be quiet! Dark Base 900 PRO review - Article

be quiet! DARK BASE PRO 900
The next-gen enthusiast class chassis

We review the all new be quiet! Dark Base 900 PRO. The new enthusiast class chassis from be quiet! is full of intricate little features like a wireless charger for your phone and a full window side-panel made out of tempered glass. Next to that it houses pretty much anything you need it to and is offered in a near tool free product. A lovely chassis design, fairly tool free, good space to work in and it has very quiet airflow plus is prepped for liquid cooling. It doesn't stop there though, the chassis has silent fans, a fan controller and yes, even a nice (and proper) RGB LED lighting system built in. 

That's quite a lot of features I've already mentioned there, eh? Well, that is the concept and norm be quiet! lives by, it needs to be done right and as such they go into detail. Their last gen Silent Base series chassis have been a success. They wanted to offer something new, something that can compete with the big guns from Corsair and Cooler Master. Hence the Dark Base 900 was born, a name that could have easily been derived from a Star Wars movie :)

Dark, style and feature-rich and obviously silent with the help of noise dampening are just a few features that come to mind. The side window, for example, is made out of coated tempered glass, the chassis will offer noise isolation thanks to padded dampening, well that and the use of some of the most quiet fans. Just looking at the chassis for the first time will bring a smile to your face, as it breathes aesthetics and offers a quality feel. Depending on the color combination you choose, the chassis is made with a dark interior. There are three color options available - black and orange, black and silver, or all-black (our sample). Next to the color options, there will be two main SKU models available, the Dark Base 900 and the Dark Base 900 PRO. That last option comes with a Qi wireless charger for your (compatible) smart-phone, e.g. the latest Samsung Galaxy 6 and 7 series, as well as RGB LED lighting and more fan connectors. Next to that, the PRO model will have a tempered glass window, the standard 900 is closed with another panel. The be quiet! Dark Base 900 and 900 Pro will cost 199 and 249 euros respectively (MSRP).

Due to the grand looks you might not even realize it, but this is a mid-tower chassis sized 242,7mm x 585,5mm x 577,2mm and made of metal, aluminum and also that tempered glass (4mm thick). You can house XL-ATX ranging down towards Mini-ITX motherboards in there. Also, the motherboard tray can be rotated (flipped) so that a user can decide whether the board is positioned on the left or right. Another advantage of the motherboard tray is that it can be removed and used as a test bench externally, which means fast changing of parts is possible. So once you know your components are working/installed/seated, house it inside the chassis. Storage isn't anything to complain about either, you can mount nine storage units above each other, each in its own tray. be quiet! supplies seven HDD trays, two spaces for opticals (albeit the 3.5" trays can house 2.5" units), at the backside of the motherboard tray there's another SSD tray as well. The trays and bays can obviously be removed as modability (is that even a proper English word? ed: sure, why the hell not!) is also a key feature of this chassis.

Besides a lot of room for HDDs, there is also proper room for large CPU coolers up to 185mm high and extra long VGA cards (31cm) and power supplies. The maximum length for a power supply is 284mm. Included as well are three 140mm Silent Wing-3 fans, all connected to an adjustable fan controller. The Pro version has four PWM and three extra non-PWM connectors for fans, where the normal version has only the last three. Also there is a connection for an LED strip on the PRO model as well as the aforementioned Qi charger and a glass side panel. But hey, this is just the introduction, let's start up the review shall we?

Have an initial peek first though!