be quiet! Silent Base 802 Black Window

be quiet! is expanding their Silent Base line-up with this excellent 802 variant that gives you an incredible versatile edge regarding which direction you want to take your build because you have the choice to optimize the build either for maximum sound dampening or increased cooling performance.

It comes with three 140 mm Pure Wings 2 fans that will give you a brilliant starting platform for any type of build you wish to undertake. As you will see, it’s an absolute joy to build in it and the finished results will always be epic due to its lovely overall aesthetics, almost tool-less experience and clever little details. Buckle up because this will be a picture heavy review !

be quiet! is a premium brand manufacturer of power supplies and cooling solutions for your desktop PC. With numerous awards under their belt they are considered the best German power supply manufacturer from Germany since 2006 – proved by being awarded with, no less than nine times in a row, the “Manufacturer of the Year” in the power supply category by the readers of the well-known German hardware magazine PC Games Hardware. In the category “fans”, be quiet! earned the first rank five consecutive times and belongs to the Top 3 CPU cooler brands for more than three years in a row. The community of Hardwareluxx also voted be quiet! as “Manufacturer of the Year” in the PSU category for four consecutive years.

Prices and Availability

You have the option between two colour variants (black or white) and with a tempered glass or metal main side panel. The glass versions will charge only $10 more than the regular models which have a recommended retail price of $159.90. Due to the current global shortages in the tech industry, there will be some low stock and/or inflated prices. Overall, considering what the 802 enclosure is offering, it is prices really good. Today we are testing the black tempered glass variant.

Presentation and Specification

* Courtesy of their website

▪ Exchangeable top cover and front panel for either maximum airflow or silent operation
▪ Three Pure Wings 2 140mm fans guarantee a perfect airflow
▪ Extra thick insulation mats for improved noise reduction
▪ State-of-the-art I/O port with fan controller and USB 3.2 Gen. 2 Type C connector for usage of latest hardware
▪ Fast and secure detachment of the side panels with push pins
▪ PSU shroud and smart HDD slot covers provide a neat interior
▪ Decoupled motherboard tray can be relocated for an inverted layout
▪ The power supply can be easily installed from the back of the case
▪ Detachable top bracket allows easy fan and radiator installation
▪ Generous dimensions for radiators up to 420mm
▪ Full metal body provides stability and a great haptic
▪ Side panel made of tinted and tempered glass
▪ Three years manufacturer´s warranty

The case, as previously stated, is a powerhouse in modularity and versatility and thus offers a great canvas for almost any build requirement.

You can install up to 420 mm rad in the front, 360 mm on top, mount your GPU vertically if you have a riser card, up to 7x 3.5″ or 15x 2.5″ drives, almost a dozen fans and connect another 3 to the built-in 4-step fan controller PWM hub; up to a 185 mm tall CPU cooler, 288 mm long PSU, 432 mm (!) long GPU (if you don’t use all the interior HDD cages) and it’s jam packed with antivibration and sound deadening material. There’s too many specs to present in one or two phrases so we will tackle them as we go along.

Visual Inspection

The case comes shipped in a standard big carboard box with a quick schematic of the case on one of the sides.

On the opposite side we have a list of the main highlights of the case accompanied by another schematic that depicts its modularity.

The case resides safely inside cocooned between two large styrofoam pads and a plastic cover.

Also here we discover one of the two accessory boxes. In this one we have the manual, 6x be quiet! branded Velcro straps, some installation screws and the mesh panel kit.

Right, here she is – the 13 kg hangar. It has a very sleek, elegant and appealing design with those two front side meshed intakes. There’s no fancy over-the-top-lights or aggressive features, just a minimalist but very pleasant to the eye look.

Let’s take the higher ground. The front panel is generously equipped with 1x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type C, 2x USB 3.2 Gen1, HD Audio and a fan switch button. The power button is hard to miss and right next to it we have the reset button and the HDD activity LED. Also a small OCD remark, the Type C port looks like it was an afterthought and should be flush with the case.

Underneath these two magnetically attached panels, we have the top exhaust. Good for a 360 mm rad and here is where you would switch them out to the extra single piece meshed panel.

To remove the front solid panel, just slide it upwards since it is held into place via these 8 perpendicular clips and two extra top ones.

As you can see, the front panel has an impressive insulation that covers over 90% of its surface.

There is a removable front dust filter that covers the whole intake area and underneath it we have the two pre-installed 140 mm Pure Wings 2 fans.

Now this is how it looks with the front meshed panel – also very sexy ! It perfectly matches the overall theme of the case.

There is even a full case length removable dust filter underneath the case.

Since we are here, let’s install the stabiliser feet. Hope you didn’t throw out the lower styrofoam pad because that’s where you will find the struts.

Installation is really easy, just align them properly and slide them until you hear a nice click.

Not only they will offer extra stability but will also increase the ground clearance for better airflow.

There’s even more interesting details at the rear. From left to right we have:

A quick access removable plate to insert the PSU from the outside.

The standard 7 PCI slot and even 2 vertical ones to accommodate in theory even a 3-slot wide GPU.

This is the rear exhaust 120/140 mm fan location and we can see the third 140mm Pure Wing 2 fan.

The extra top meshed ventilation area and see those two plastic button? That’s how you release the side panels!

Oh, yes this case has a built-in nifty rail system with the quick release and access philosophy in mind. It’s a very handy system. No more dropping the back screws or to fiddle with them because they are screwed in too tight. Just press one button and done.

Yet again, we have a full body armour of thick sound deadening material that covers almost the whole surface of the side panel.

Now let’s explore each area of interest. Overall, one key feature here is the fact that the interior can be reversed !

This is a removable storage cage that can accommodate 2x 3.5″/2.5″ drives.

In the other accessory box you get one extra HDD hot-swappable tray. You can install an additional 4 of these if you desire.

There is space for 3x 2.5″ drives that can be installed in these trays.

This is the hub where you can install 3 more 3-pin fans that will be controlled from the front IO switch.

There is over 20 mm of cable management space available to play with.

Finally these are the front IO cable connectors which have plenty of length to reach comfortably any position on the motherboard.

Now let’s explore the main chamber. The tempered glass side panel uses the same quick access rail system.

To give you an idea how big this case is and what you can do with it, here is our main ITX build in the DAN-A4 SFX case with a 295mm long ASU STRIX GPU, just relaxing inside the hangar.

If you wish to populate all of the 5 locations with the proprietary trays, then your GPU clearance will be reduced from 432 to 287mm, which is an extreme scenario but nonetheless it has to be mentioned. Next to these, there are 3 main cut-outs with rubber inserts to facilitate easy wire-management around the motherboard.

The included 140mm Pure Wings 2 fans are rated up to 80,000 hours of continuous operation and they will spin up to 1000 RPM while pushing up to 61.2 CFM if airflow with a static pleasure of 0.76 H2O. They should be very quiet even at 100% RPM considering they are rated at just 18.8dB(A).

The fans have 9 blades with a very interesting ribbed design on each one.

You can install a lot of motherboard formats in this case even an 30.5 x 27.5cm E-ATX one.

There is plenty of room to install even a 185mm tall CPU cooler.

The case has a very useful removable radiator tray which is held into place with two screws which will make any fan/radiator installation a breeze.

The 4 top plastic plates can be removed that sit on top of the PSU / lower case chamber.

Then the front cover is removable for even greater access to the whole area.

There’s shouldn’t be any worries regarding your PSU choices since you can put almost anything you can think of, up to 290 mm long.

Testing Methodology and Component Installation

We will:

* Cram as many regular components as we can and point out if any problems arise and to test the wire management capabilities
* Measure the noise output from the case’s fans and overall system noise with our Pyle PSPL01 noise meter placed at 30 cm from the fully built case.
* Sound levels will be measured in dB(A) after 5 minutes at idle; CPU & GPU load noise levels will be measured by running AIDA64 stressing the GPU, CPU, FPU and cache for 2 minutes while the CPU was OC’ed to 3.7 GHz for 1.325v.
* The ambient noise level in our test room is measured at 30 dB(A).
* Ambient room temperature was at a recorded ~ 18°C.
* CPU and case fan profiles will be set to their standard/auto operating mode in the motherboard’s bios (or via the integrated hub if available) and GPU fans set to their default fan curve.

Specific to this case:

* Test with the stock insulated top and front plates and then with the extra mesh panel in both temperature and acoustics benchmarks, while the tempered glass side panel will be always on.

Hardware used:

– CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1700 AM4 – 8c/16t @ 65W TDP
– CPU Cooler: SilverStone IceGem 360mm ARGB AIO
– RAM 16GB DDR4 T-Force Night Hawk RGB 3000 MHz CL16
– Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX X370-F Gaming ATX @ BIOS 5220
– Boot SSD: ADATA XPG SX6000 128GB M.2 NVMe TLC
– Video card(s): KF2 GTX 480 Anarchy Accelero Xtreme Plus
– PSU: Seasonic S12II-620 Bronze

Software:

– OS: Windows 10 Pro x64 20H2
– GPU Drivers: NVIDIA GeForce WHQL 391.35
– Core Temp v1.16 – To see the temperatures in real time
– CPU-Z v1.95 – To verify the CPU’s statistics
– AIDA64 Extreme v6.23 – A popular total system stability test suite
– MSI Afterburner v4.62 – To record the FPS and load/temperatures

Resolution for our test game Rise Of the Tomb Raider, is set at 1920×1080 with everything at Medium quality settings and no AA.

 
A standard ATX motherboard will present no issues what so ever to this case.

We love small but very effective details like these, where just a small metal clamp will help to correctly guide the fan wire through.

The big cut-out provides full access to the back of the socket area for the motherboard when you need to install any backplates.

The PSU is next and thanks to the quick access design, the unit just has to slide in the lower chamber.

The thick rubber pads will support the PSU and will help with eliminating any vibrations.

Wire management is as easy as 1-2-3 due to the ample space all around the back area and thanks to included Velcro straps that will hold most of your wires.

If you want to route some thicker cables you can use the cut-outs underneath removable bottom plates that divide the PSU chamber to the main area.

An E-ATX motherboard might cover these cut-outs so just a head up. A quick workaround for this is to use one of the HDD bay cut-outs to route the cables through there.

Our testing GPU is a dinosaur but a perfect tool to see if you can install vertically such a thick graphics card with custom cooling.

The side panel has no issue to clear the GPU and there is even a few mm left to not create any undesired turbulence.

Finally, let’s put a 360mm AIO inside. Thanks to the modular top tray, this couldn’t have been any easier to install.

The final result is just a clean, elegant build.

Testing, Results and Analysis

Let’s start with the temperature results. The difference in cooling potential between a full mesh and a full sound optimised case, is almost close to margin of error between 2-3 degrees. This Silent Base 802 is a very well designed case no matter what panels you choose.

As for acoustic performance, even in full GPU and CPU load, the case does a really good job on insulating the noise even in the mesh setup. That extra body armour of noise reduction in the solid panel clearly shows it’s positive effects.

Well then, it time to wrap things up. The case is very well built despite some ABS plastic panels but those don’t necessary give you a cheap feeling.

Its minimalist design is specifically tuned to be elegant and not to scream for attention. Once you do start to glance at it and if you have the window version, you begin to appreciate its aesthetics even more.

The build experience is an absolute joy just because it’s so well designed and has plenty of headroom for any enthusiast and WC build. One small heads up is that if you use an E-ATX motherboard, its extra width will cover the main cable routing cut-outs next to it. This can be easily overcome if you use the HDD bays. Other than that, we didn’t find anything that negative. Basically anything you want to install, it will fit.

Ah, it could have included more 3.5″ HDD cages like the model it replaces (the 801) which had 3 of these.

The included fans are quiet even close to max RPM but by the time you will hear them, most of the noise will come form other components.

The fact that it comes with 3x 140 mm fans, that are connected to an integrated fan hub, the option to invert the interior and the choice of noise/airflow optimised panels, it’s hard not to have this case on your shopping list.

Conclusion

This new Silent Base 802 is without a doubt a powerhouse in modularity and versatility and thus offers a great canvas for almost any build requirement. It’s a complete package and you get what you pay for. It’s a joy to build in because it gives you so many options to configure it to your needs. With so many cool tricks up its sleeve, it’s a hard case to beat even at this price range and most definitely is a long term option/investment.

The good:

+ Great build quality
+ Elegant and minimalist design
+ Choice of mesh and/or solid noise optimised panels
+ Anything you want to install, it will fit
+ Plenty of storage options for any mainstream/enthusiast usage
+ Highly modular and versatile
+ The interior can be inverted
+ Three include 3x 140 mm fans
+ Type C USB 3.2 Gen.2 front IO connectivity
+ Fan hub controller with 4 settings
+ Extra thick, premium sound dampening on the removable panels
+ Excellent quick release for the side panels
+ Vertical GPU mount
+ Radiator suport up to 420mm

The bad:

– An E-ATX motherboard might cover the main WM cut-outs
– No RGB
– It’s very big size wise
– The front Type C should have been flush with the case

Glob3trotters “Editor’s Choice” Award – 5 out of 5

Many thanks to Be Quiet! for supplying us with this epic case !