Gadgetory

yep the new dark bass is here face refresh so what's up guys I'm Dmitry and on the review table is a very exciting tower from be quiet the dark bass 700 ever since the launch of the dark bass 900 Pro they kept telling me that they have some new exciting things coming up and it slightly smaller footprint so that is exactly what we have here now the thing is for a mid tower it is quite expensive for a hundred and eighty dollars so let's see what this case brings to the table and the very overly crowded marketplace in late 2017 right after this invest in storage that makes a difference choose toshiba Rd 400 and vme SSDs that are incredibly fast and reliable backed by advanced warranty programs so you can focus on what matters Rd 400 check it out in the description below alright so the new dark base 700 feels like a refinement in many ways versus the larger dark base 900 and puts the company on the competitive track within the mid-range tower category it's about the same height as the NZXT H 700 but it's longer and I wish they would shorten the body a little bit because in many instances the interior space is left unused and feels empty another point of feedback for be quiet is to stop using brushed aluminum fantex has proven that sandblasted textures look far superior and don't leave any finger marks something that plagues the front and top panels of this case the tempered glass panel has now received black out top and bottom strips to hide the mounting locations the amount is standard with four thumb screws with a small lip at the bottom to hold the panel but unlike many cases with TG there are no rubber bits on the frame itself only on the mounting pegs and none on the glass either and I would like to see padding added in their future case but the glass is generally scratch resistant unless you intentionally try to do something with it so with general handling don't worry about creating any scratches one thing I don't like about the front panel is this continuous facade because it's not comfortable to pick up the case in this spot and if you do finger oils will be spread all over the front doors pretty loaded with all the standard goodies like USB 3 power and reset buttons audio jacks and finally a type C port on a mid tower that needs that 20 pin connector on your motherboard for the gen 2 speeds and then we have one of the best integrations for a fan controller with three speed settings plus auto in which the motherboard controls this speed via the PWM connector the controller hub is at the back and I wish it was more discreet with better wiring but here we have two fan rails with three fans each that can be set to either performance or silent modes individually that means you can have let's say one rail handling the intake and another exhaust for that smart airflow control and lastly we have built in RGB lighting and the front of the chassis with those really nice ambient side strips that wrap around the bottom I actually quite like this look they're not too bright and there's some spill into the exhaust vents and it's all uniform plus the hub has an additional 12-volt RGB connector for more LED strips and a motherboard connector to control the lighting through the software on your motherboard I love this flexibility the problem however is the removable mid plate that if not aligned properly will not light up in the correct colors in whatever channel is misaligned and this can be fixed by pushing the panel in a bit so this is how the panel is removed you pull it out by the edges the contact points are at the bottom of the frame and this Wireless approach to lighting is pretty awesome as long as the connectors are not bent and I'm not sure if the panel arrived like this or I accidentally touch the bottom of the panel while removing it so be careful and if the lighting does not match you know why at the front we have a large dust filter and an excellent 140 member silent wings three fan airflow has never been a strong suit for be quiet and it really shows here with an incredibly restrictive front paneling on the inside and on the exterior to now it's weird because their fans move a lot of air and they're very quiet so they need to open up the front on the case to allow more air to enter at lower rpms on the fans and this is also where we access the bottom dust filter the top panel is pretty much completely closed except for the tiny exhaust strips at the back now it's great for noise isolation and placing objects on top of the case but what's confusing is this excellent removable top fan bracket that accommodates 280 and 360 million radiators with triple 140 Miller fan support as well but no ventilation room for those fans to actually exhaust air the spacing between the bracket and the panel is available but aside from the rear exhaust ports and the top openings there's nowhere for that air to go but balance back inside so I love the airflow options at the front the top but the exterior paneling shuts down the cooling potential now the interior layout is by far the best be quiet has put out yet they are pushing forward better modular elements than most cases especially since you can actually invert the motherboard tray without any sacrifices so for one I love these plastic covers on the hard drive slots they add some character to an otherwise boring panel and then total we have three of these metal drive cages that you can mount on any of these five slots and two of them are hiding at the bottom but can be removed easily the interior ones limit your spacing from the front so push-pull is not possible but it is an option with enough spacing allocated in that bottom opening and to come back to these plastic covers they can be extended out to pass the cables since the motherboard tray is flat and so are the rubber grommets I really like the new modular approach of the bottom section with four top panels to reveal ventilation above the power supply and extra fan slot near the drive cage and the spacing for the front plus the side plate is removable to access everything from either side so my only complaint is with the rear section it's pretty average and form of cable management and I was expecting a bit more from such an expensive meant hour although we do have three more SSD slots on these two brackets so storage options are adequate and finally this is one of the only few mid towers to feature in the vertebral motherboard tray and 11 screws later and unplugging the front of your cables we have an empty frame for either modding or repainting and you can do all the hardware installation outside of the case which has its benefits and a nice touch for be quiet to install these rubber feet so the tray does not wobble and resuming with the inversion process is super simple it took me like three minutes to secure everything and now you have this orientation swapping the glass panel is taken into account by remounting the pegs on to the other side so the procedure is pretty much flawless but I do wonder how much interest there is with this inverted layouts hardware does not look good when flipped so unless you really need your system on the left side this feature may be unused by many if you decide to go with dark base 700 and finally this is the system I've settled on and much cleanly result versus the dark base 900 but here you can see if those drive slots are not used on the side we have too much open space I've got a 360 rad at the front so that helps to fill some room and doing a custom loop in here should definitely be a nice experience although the front airflow is heavily blocked one of the panels on the shroud had to remain off because there's no way to mount it back with the cables coming out and there's also no way to route the eight pin CPU cable at the top unless you pull out the fan bracket first as the spacing is not large enough for that connector to fit but I really like the extra functionality of the side covers throughout my GPU cable and in case you need to access anything at the bottom it's a simple panel away.now cable management is fine because we have a lot of room but organization is not made simple I think NZXT said really and you stand it with the H 700 I and all those plastic channeling that is no effort at all when it comes to cable management so in total we have 5 fans in the system right now they are in the setting one in the performance mode for both rails and it's audible obviously the system is audible to go it to silent then it's fine but right now let me switch back between setting 1 & 3 so maximum speed that you can expect from this case it does block out some noise but of course 5 fans going full speed is going to be audible all right so dark bass 700 I like it but it's not perfect I do appreciate the direction that the choirs taking in terms of those module elements and now they're better than ever in terms of that reconstructing that entire bottom shroud or being able to seamlessly invert your motherboard tray without any sacrifices that's awesome I like the lighting integration but because there's nothing on the back there it kind of looks odd like it's incomplete so perhaps if they were to add an additional lighting strip at the back that's what have been nice and the price point one hundred and eighty dollars from in towered that is expensive but perhaps big wires trying to meander their way into that niche market for people who want to have the option for the inverted motherboard layout in terms of acoustic isolation I mean I have five fans in there but it's only quiet in the silent presets at like one or two so lower rpm fans but in that case we're really kind of choking the system with airflow because our really restrictive front panel and so the next thing I would like to do is do proper temperature testing and compare that to other restrictive cases that I have in the studio and perhaps just see where the case industry is going because I don't see any innovation in terms of airflow and opening up that those you know front intakes and top exhaust without sacrificing on acoustics you could lower rpm and maybe set some standards in terms of how quiet your system should be in form of rpm and not side paneling that doesn't let any air flow or air to exit at all so guys let me know what you think of the dark bass 700 in the comments below make sure to subscribe and watch this other relevant content here hey stay tuned for part 2 coming very soon I'm tweet drink thanks so much for watching we'll see you in the next video