Venture inside and it’s like an enthusiast’s playground, with lots of space to explore. Let’s start with fan mounts. There’s the usual 120/140 at the bottom, a 120/140 at the base, three 120s on the side, and three 120s or 140s both up top and in front. No love for 180s, sadly, but if you’re liquid cooling, there’s room for up to a 420mm radiator in front or up to a 360mm in the roof. The next picture is one you have been waiting for. The side panel is a sheet of tempered glass. Oh sure, you have had windowed side panels – side panels that are steel on the periphery enclosing glass or Plexiglas windows. But this side panel is pure glass.

Personally, I have built in over 30+ cases over my time as a PC builder and to date, I have never worked with a case as configurable or flexible as the Dark Base Pro 900 rev. 2. In the end, I was able to create an incredibly clean build and thanks to the modularity of the case, I was even able to change its configuration to completely invert it. I’ve wanted to do an inverted build for quite some time and I could not be happier with the result In the Dark Base Pro. Next, we see the top aft end of the case. One of our grill pieces is there. It turns out there are screw-holes up and down the side of the case allowing you several inches of play in the vertical position of your motherboard tray. Note: those 1” spacers are held in by special screws. There are no extras. I lost two of mine when I was replacing these spacers. I salvaged one but the other is hidden in a part of the case that is closed off. I learned to turn the case on its side so the special screws go down vertically — I would not lose anymore. But for such an expensive case you would think that the be quiet! engineers would have included spares. Not every inch of the Dark Base is as well-designed, though. With flexibility comes complexity, and some parts of the case’s design suffer in the name of accommodating the Dark Base’s dizzying array of interior configurations. The power-supply mount on this case doesn’t offer juice boxes nearly enough breathing room, and some might appreciate the option to swap the noise-killing but restrictive front door with a high-airflow mesh panel. Every contribution makes a difference and we thank you for your support. Inside the Belly of the Beast The motherboard tray supports a wide range of motherboard sizes that including small form factor boards like Mini-ITX/M-ATX all the way up larger once such as E-ATX/XL-ATX. The Dark Base Pro also has plenty of cable routing cutout around the motherboard with two at the top and bottom as well as three grommets on the right side of the tray.The face panel is what we expect from Scandinavia and Germany – sleek, almost plain-looking but smooth and attractive. At the top, we can see the I/O cluster showing again its accessibility from the front. You can also see the tape holding the door shut. A power-cable pass-through then joins the PSU’s plug with the outside world. Two smaller mesh panels above this extender can be repositioned to keep the case looking right when the adjustable motherboard tray is moved up or down on its mounts. Unlike most PSU shrouds, the Dark Base 900 rev. 2’s isn’t joined up with the motherboard tray in the least. Instead, a generous gap between the tray and the shroud creates a full-length cable routing channel from the bottom of the case into the main chamber. This is one of the better approaches for bridging a dual-chamber case layout that I’ve seen, not least because of its versatility. The screws that hold the motherboard tray in place are outfitted with orange rubber grommets. To lower the motherboard tray, you also must remove one or two mesh covers at the bottom rear of the case. You can then install one or both up top in the gap that is created by dropping the motherboard tray down one or two positions. It's a simple and clever design. Photo 2 is a closer look at photo 1 with a bit more detail, and shows how close the bottom radiator fan is to the shroud. It touches it.

As you can see, even the non-Pro version of this case is expensive; but both versions earn their keep. They are fine cases that can accommodate the best heatsinks and didn’t forget about water cooling. The glass side and the LED’s show off your system to perfection.Here you can see those grommets in action, holding the front fans while dampening vibrations. Slots allow those fans to slide up and down or allow you to put a rad here. You can also see narrower slots for 120 mm fans. A closeup of the PSU part of the rear we can see two grilled one-inch spacers above the PSU grill. Presumably, a PSU would sit with it bottom portion submerged in the case’s framework. From this we can guess that for a PSU to breath freely it must sit forward of the grillwork of the case. Note the vents at the bottom. These presumably contribute to the PSU’s air intake. PSU Grill This MB tray has cushions. How come? The motherboard tray does not touch the side. Hmm, A mystery. But the MB tray seems to be fastened to the case skeleton with sound-deadened screws, also visible here. Overall, be quiet’s Dark Base Pro 900 rev. 2 is truly an amazing case and it’s quality/design/flexibly just blew me away. Out of all the cases I have built in, the Dark Base Pro has easily been my favorite and I can’t think of any better case to give the Editor’s Choice award to.

Here are the end pieces from the rear or the case. The solid piece comes from above the exhaust fan. The large piece is the PSU carrier face down, showing its bottom screw-holes. Moving on to the build itself, working in the Dark Base Pro 900 was a lot of fun but it did require a lot of time and planning. Because the case is so customizable, you first must plan out what configuration you would like to go with before even installing any components. If you don’t do this, you would find yourself installing/uninstalling your components as you readjust the case. Aside from taking longer than expected to complete, the only issue I ran into during the build was working with cables at the top of the motherboard. Since the motherboard is closer to the PSU shroud when inverted, it was a little bit of work trying to plug in some things like the EPS and CPU cooler fan cables. We started things off by installing an Asus AM1I-A mini-ATX motherboard and plugging in the various I/O cables. This was easy, as we had several cable-routing options available to us. We also appreciate that the case includes some pre-installed standoffs.

System Build & Installation

With most of its impedimenta stripped away here is the Dark Base 900 in all its glory, naked before the world. You might note that although the HDD cage holder is there and the motherboard tray is in place, nothing else is. This naked case weighs just over ten pounds (160 oz. = 4.5 kg).