panel allows the installation of fans on the top of the chassis in a push-pull fan and heatsink configuration (the one blows, and the other one leads the hot air out).

We used AIO DEEPCOOL Gamer Storm CAPTAIN 240 liquid cooling for the processor with push configuration of the fans. We installed the heatsink in a way that is closest to the outside so as to refrain from blocking the access to the fan connectors and the power supply ATI/EPS connector in the top part of the motherboard – ASUS Maximus VIII Hero.

The cell for the 5.25-inch optical drives or fan controllers is in the upper front of the computer case. It accommodates three devices and it is equipped with a one-sided tool-less plastic mechanisms for snapping.

Unfortunately, our attempts to mount an optical device with standard dimensions were thwarted by the abutment at the radiator of the liquid cooling (top slot) or at its pipes (bottom two slots).

Below the cell designed for 5.25-inch devices are the ones designed for hard drives (HHD). They are two entirely metal with option for mounting seven 3.5-inch HHDs – one with three and another one with four, or two SSDs – for one at the top of each.

We can change the places of the cells or we can remove them by unscrewing four screws on each of them (three in front and one on the back side of the motherboard’s panel) and in their place we can install a heatsink for liquid cooling with a length of up to 240 mm. An interesting solution on behalf of be quiet! is to provide us with an opportunity to move the lesser of them, with its head upside down, into the cell for 5.25-inch devices. This attempt of ours also failed “thanks” to the 276 mm heatsink of the liquid cooling and its pipes.

The other solution of the people “to blame” for the creation of Silent Base 800, which makes us happy, is the use of orange rubber rails for the installation of hard drives. Thanks to them, the vibrations of the drives’ operation is minimized and hence the unpleasant noise.

After we install the HDD rails with the vertical cut opposite the connectors, we simply slide it with the connectors on the inside of some slots and fix it using a vertical sliding mechanism.

In the case’s rear top next to the opening for the motherboard’s I/O panel is the third factory-installed fan. There we can mount even a 120 mm heatsink. This fan is also from the Pure Ring 2 series, but with dimensions of 120 x 120 x 25 mm, speed of 1500 rpm and maximum noise levels of 19.2 dB. Here we can see additional rubber bushings used in its installation.

In the bottom part of the Silent Base 800 chassis, after the power supply unit placed on soft foam pads, we can place an additional 120 mm fan. The power supply can be up to 290 mm without a lower fan installed and up to 160 mm with an additional lower fan.


System photos

In order to check how the assembly of a computer configuration in Silent Base 800 Window Orange will flow, we used an ASUS Maximus VIII Hero motherboard in combination with an Intel Core i5 6600 processor cooled by the Gamer Storm CAPTAIN 240 CPU Liquid Cooler, RAM Crucial Ballistix Elite 16GB (2x 8192MB) DDR4 at 2666Mhz and ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce GTX 1060-8G-GAMING video card (a review is coming soon). We relied on the be quiet! Power Zone 650W power supply, and for the installation of drives we had an HDD and SSD by Samsung.

Thanks to the big opening in the motherboard panel we had no problems installing the back plate of the processor’s cooling with already positioned motherboard in the case.

The rubberized openings and the space between the back part of the panel and the side lid, allowed us to hide the cables which we don’t want to see.

To install a GPU with impressive dimensions we needed to remove one of the cells for 3.5-inch devices.

The orange highlights positioned in and out look fresh and contribute to the overall beautiful appearance of the case.

The window on the side panel offers us a great view to the components in the box.

Temperature tests

We would like to clarify the fact that the case was completely closed and the room temperature was around 22 degrees Celsius during the tests. Compared to the components used in the assembly of our computer system, we decided that the overclocked GPU is the unit that will generate the most heat in the case. That’s why we decided to use the Unigine Valley benchmark to load the machine.

During all tests we used software to manually set fan speed of the liquid cooling system to 950 rpm. The ones of the GPU we adjusted to 45% of their full rotation capacity.

In order to check the cooling capabilities of the Silent Base 800 at the different noise levels coming out of the case, we did three experiments with different settings of the three factory-installed be quiet! Pure Wing 2 fans. The first was with fans operating at maximum speed. After a 60-minute test we recorded maximum temperatures of 60 °C on the video card, 43 °C on the CPU,  29 °Con the motherboard and 37 ° on the RAM.

The temperature results were amazing, but the noise coming out of the case was not exactly what we expect from a quiet operating system.

The next thing we tried was with completely stopped fans. The lack of noise (from not working additional fans) was great but at the expense of temperatures that rose from 10 to 13 degrees for various components.

The maximum measured temperatures after a 60-minute load were: 71 °C on the video card, 53 °C on the processor, 41 °C on the motherboard and 50 °C on the RAM.

Dissatisfied with the results obtained in our last experience, we engaged the be quiet! Pure Wing 2 fans once again. With the help of software for motherboard management, we have raised their speed to the point where noise levels do not to exceed the limit of our understanding for comfortable work with the computer.

After 60 more minutes of system work, the temperatures stabilized and they were more than satisfying: 61 degrees on the video card, 43 degrees on the CPU, 32 degrees on the motherboard and 42 degrees on the memory.

Silent Base 800 Window Orange proved that it can provide a great combination of silent work and amazing cooling capabilities.

Verdict

Silent Base 800 Orange Window has high build quality and beautiful design. The computer case attracts our attention with the orange details against the entirely black background and the side cover with a window offering a view at the bigger part of the interior. be quiet! tried to minimize the level of unpleasant vibration and noise by using noise insulating material, rubber bushings and rails for the installation of fans and hard drives in the case.

The computer case offers enough space for mounting big GPUs and air or liquid cooling systems. Its functional design is accompanied with dust filters that can be cleaned, a large opening in the panel behind the motherboard and removable cells for hard drives – we can install one of them in the compartment for 5.25-inch devices. We note that our attempt to take advantage of this clever designers’ solution failed because we used an AIO liquid cooling with a 276 mm heatsink, which touched the back of the cell. The rubberized openings for cable management and the distance from the back side of the motherboard’s panel to the side cover allow hiding all cables which we don’t want to see through the window on the other side cover.

be quiet! Silent Base 800 Orange Window comes with three factory-installed quiet and efficient Pure Wing 2 fans and a unique design that minimizes disturbing noises from the air flow and other components in the system. Thanks to this, the computer case not only offers beauty but also great cooling capabilities to users who seek balance between maximum performance and quiet operation.

You can buy be quiet! Silent Base 800 Window from here.

Pros

  • Beautiful design and high build quality
  • Option of installing a liquid cooling
  • Three factory-installed Pure Wing 2 fans
  • Dust filters


Cons

  • Relatively high price

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Gianni
Gianni
6 years ago

Hi, Any idea if the Dark Rock Pro 3 cooler will fit in this case? about to start on a new build combining the i7-8700 and dark rock pro 3.