Final words and conclusion

Final words and conclusion

Be Quiet! has an interesting product at hand with the Silent Base 800. The primary three features of space, aesthetics and being a silent product have been well achieved. The included fans are drop-dead silent. It would have been nice to have seen some sort of fan controller though, three settings low/mid/high would always get my preference. But the default offers decent enough airflow and it remains a very silent chassis.

Aesthetics

Though the all black version is a little less pretty for a photo shoot, it is a nice looking chassis. My bet is that the black/orange version will sell the best. Ever since its release two weeks ago this chassis has been praised a lot, and it is well deserved. Admittedly, it's a lot of plastic, but it's done right. And over time, you'll slowly appreciate it more and more. The all black design is nice, the colored version looks better though. Aesthetics wise things are kept simple. On the more simple side of things, added benefits are of course the two USB 3.0 ports, the mainboard cutout on the motherboard tray and the overall tool free design. 

The work space inside is decent of course, but mind you the biggest motherboard you choose will have to conform with the ATX form factor as a maximum as the chassis can house ATX, Micro-ATX and mini-ITX motherboards. There's also decent space for routing cables and, well, hiding them of course. With good access to pretty much everything and with 7 expansion slots there is plenty of room for two or three graphics cards. Bear in mind though that some restrictions do apply when it comes to length of the graphics cards, especially when using more than one of them. This definitely needs to be checked out before installing multiple graphics cards. The all black interior, cool looks, the CPU backplate cutout for easy installation/replacement of CPU-coolers and overall features that belong in the mainstream to high-end segment all add value. 

Final words

For their first ever chassis, I feel that Be Quiet! has done a very nice job with the Silent Base 800. It's a well designed product with nice aesthetics and a good feature set. But most important is the factor mentioned in the naming, it is a very silent product. The low RPM fans are of good quality. Then there is sound dampening insulation inside the chassis combined with rubber elements everywhere to keep your PC whisper silent. There is enough room behind the motherboard for cable management, and then there are the three fans in the case, factory installed, offering very nice airflow at very low noise levels. In this price range (120 EURO) we do miss a real fan controller though as I like to alter RPM on the fly. But sure, the overall well thought through design, the nice quality and a sufficient enough feature set definitely make this chassis interesting. The finished product looks quite lovely, though taste differs per person of course. Though the chassis is not perfect it remains a very good one. But if I had to rate it I'd give it an 8 out of 10 and considering the Silent Base 800 is the first chassis Be Quiet! ever put into production we can only applaud them.

We can recommend the Silent Base 800.

Good job guys, well done.

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