Gadgetory

well as the title of this video suggests I'm going to be comparing both of these cases here I have on my left the be quiet dark bass 700 with integrated LEDs we'll talk about that a second and also the lien lis alpha 330 X this also comes in a white version as far as I'm aware the 700 is not yet although there might be one coming soon maybe a special edition I'll talk to the folks over at be quiet about that but for now I have the two black cases now this one is not as long as the be quiet cases but they're very similar elsewhere dimension wise they're about as wide as each other and they're also almost identical when it comes to the height aspect as well but like I said this is a very functional case this case has just a nice finesse to it very nice form we'll talk about the differences in which one you should buy so what we'll do first is tackle the Alpha 330 X from leanly this case is a very form-based case in the sense that it's supposed to look really good and you can get that vibe just from looking at the outside of the case tempered glass on the left side of the front panel and on the right side if you know you're into seeing your cable management of the rear so pay special attention to that because if you do have that exposed to any amount of space in your room you'll be able to see everything back there starting with raw hardware support up to a 360 millimeter radiator fan combo up front thanks to the cutout in the basement also up to a 360 millimetre read fan combo up top because everything is pushed a little more tour the left side of the case you're not gonna worry about RAM interference very much at all unless you have some really absurd gaudy Ram so I was convinced at first glance that this case would not have adequate cable management Headroom on the right side of the case however there's about an inch and a half of clearance between the motherboard tray and the start of the tempered glass on the right side which means that you have more than the space for extra long cables if you want to run cable extensions all of that should be plenty fine I would say with even non-modular power supplies another cool feature these two thumb screws when released will open a door just slides down there's a hinge at the bottom actually two of them and this gives way to a cable management shroud similar in design to the the XTS 340s 340 Lee Campbell Shroud except this one is not too gaudy it's not too ostentatious and it doesn't take up a lot of room in the front of the case you should still run your graphics cards all that plenty fine in fact there's a few mounting places up front as well for SSDs and pumps and reservoirs so you can stuff your cables back here any excess cable so you can have just kind of run down the side again over an inch and a half of clearance here so you're not going to be too concerned or you shouldn't be too concerned about where your cables will be routed just keep them kind of clean because you've never you can't see back here just hinge the door back in place and then screw the two thumb screws back into the chassis and there you go all of your cables for the most part are gone another cool feature you can actually mount hard drives behind the motherboard tray it's a testament to how wide the right side of the case is for that cable management this is a simple thumb screw here just unscrew it slide it up a little bit there you go there's your harddrive tray released secure the harddrive from the bottom and then slide the drive bay back into position apart from that there are two additional harddrive tray mounts down below in the basement there's also an adequate space for your power supply and not the biggest power supply so fit back here unless you want to remove that hard drive bay again it shouldn't matter too much though because you do have these hard drive trays behind the motherboard shroud so I don't think it's going to be a concern you know whether or not you can use this because you do have to here there's no space up the front but here up to four three and a half inch hard drives and then if you want to mount SSDs you can do so here here here you can also do so where the hard drive trace could also be mounted and then you can mount to back here you really just tape them anywhere I bet the official SSD mounts was about seven or eight of those in this case so plenty of support there you can also mount some up front if you're into showing off what your SSDs look like but the the drive support in this case is actually quite good now on to the front of the case this is where things get a bit dicey I start questioning some of the design choices here because for one they literally have a pump a reservoir mount integrated into the basement which tells me at first glance that this is a case designed solely for custom loo builders or maybe they just wanted to have it extra you know in case you want to build a custom loop in here it's certainly friendly though it doesn't hurt to have it it just looks a bit weird with it in there and nothing on it and then you take it out you got four random holes that really go nowhere I guess it's a nice addition though I can't really complain it's also riveted so you're gonna tell for sure that something should go there if you decide to remove it completely there is a large rubber grommet on the basement at the back good for your front I Oh power reset switches all of that there's also a big groove right here for I'm assuming GPU cables and that's it although I'm not sure why it's so long maybe it's just because some graphics cards are short some are extremely long so you do have your really nice and big one here I would say that if it was rubber grommet Adana it just looks a bit weird having a long narrow hole cut out at the front of the basement other design choice is a bit questionable not sure why they're rubber grommets way over here I mean I guess for fans you could just run cables through there for your fans but they don't need to be this big hey unless you want to run your 24 pin all the way across this cable shroud but mainly use does something really cool here something that I wish NZXT would do with their cable shrouds I've given you a cutout up top and a cutout down below to prevent your cables from getting cramped you know there's not much space between the cable shroud and the motherboard tray so having this cutout here will prevent those cables from being crushed especially your 24 pin should look nice and pretty once everything is inside lastly I want to talk about the rear of the case there are two vertical graphics card slots kind of defeats the purpose of having them though if you don't include a riser cable Lenalee does not so if you want to spend extra twenty to fifty bucks you can utilize that again though for your cards on air you're gonna be really choking it because the card is gonna be pressed right against that left tempered glass panel so not recommended unless your water cooling first and foremost also there are eight PCI slots oriented horizontally which is a bit questionable because this makes it by definition a full-size power although nothing else about this case is telling me that it's full size so the ACE slots just kind of there for looks you can put four two slot cards in here if you wanted but that bottom one would certainly be choking for air the top and bottom of the case are protected by dust filters the one up top is magnetic which is cool again that supports are up to a single 360 milray da tur fan combo also front IO consists of two USB 3.0 ports on Mike phone jack headphone jack a power button and a USB type-c port really cool to see that in cases nowadays so it's nice if you want to you know do anything really fancy like Paul's hardware did to get USB type-c support in his case the be quite dark Bay 700 case by the way also has type C support we'll talk about that here in a second underneath the case you also get a very large dust filter easy to remove keeps everything nice and clean down there for your power supply now it's the be quiet dark bass 700 turn at first glance I really like the way it looks it's super clean I really like how they've included these covers here for where the hard drive bays would usually be they came equipped in the dark Bass Pro 900 which I reviewed right here but they've basically hidden holes with these plastic covers that you can remove really nice to have those gives it a nice clean aesthetics you don't see all the way through the cables on the right side of the case now the basement also completely modular you don't want the basement at all just remove the thing on an issue and by the way if you want to invert the case and flip everything around to where the tempered glass panel is on this side on the backside then you can just kind of flip everything around and still have a fully functioning basement and yes the text is still right side up you also have three large rubber grommets here where you'll expect to run your 24 pin your SATA USB 3.0 all that good jazz so really nice to have three of those spanning the entire length of where the motherboard should be another thing to note though if you want to use the rubber grommets in this case will only support technically up to ATX motherboards EA TX will probably extend over the rubber grommets you might not be able to use those in which case you'll have to remove some of these plastic covers and run your cables through there won't look as pretty but at least you have the option for larger motherboards if you so choose I like how be quiets also included two silent wings three fans with the case maybe a third one but maybe that's pushing it I don't know if this price point I'd say that a third one will be really nice because you can fill up that top slot at the front of the case you have basically everything you would need ventilation wise to and take someone out take and that's gonna be good enough right but having two is still decent at least I didn't cheat out and go with some crappy fans that's something that the Alpha 330 X by the way definitely did do is cheap out on the fans you get one fan at the rear and it trash throw it away right away if you buy it these fans though keep them for life they're really good family links three fans from be quiet you do get one harddrive tray what's one harddrive tray with the purchase of the dark base 700 least you got once you want to put one up front you can do so and take out one of these plastic panels you should be good to go there you know if it came with a velcro strip yes it does okay I was about to rip on this case we're not including velcro straps because they're literally just tied here with tie straps like sandwich tie straps but you do get some velcro straps not sure why they didn't just throw them in there and guide the cables with these in the first place but you do have them if you want them again kind of weird they didn't use them to begin with but the cable management and here isn't as clean it's not you're not gonna be able cover anything up like you will in the Alpha 330 X but it's very simple to guide these cables you got plenty space again about an inch and a half with the clearance in the right side of the case so you're not gonna be too worried about where your cables are going also because you have the basement down below any excess cabling just stuff down there you should be alright in other news on the right side of this case there is a completely ripped off SSD mounting system behind the motherboard tray guess where this came from as far as I'm aware fractal design I liked how they utilize the dead space be quiet essentially ripping them off and doing the same thing but hey if it's not patented I don't blame them for copying because it's a great to design a great use of that wasted space a simple thumb screw secures everything where it should be below that you'll find a third SSD tray and where the fourth one will be to the left of it there is a fan huh good for what it looks like up to six fans we want to include some splitters maybe up to ten or so be on the safe side there it is powered by SATA and believe I don't see any molex down here that's a good thing I hate molex those who have been here for a while I know why so SATA power that's a great thing and all the sex your space up here is pretty much good for hard drives there's two extra hard drives mounting points below in that Bay and it does look like it is removable so you'll have extra space if you have a really long power supply and just want to stow extra cables down there now the front of this case had me for a bit by the way this is a fingerprint magnet anywhere you touch you're gonna basically leave fingerprints or some kind of smear it's just the nature of the case I was trying for the longest time to figure out how to take off this front panel I wasn't sure how I actually message Chrisman be quiet on to inquire about how to get it off because I thought I had to take the entire front panel off all the way down to the legs because that's what it shows in the manual but in fact just a simple yeah there we go just pop off this little front panel here and there you go access to the three 120 millimetres fan mounts the front dust filter is very easy to remove a simple latch up top undoes it and it spans the entire head of the case for all three of those fans that you could potentially put up front here regarding the front i/o starting from the left we have what looks like a makeshift fan controller it was turned into one from a previous USB 2.0 or 3.0 slot pretty cool how they did that also they do the same thing with the USB type-c port a three point one port there there's a microphone jack a headphone jack a large power button very satisfying click there a hard drive LED notification icon there's also a RGB switcher here just click it to cycle through the different colors at the front of the case and there are two USB 3.0 hubs on the far right side as for the rear of the case very similar design to the Alpha 330 X's I feel like they could have maybe shaved a few extra centimeters off the back but they wanted space for a longer power supply you can tell that they did that because the mounting points are way further back then the rear i/o panel is also the vertical graphics card mounting system sticks out a bit more - so they wanted to be pretty flush and that's why it is a bit longer than the Alpha as well now let's talk price I already mentioned that the Alpha 330 X is priced at about 120 to 130 US dollars good price for a leonie case because most of these in the past have been around 3 to 400 bucks thanks to all the tempered glass but because that's now more or less a standard it's hard for them to differentiate their build quality with other competitors that were on the cheaper side previously and to keep this price under about 150 bucks they also threw in a really cheap fan and no RGB connectivity the dark bass 700 though comes in a bit higher comes in about a hundred and eighty bucks it does have integrated RGB LEDs though it also has a sound damage foam on three of its panels it also comes with two silent links three fans which we could say are about twenty bucks a piece also comes with an integrated fan hub which is proud another 10 bucks now whether or not you should include those already in the cost of the case is beside the point nonetheless this is a better equipped case for what you're getting price-wise it is a bit pricier but if you want the same kind of stuff in this case you'll have to pay more for it at which point these two case prices kind of level out one other thing that I did not discuss but that I at least want to mention is the airflow with both of these cases be quiet cases of excellent airflow they always have for the most part the airflow and the front is gonna be decent because you have about an inch worth of clearance for air to move and that's up to make a 90-degree turn which makes things quite loud and slightly inefficient but that's okay up top though I am a bit more concerned because you only have these six little ventilation slots up top so if you want an exhaust array especially in a custom loop it's not gonna sound too pretty up here because the air has nowhere to go it's just gonna hit this panel and make a lot of noise with the alpha 330 X 2 though complete opposite story so the exhaust arrays not gonna be too bad in terms of air flow because all you have is a single little dust filter up top to prevent dust from getting into the case due to the effects of basically gravity so if you're exhausting most of the time dust isn't gonna get in here anyway but when your computers off that's why this is here in case you're wondering about that up front though really restrictive it's it's gonna be a big issue I'm gonna run some tests when I do the dedicated build video in the alpha 330 X but we're talking I mean just a tiny little sliver for air to move in at the top of the case and the front and also a tiny sliver at the bottom this is worse than the NZXT s340 considerably worse also worse than the Fant XP 400 so we'll do some front panel on front panel off tests will also do the same with a dark base 700 especially up top here because I'm pretty concerned about exhaust setups with this arrangement it's just I don't know why they did that if you are interested in either these cases you can find their links in the video description tied to our Amazon affiliate account so I appreciate that might be new egg actually but I appreciate any purchase via those links because it does give us a small kickback helps us make more videos like these I'd also like to know your opinions on these cases in the comments below so leave a comment I'll check them out especially near the publishing time of this video when it's up on YouTube if you like this video be sure to give it a thumbs up thumbs 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