Gadgetory

the newest enclosure on the market is be quiets dark bass 700 loosely related to the high-cost dark bass pro 900 invertible enclosure the 700 retains the invertible motherboard option but reduces physical size and uses different tooling and key locations dark bass 700 also markets itself as a mid tower alternative to the 900 with a focus on silent operation and cooling combined generally speaking it's impossible to chart-topper both of these aspects in a case but be quiet employs a fan speed switch with multiple speed settings to give users options today we're reviewing the case at its $180 price point as compared to alternatives on the market before that this video is brought to you by thermal grizzly makers of the conductor not liquid metal that we recently used to drop 20 degrees off of our coffee lake temperatures thermal grizzly also makes traditional thermal compounds we use on top of the IHS like cryo nod and hydronaut pastes learn more at the link below we just pushed our case awards video for the year before this one went live but already knew everything about it because we've been testing it for a while so first thing here one of the items we noted in that case awards video was a general lack of USB type-c in modern cases for the year the dark bass 700 this case actually has a type C in the front next to a fan controller and if you look closely at it it's a repurposed normal USB type a slot two of them that have been given type C and a fan controller so basically it looks like the tooling was already done and be quiet went back and modified it or took old tooling from something else and then put those two items in the same port with just some filler plastic around it pretty clever solution because most the other cases on the market haven't figured that out yet so we'll point that out now the marketing push here is focusing on both silence and noise and it's effectively impossible to do both of those well so that comes back to the fan controller fan controller on this has two different toggles silence and performance mode and that it's got three speed levels for those so you switch between the three speed levels that you pick either silence or performance and then you basically judge what you need based on your workload as four core features this is an inverter case meaning that the motherboard tray can again be flipped upside down and moved to the other side of the case and every component of the case side panels harddrive cages power slash shroud etc can be repositioned to fit this configuration some of our complaints with the 900 have been resolved now the manual has a single chapter of step-by-step instructions for instance and there are clearly defined layouts standard or inverted to choose from within the manual one of the best things about the 700 invertibility is that it's practically unnoticeable when unused there are no weird compromises made to make the invertible layout possible and that's just like the 900 was the motherboard tray of the 700 can be removed it sort of painlessly there are 11 screws that hold it in place and it can be used as a test bench if you really wanted to as it even has little legs on the corners for this purpose the PSU shroud is the most visible difference from the dark base 900 for removable plastic sections cover the top of the shroud and one large plastic panel covers the side the underlying steel framework is permanent but these plastic sections can be removed as desired or shifted around for inversion the plastic panels are slightly popped up to leave small airflow gaps as a common feature would be quiet cases there are no 3.5 inch base visible in the 700 but that doesn't mean they aren't there there are 5 mounting points beside the motherboard for the be quiet distinctive free-floating hard drive bay deployment that they tend to use each is capped by an adjustable plastic cover that allows room for cable routing when not in use the two bays included with the case are hidden beneath the power splash shroud for a total of seven possible 3.5 inch locations although only two can be used simultaneously without additional bays the +2 PCI slots listed in a spec sheet refers to the vertical GPU mount which proves difficult to use as always as for any type of GPU that is a taller PCB in combination with an air cooler this happens whether or not you have an open-loop setup on your GPU it's just that as long as you use a reference board you'll be fine otherwise you can use a taller GPU but no air cooler one or the other there's relatively little clearance between the shroud and the edge of the card where the PCIe riser cable plugs in and some cables may be difficult without removing the panels from the shroud getting into testing the fan controller has three manual settings and auto which accepts PWM input from the motherboards fan header one important note is that the fan controller has two channels each of which can separately be set to either silent or performance with toggles on the PCB both channels were set to silent by default in our sample and silent mode level 3 which we used for most tests these silent wins three fans run at about eleven hundred rpm which is the maximum speed while in silent mode performance mode level 3 used in the max fans beam tests pushes them to their rated speed of 1600 rpm and is expectedly significantly louder when using just the stock fans we'd recommend using performance mode level 1 is still quiet and level 3 is the greatest possible air flow but the silent mode is more of what it's marketed toward with additional fans of different speeds users could experiment with setting one channel to performance and one to silent the idea is ultimately that you set multiple zones in the case but we'd recommend generally just matching them to the fan speeds for the least turbulent noise there's obviously a big focus on silence in every be quiet case it's kind of the name the tempered-glass models like this one can't have as much noise damping foam as the previous versions without Windows three panels front top and side are padded and the thicker glass will at least help with reducing long wavelength of noise from exiting the case so it doesn't help with higher frequency stuff like coil wine there's a reason why we didn't do every test at 1600 rpm max fan speeds looking at our noise chart now reach forty three point four or DBA and that's on the same level as the Corsair v 70 X running three fans at 1550 rpm and these silverstone are l06 with four 120 fans and completely ventilated at mesh what be quiet calls l-shaped noise damping vents end up backfiring when too much air is forced through them the pressure is just creating turbulence and noise the 90 degree turns mean that you're losing some pressure every time you silent winds three fans are capable of moving a lot of air but they're also fighting the front panel just like a lot of cases these days the difference here is that be quiet actually advertise a silence so the closed off front panel is sort of necessary to achieve that to the maximum it's just a question of when they've gone too far we can look at that and the thermal results to see if that's the case at level three silent mode roughly 1,100 rpm noise levels were much more reasonable around the Rosewell Cullinan and coarser 270 are level one slowed the fans to just 450 to 500 rpm but it also made the 700 quieter than anything we've tested since the pure bass 600 also at minimum rpm level three silent is a good compromise between noise and airflow for testing purposes it does becomes a question again of where the thermals land we'll look at that next in addition to the stock configuration that fan level 3 silent we tested maximum and minimum fan speeds as it governed by the controller out to the GP vertically and removed all the plastic covers from the shroud our thermal test start with torture workloads which bring the CPU and GPU simultaneously temperatures are reported as delta T over ambient again we're starting with just the dark bass 700 then adding the others with no fan went to directly at the cooler the stock configuration CP 2000 T rose to sixty point six degrees Celsius cranking the fans up to their maximum speed lowered the delta to fifty four point six and turning them all the way down raised it to seventy four point six where we saw definite thermal throttling on the CPU we rarely see this the minimum fan speed should never be used under serious load especially not in a torture test like this we recommend only using minimum fan speeds when dealing with idle or near idle working states like web browsing it is then critical to remember to turn that back up when you start gaming rendering or doing anything intensive that's the important part remember to change it mounting the GPU vertically lowered CPU temperature slightly the 57 point three degrees Celsius delta T over a man's and that's pretty much been what we've seen in past tests this is primarily because the card is no longer radiating heat directly into the CPU cooler and it doesn't block air flowing into it removing plastic sections from the shroud to potentially raise the CPU temperature what the results were within test variants and deviation comparative temperatures our next sixty point six degrees Celsius delta T is relatively warm around the in wind 303 and BitFenix Shogun and just slightly cooler than the toasty antec pH or BitFenix and so add that fans be it's also as loud or louder than all of them 54.6 is a more respectable Delta around solid performers like the Corsair 270 R and thermaltake meu 71 but it's also much louder than all the nearby cases the dark bass 700 fails to offer superior noise the thermal performance and the stock configuration and does not offer a particularly compelling standalone thermals or particularly compelling standalone noise that is not until we go to minimum fan speeds for low load operation but the minimum fan speed allowed our CPU to hit 100 degrees Celsius during thermal testing so it can be considered a failure in the range of the in wind 8:05 infinity overall CPU temperatures were a bit disappointing but there's only one intake fan and it's not pointed out the CPU it's still an improvement over the pure bass 600 but at its best instances this case is simply middle-of-the-pack nothing special at all GPU if they're all results our next starting again with data for just the dark bass 700 our 1100 rpm fan settings scored a GPU DT of 52.3 degrees Celsius and maxing out the fans only lowered that a couple of degrees to 50 point 5 degrees Celsius well we're in the fan speed predictably spikes temperature up to fifty eight point nine over ambient mousing the GPU vertically caused the usual overheating this time reaching a delta T of 70 point four degrees Celsius while removing shroud sections again had practically no effect at all the intention was to allow more air to circulate the bottom of the case and lower GPU temperatures for the stock intake fan is positioned right above the PSU shroud so that does its job just fine and regardless of whether the shroud is they're comparing GPU temperatures reveals where all the incoming air is going 52 point three degrees Celsius delta T over ambient is comparable to the NZXT H 700 I and the Thermaltake Corp III open-air case the maximum performance of fifty point five degrees celsius pushes it to the top of the GPU chart alongside the cooler master see 700 P even with the fans at minimum speed the GBO temperature isn't at the bottom of the chart like it was for CPU temperature and fifty eight point nine degrees Celsius is still several degrees under the BitFenix Enzo and an Tek p8 the dark bass 700 does significantly better in its GPU cooling making us wonder if relocating the rear exhaust fan as front intake may be better for the CPU thermals when using air coolers there's 700 GPU thermals in 3dmark firestrike are among the best performers in the stress test that's a result of two things one all of the air is going straight to the GPU and we've already proven that the GPU does much better than the CPU and two we haven't tested as many cases in this benchmark so there's less competition at fifty four point six degrees Celsius the case is slightly outdone by the thermal take view 71 even though this test tends to cause even higher GPU temperatures than the torture test the dark bass handled it well the CPU temperature of 35 Cu in this test was comparatively warm looking at the others and nearer the spec Oh 4 or thermal take T 21 we've been on 2 blender a realistic blender CV workload had the CPU temperature is still relatively warm at thirty nine point five degrees Celsius just a bit over the thermal take G 21 as far away from t.j.maxx but outperformed by the dark base nine hundred and even the aged 500 P a thermally unimpressive case rendering our test image on the GPU resulted in GPUs averages of 26 degrees Celsius delta T over a man's again comparable to the view 71 and competitively cool but 700 outperforms the 900 here as well as most of the other cases we've tested with blender except the H 700 I and as always the redline zero six this case is kind of boring overall but that's not necessarily an insult to be quiet be quiet and fractal both take a more visually boring approach to cases and that's perfectly fine a lot of people want that the thing is though it's not particularly exciting in noise or thermals be quiet manages to best itself with other cases in each category and with this setup right here what we end up with is a noise situation where it's not the quietest in its stock configuration it's closed at 33.1 DBA or decibels unfortunately it also can't really play games at that closer setting the silent one setting so without the help of liquid cooling to brute force this what you end up with is silent 3 being the best for performance but is that 36 decibels so it's middle-of-the-pack to bottom half of the pack and that keeps us non throttling but it's also just it's not that impressive of a noise level the temperatures are the same so it's if you want to get mid pack average temperatures with this case you end up with some of the worst the noise levels we have on the charts and if you wanted to get the quieter quietest noise levels you end up with some of the worst thermals so it's it's kind of you can pick the middle but then you just end up with something completely average and at 180 dollars completely average isn't really an acceptable starting point for a case stock now that said there's a lot of credit to be given here the build quality is exceptional in the case it's got a lot of metal paneling the invertible tray makes it one of the cheaper if not the cheapest invertible ATX case that is on the market right now and the build quality and modularity of all the panels that can be removed and inverted are also pretty high quality which for a case that can be flipped around completely to the other side is somewhat remarkable because typically you have companies that are forced to cut corners in order to make modularity happen and you either end up with something that is visually unappealing in some configurations or stuff that just feels cheap be quiet manages to avoid those issues they have higher quality feel they have higher quality build in general it's just a matter of being choked for air once again and here's the thing be quiet isn't targeting a high airflow case so that's a lot less relevant than with other cases but they are targeting something that can do lower noise and the issue is be quiet ends up in a situation where their case isn't the quietest and when you kind of roughly normalize for noise it's also not the coolest so it's just it's lacking both ends of the argument which makes it average so thermally noise acoustically it's average but build quality is good just whether that's worth it is up to you there's a lot of really good cases out there for a similar or cheaper price including stuff from be quiet the dark bass pro isn't or actually the dark based non Pro the dark bass 900 is like 200 bucks way better options in general but it's huge so that's obviously a potential downside this is basically for people who want the dark bass 900 can't fit it for some reason but also end up with a lower quality just kind of acoustic and thermal level overall so yeah overall its average that's really all there is to it if you wanna help us out directly can go to patreon.com/scishow to store that gamers next to snide to pick up a shirt like this one make sure you subscribe for more thank you for watching I'll see you all next time