be quiet! Dark Base Pro 901 Full-Tower Case Review

How Much Does it Cost?

The be quiet! Dark Base Pro 901 Black Tempered Glass Full-Tower Case is available now at Scan for £319.99, which frankly makes it one of the most expensive cases I’ve ever reviewed. However, that’s not to say it’s overpriced, as it clearly comes with a lot of extras that really put it into a league of its own. The little details add up fast, so let’s count them off…

There are thick noise-isolating materials and panels for all intakes. There are high-quality dust-filtered panels for the top, front, bottom and sides. There are two versions of the top, left, front and shroud covers included in the box, as well as additional brackets for other motherboard form factors, and 5.25″ drive mounts. The motherboard tray and case interior can be inverted, changing the case from left to right side orientation. There are built-in fan hubs on the removable cooling mounting brackets, and cable-free connectors for the front panel RGB. There are three Silent Wings 4 140mm fans (some of the best fans money can buy), the GPU mount is rotatable, there’s an enormous GPU support bracket, there’s RGB lighting… and I have likely missed a lot there, but you get the idea.

Overview

This clearly isn’t a case for everyone, as it’s both quite large and quite expensive too. But ironically, it is a case for everyone in that it’s so modular and flexible, it’ll be suitable for virtually any kind of PC build; obviously excluding compact and affordable builds.

Having a case that can be tuned for silence is important if you’re in a noise-critical role, such as a recording studio. However, you may still need room for a potent system, with lots of storage. Or you want a rendering workstation that can handle a dual-socket motherboard and four workstation GPUs with a bank of 20TB HDDs in the front… or an RGB-lit inverted and liquid-cooled gaming rig with high airflow. It’s bonkers to think that this case can be all of these things with surprisingly little effort to change the configuration. What I do like is if I needed ALL of those kinds of PC. Such as here in the office, we could have four of these cases, all doing different things and in unique configurations, but they’ll still all match aesthetically on the outside, which is pretty awesome.

The build quality and engineering on show here are really impressive, and while multiple fan hubs and clever connectors aren’t needed, they are cool, but the little details like that stack up far and certainly add to the price. This is a case that’s frankly built with more features than it needs to be, but at the same time, it’s awesome that they’ve done it anyway, just to see if they can create the ultimate case that can meet the demands of more than just one kind of PC enthusiast.

It’s unlikely you’ll change the configuration more than once, but it’s nice to know that you can. It’s expensive, but it’s also extremely impressive and by far one of the most capable and versatile PC cases I’ve ever seen.