We knew that be quiet! has been working on its Silent Base 600 case for quite a while now, and we first got to have a look at it back at Computex earlier this year. After a couple more months of hard work, the folks over at the German cooling manufacturer have finally finished the mid-tier case, and released it upon the U.S. market.
The Silent Base 600 is meant to be a universally applicable case that comes in at a reasonable price tag. Therefore, its design is fairly straightforward, with a focus on quiet operation. Inside, the layout is about as ordinary as a case can be. You'll be able to fit an ATX motherboard, three dual-slot graphics cards, three optical drives, and three 2.5" or 3.5" SSDs or hard drives.
| Motherboard Form Factor | ATX, Micro-ATX, Mini-ITX |
|---|---|
| Graphics Card Length | 290 mm |
| Graphics Card Length (Without HDD Cage) | 400 mm |
| CPU Cooler Height | 170 mm |
| Expansion Slots | 7 |
| External Bays | 3x 5.25" |
| Internal Bays | 3x 2.5", 3x 3.5", Shared |
| Dimensions | 495 x 230 x 493 mm |
| Weight | 7.8 kg |
| Materials | 0.7 mm steel, ABS plastic, Nylon |
One interesting thing to note about the case is the reason why be quiet! took its time to finish it. As you may know, be quiet! is rather new to the case manufacturing business, so in order to make a good name for themselves, the be quiet! team has to build a superb case.
One example of a little detail that they paid extra attention to is the tool-free mounting system. Many cases come with tool-free mounting systems for various parts, but a common problem with such systems is that they tend to rattle, as they have quite wide manufacturing tolerances. With the intention of building a silent case, be quiet! did its best to ensure that their system doesn't have the same noise issues.
When you're working with the case, you'll notice many such details – or rather, won't, because there should be no rattles. The folks at be quiet! paid attention to smaller details such as those, but also the more obvious ones. The case comes with dust filters in front of all the intakes, and damping material throughout its interior.
If you look purely at the case's spec sheet, there's not much happening that's remarkable. The build quality should be strong, however, and its design should certainly appeal to a large audience. be quiet! announced that the case is available immediately, with a $109.90 price tag. A windowed version is also available for $10 more. All the cases are black, with either black, orange, or silver accents, and they all come with two Pure Wings 2 fans pre-installed.
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Niels Broekhuijsen has been with Tom's Hardware since 2012, and works as a Contributing Editor on the news team. He covers mostly hardware, components, and anything else that strikes his fancy. Outside of work, he likes to travel, cook, and fix things that are broken.
You can follow him at @NBroekhuijsen. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.
