be quiet! Silent Base 800 Case Review

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be quiet! Silent Base 800 ATX Computer Case (Orange)
Model No. BG001
MSRP: $139.90 US dollars
SKU: 4260052184196

I start this review by simply noting the unique model number of BG001, because for be quiet!, the Silent Base 800 Computer Case is the very first case from be quiet! and the Orange flavor is the very first in the series of three cases from this German computer parts supplier. This new case has hit the ground running and we at Think Computers dot org have been given a distinct privilege to review it, so it’s a little historic for us to write on a case that is the very first in a total line of 3 cases as of this review.

The BG001 is the Orange version, the BG002 is the Black version, and the BG003 is the Silver version. The accent colors of the case is really the only difference you find which gives you three different color combinations to choose from. The internal rubber colors are black, silver or orange as in the one that we are testing in this review.

be quiet! is a trademark of Listan GmbH & Co. KG which started out designing and selling power supplies back in 2006. Since then this little company has made a big name for itself by creating quiet products for computer builders all over the world. They have branched out to include the creation and sales of air cooling solutions with their own brand and design of case cooling fans, power supplies and now computer cases.

The be quiet! “Silent Base 800 Computer Case” is specifically designed for high resolution gaming builds with a mixture of silence. Then add your pure muscle mixed with some over clocked CPU’s with an overall look that can fit into any living environment without attracting too much of the wrong attention both by loud looks or loud sounds.

The silence of the be quiet! Silent Base 800 Computer Case comes into existence by some great German ingenuity, good materials and high end designing that do the best it can to allow maximum airflow into the case with the noise isolation materials to keep the noise of the parts trapped inside the unit.

There is quite a market for sound proofed computer cases. Many companies are now offering this type of less annoying sounds of the computer component that in itself is a naturally noisy environment, and trying to engineer the noise out of it takes some really design challenges.

This is done by first designing an adding adequate sound proofing material on panels like in luxury cars, to keep a quiet and tranquil cabin. Then there is isolating and placing the case vents in a way to contain air flow noise and control fan noise at the source.

This can become a daunting task since natural laws say high power there is high heat; high heat needs to be super cooled and super cooling cause’s even more noise.

Then there are the fans that come pre-installed with the “be quiet!” Silent Base 800 Computer Case. The fans are the Pure Wings 2 series from be quiet! The front intake fans are two “Pure Wings 140mm” fans that are 9 bladed fans with a 18.5dba @ 1000 rpm with a 61.2 cfm and well isolated from the outside by the case itself by a special mounting process and indirect venting. The single “Pure Wings 2” silent 120mm exhaust fan is a 19dba @ 1500 rpm with a 51.4 cfm fan that is blowing out the back and doesn’t need lots of isolation since most of the heat from the case is being expelled from this point and the need for zero air resistance is most important here.

Pure Wings 2 Fan

The “Pure Wings 2” fan blades are designed to reduce noise-generating fan turbulence or wind noise that can cause very annoying background noise in any computer case, but these are not the best fans that “be quiet” has in their inventory but the price hike for adding the premium fans would not be worth the jump in price of the case itself.
That said, the MTBF is a good 80,000 hours. This type of bearing is also employed strictly for its need to be quiet. Because the lubricant is constantly soaking the shaft and bearing this action also keeps the action of the fan sound down and a special noise-canceling circuitry inside the fan to keep down the sound of the motor noises. Then they added the special way that the fans are finally attached into the case. They call this process “decoupled” which gives the illusion that they are not hard fitted into the unit but in fact, they are mounted very tightly into the cases internal steel frame.

Rifle bearing

“To better understand the way The “Rifle Bearing” works; you first need to understand the word “Rifling” itself. Rifling gets its name from the grooves that made inside the barrel of a rifle. This rifling makes a bullet or projectile spin and uses that spin action like a gyroscope to make the projectile fly straighter. These grooves inside the fan mechanism surrounding bearing are said to create a miniature oil pumping action that moves oil around the shaft and the internal bearing and constantly create a flow around the whole mechanical movement. This movement of oil and rifling is sealed inside at the top and the bottom of the shaft and the oil is kept flowing inside and outside of the two moving parts to allow for free flowing movement without the two parts ever coming into direct contact.”

While this is all really happening inside the fan, I have no idea. From my personal research on the subject I have found that there are really only two basic types of fan bearing (Ball and sleeved) while newegg.com lists 24 different varieties of case fan bearings types. But are they really that different? Don’t get me wrong there are all differences and some are a lot better than others but everyone needs a way to make their product stand out higher than the other in a large crowd.

Noise

Internal mechanical hard drives are still the best bang for your buck when it comes to large amounts of data storage for the money, but they can be also creates the most annoying noises to fight inside any typical computer case. This and the high performance graphics card add vibration and constant whirring sound that comes from the movement of these device fans and inner working, inside the metal casing can cause vibration and noise that is usually directly transferred to the structure or frame of the internal metallic case, so to combat this most annoying of these noise mechanical components the internal 3.5 inch drive cages feature a unique and specially designed lattice work of both strong steel casings and silicone rubber anti-vibration rails or side mounts that fully decouples the mechanical hard drives from the frame of the case and virtually eliminating the transmission of any vibration or resonance to the case structure. The lattice like silicone mounts are designed to literally halt internal vibration of the drives by holding them hard and steady while isolating them in a suspension of soft Silicone rubber. So even the loudest set of WD VelociRaptors running at full 10,000 rpm in raid can be isolated and the sound deadened by the silicone mounts and the sound of the drive themselves can be deadened by the inner panel sound proofing.

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