be quiet! Shadow Base 800 FX
Introduction
Something that has always been important is choosing a good case to mount our computer. The problem is that some components have grown so large that they won’t fit in the box. Undoubtedly the clearest example are graphics cards, increasingly absurd in size. Other aspects when choosing a box is the airflow. It is important that it has a mesh front to allow a large volume of air to enter. If we want it with a closed front, it must have side grilles that allow a large intake of air. The German company be quiet! is aware of the current needs in terms of space. For this reason they have built a chassis that allows the installation of radiators of up to 420mm. It also supports E-ATX format motherboards and how could it be otherwise, high-end graphics cards. be quiet! also wants each user to be able to opt for the solution that interests them the most. For this reason we have a total of five colors and formats that include ARGB or not, as we want. Thus, it is possible to satisfy the needs of all users. We have five versions or variants of this mid but large computer tower. We have as a basic model the Shadow Base 800 Black, which lacks ARGB and controller lighting. This is perfect if you are looking for something sober and elegant without little lights that you end up turning off because they are annoying. We continue with the Shadow Base 800 DX Black and Shadow Base 800 DX White models that add subtle ARGB lighting. Specifically on the front we have some side strips that give it a small discreet touch. Thus, they offer greater customization, adapting to our needs. These two models, as well as the previous one, have three 140mm PWM Pure Wings 2 fans. Finally we have the Shadow Base 800 FX Black and Shadow Base 800 FX White. These, in addition to carrying the ARGB strips on the front, have four 140mm PWM Light Wings fans. These fans offer us a great air flow and low noise. In addition, it includes an ARGB/PWM controller for up to 8 peripherals. All models of this case feature the same internal layout, the same tempered glass side panel window.
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Common features of the Shadow Base 800 (DX/FX) series are a heavily perforated front panel and fans with a more efficient geometry, similar to the Pure Base 500. But they still stand their ground in the midi-tower category with dimensions of 550 × 247 × 522 mm (including the stand), even though they are already at the upper limit. Today we are focusing our review on the white window version of the Shadow Base 800 White FX variant.
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Packaging & Contents
The primary front side of the packaging shows the Shadow Base 800 FX as a black line drawing showing a peek of internal detail. The chassis name is also present across the bottom, along with a critical blurb about the chassis features.
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At the back we see an "about Be Quiet! marketing paragraph, and it is in several languages. Below this, we find a blown up shot of the Shadow Base 800 FX with numbered components and a legend to the right to help identify the featured parts. At the bottom, we see several more languages explaining a few critical features via the marketing blurb listed above.
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Rotating the package clockwise ninety degrees and we get a side shot with eleven languages. It covers the same marketing blurb about the chassis. The top left has an inventory control sticker, likely from the factory, which makes the chassis. Two QR codes leading you to the uploaded version on the product page and manual.
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The final spin of the package and we see the specification table for the chassis. Below that, we have a sticker that identifies the color of our chassis.
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There is also an inventory control label at the bottom edge, which clarifies precisely which version of the Shadow Base 800 FX we have on hand.
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The Shadow Base 800 FX itself is held in place by two thick Styrofoam spacers and protected by a heavy-duty cloth bag, which certainly makes for a nice unboxing experience!
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Naturally, you will find a manual inside the box, which is very detailed and showcases all the possibilities within the Shadow Base 800 FX, and trust me, there are quite a few unique elements, but more on those later.
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We have a box identified as "Accessories".
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In addition, there are several zip ties, sorted screws, and a double HDD cage bracket.
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A Closer Look Outside
Looking at the be quiet! Shadow Base 800 FX, the first thing you will notice is the excellent material mix. The chassis mostly uses steel and glass and very few plastic elements. Both the front and top are made out of brushed steel.
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As with most be quiet! enclosures, the Shadow Base 800 FX features a clean, understated look with straight lines and some angles. In the rear, things are arranged in a traditional fashion with the PSU bay at the bottom of the chassis.
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Upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that there are several design elements embedded within the enclosure. For example, note the 45° angles on both side panels.
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The 4mm thick main glass panel comes with a slight tint and black linings that mesh with the design well. The tempered glass is mounted onto rubberized risers and then secured with two thumbscrews at the back. There's enough clearance on the glass so there aren't any tension issues or anything.
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The right side panel is just a solid steel panel, but it’s flush mounted, has rear-fitted thumbscrews and looks pretty presentable overall. The solid panel of the chassis feature a sound-dampening mat to keep things as quite as possible.
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The front of the Shadow Base 800 FX has plenty of mesh to enable airflow, giving the case easy access to external air for cooling. From the front, thanks to the mesh, you can see a bit of what is behind.
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In the front, the only thing you will notice at first is the company logo at the bottom. There is no front side door though, so that means no space for your ODD units.
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There are cutouts at regular intervals on both sides. These are there for the air intake from the mesh side.
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You may pry the whole cover off.
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Behind it is the first dust protection grille of many others on the case. It fits perfectly, is locked in place and not attached with cheap magnetic straps. The filters is a snap to remove from the front of the case for quick and easy maintenance.
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Behind the dust protection panel, you will find three retail-grade Light Wings 140mm fans. Due to the FX bit of the name, these are Light Wings BQ LIW-12025-MR-PWM fans and are already connected to the hub, which is very nice. The user can install up to 420mm radiator on the front. Also, there are three cutouts facing the side of the fans. These are there to pass the fans’ cables for further routing and connectivity.
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The lighting unit of the front cover is connected by push-pin contacts, which eliminates the cable tangle and thus the risk of tearing off a cable when disassembling the front.
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be quiet! has placed two USB 3.2, the usual audio plugs, and a USB Type C Gen2 plug at the very top edge of the Shadow Base 800 FX. You will also find the traditional power and reset buttons and a RGB toggle switch.
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The top of the case looks stunning, with a massive dust filter recessed into the top. It is magnetically designed for easy disassembly and cleaning.
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That’s not uncommon, but I like that be quiet! went the extra step with a custom cover design that has their logo, not just the generic ones most case brands tend to use.
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Removing the filter gives us a view of the triangular-shaped holes used to ventilate the top of the Shadow Base 800 FX. We also see room for three 120mm fans to be mounted close to the glass side panel, or three 140mm fans can also be fitted. The user can install up to 420mm radiator at the top.
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In the rear, the PSU bay comes lined with foam and two sets of mounting holes, so you may choose which way to install your power supply. Above that are seven horizontal and two vertical expansion slots, which means you can place your GPU front and center. The case features rotatable PCIe slots, allowing for vertical installation of GPUs. Unfortunately, you will have to source the PCIe ribbon yourself as it is not included with the case. In the very top is another 140 mm retail grade fan, this time set to push air out the back of the chassis.
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Under the chassis, we find that the chunky ABS feet offer large rubber pads for grip. The feet are rubberized giving more grip to the surface and again preventing resonating noises escaping from the PC. Between the feet is more of the triangular mesh to allow the bottom of the chassis to pull in cooler air and is covered with a dust filter that runs the entire length.
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The filter is removed from the front, which is much easier to get to in many instances versus those removed at the back.
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A Closer Look Inside
To gain access to the interior of the Shadow Base 800 FX, simply unscrew the thumb screws holding the side panels in place. The interior of the housing is divided into two chambers, which improves the aesthetics and ventilation of the computer. The main compartment can accommodate not only a mini-ITX, mATX or ATX motherboard, but also larger E-ATX and XL-ATX models. There is a Cable Management Bar, with two vertical cut-outs for cable ties to keep things tidy. However, this is completely removable too, should you need to strip it down for some other purpose. There is an embossed logo on it.
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The mainboard tray has a large opening so that you should be able to easily access the backplate of the CPU cooler later. In addition, the mainboard tray has numerous openings for routing cables. Although these are not provided with rubber protection, the edges are deburred accordingly, so that cables are not damaged here.
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The PSU shroud is going to hide a lot of the boring stuff out of sight too, but it also features some cable routing holes of its own, as well as some ventilation, ensuring you don’t get any pockets of warm air trapped in the lower parts of the case. You can open the front plastic PSU shroud panel. We can remove it by pushing the central area down, in order to insert the power supply.
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The bottom of the Shadow Base 800 FX included the below bracket, which is removable to accommodate thick front mounted liquid cooling radiators and push/pull fan setups. This plate is also designed to allow airflow from a bottom mounted 120mm or 140mm fan if users choose to install one.
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The right portion is for a pair of 2.5" drives to be installed, one above and one below the plastic plate with the be quiet! name. The plate covers the wiring, leaving just the SSD or HDD stickers in view. Towards the front, you’ll find a trilogy of Light Wings 140mm fans, which are going to deliver a huge wall of cool air to your PC build, but also provide a beautiful light show once everything is powered up. The front of the PSU shroud has a large cut-away, which allows the bottom fan to get air throughout the case, but also gives you clearance for larger front-mounted radiators.
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In the rear, you’ll find the fourth Light Wings PWM 140mm fan, all of which are pre-wired into the ARGB/PWM hub in the rear of the case, and ready to rock.
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There are 7 expansion slots, and it is no problem to expand multiple PCIe devices. If you want, you can completely remove the slot panels and switch to vertical installation. However, an optional riser cable is required.
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Behind the motherboard, the 800 FX still looks surprisingly clean and tidy. There is a surprisingly large amount of space back here for cable management, so the build should go pretty smoothly. There are cable tie loops everywhere too, so even if you do have longer cables getting in the way, you can strap them down easily enough. The horizontally oriented panel behind the CPU cooler mounting opening can accommodate an additional 2.5-inch drive or a 3.5-inch drive. There is an RGB and PWM fan-controller PCB that comes with a PWM pass-through cable to ensure you can route the signal from the motherboard to all attached cooling units. The ARGB/fan hub is large and takes up a fair amount of space. A lot of the cables are already dealt with though, with the PWM/ARGB hub handling all the lighting and fan control stuff. You just need to hook up a PWM cable to your motherboard, you can pair your motherboard RGB too if you so desire, and a SATA power cable does the rest. All the cables within the be quiet! Shadow Base 800 FX are of the white variety. You will also find a unique USB 3.0 Type-C Gen2 plug alongside the connectors for the RGB and PWM fans.
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The vertically oriented panel accommodates two 2.5-inch drives. If you want to use all four 2.5-inch drive slots or both 3.5-inch drive slots, you have to remove the PWM/A-RGB hub from the cover. Decoupling rubber rings are used on the horizontal cover for drive mounting. The PWM/A-RGB hub is also simply plugged into rubber rings with pins. Alternatively, be quiet! optional accessories for mounting additional drive slots. The HDD cover from the accessories can be mounted in the bottom chamber and equipped with two optional drive cages. Each of these cages holds one 3.5-inch or two 2.5-inch drives. The rear part of the bottom chamber is reserved for the ATX power supply. It can either be screwed outside the housing to the removable power supply cover and pushed into the Shadow Base 800 FX from behind, or it can be placed on the side of the housing and screwed to the cover.
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Installation and Finished looks
The installation process is quick since there are pre-installed motherboard tips in this case. Of course, you can install larger or small motherboards (E-ATX / ATX / M-ATX / Mini-ATX). In order to place the first wide format, we must first remove the steel cover that covers the opening to pass cables.
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Cable management is very easy in this case. As you can see there is a lot of space for easy cable management. It is amazing how orderly all the cables look behind the motherboard tray because of the Velcro strips and numerous hooks to use zip ties on. The fact that both front and back panels can be removed gives you easy access to the PSU area for adding more cables or simply making better cable management around the bottom area. Adding an SSD to the rear of the motherboard is done by traditional means. Simply remove the mounting plate of your choice, add the drive with the included screws, and put the plate back into its place.
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You can mount very lengthy power supplies in the chassis, so that won't be an issue. The PSU will sit on rubberized padding, to ensure that no vibrations/noise passes on to the Shadow Base 800 FX frame. The shield nicely covers it if for the extra clean looks.
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With 180 mm of space, air coolers hardly have a relevant height limit.
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You can also install any kind of radiator.
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When installing a graphics card, the maximum length of the graphics adapter must not exceed 430mm.
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With everything in place, you can see how clean everything inside the Shadow Base 800 FX looks. Routing things nicely was an almost mesmerizing experience as every cable was routed in the best possible way - I never had to look for a plan B while assembling everything.
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Let's power up this system, the front and side ARGB lighting is distinctive.
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The fans look amazing as you can see.
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Test System and Methology
Test System:
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Motherboard:ASRock B550 Steel Legend
Cooler:Pure Loop 2 FX 360mm AIO(@ the top of case)
Memory: 16 Go HyperX Fury 3200 MHZ DDR4
Graphics Cards: Sapphire RX 5700 XT Pulse
Power Supply: be quiet! Pure Power 11 FM 1000W
Boot Drive: SSD Samsung 970 EVO NVMe M.2 1 T
OS: Windows 10 64bit
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To test the thermal performance of the be quiet! Shadow Base 800 FX i loaded my test system for 15 minutes using OCCT and Fire Strike Stress Test (3DMark) and recorded the maximum temperatures reached using CPUID Hardware Monitor. CrystalDiskMark 8.0.0 to measure SSD temperature under load and Rise of the Tomb Raider: 30 minutes of gameplay. The graphics card always in auto mode, Meterk MK09 placed 50 cm from the box to measure the sound level. The measurements are carried out in 2 situations: at rest and under load. Room temperature was maintained at 20 degrees C for the duration of my tests.
Performance
The be quiet! Shadow Base 800 FX did a fine job in our Temperature Tests. Of course, with all those fans in the front, there’s a lot of air coming into the case. The mesh design of the front panel makes airflow easy and the fans don’t have to work hard at all to keep things cool.
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The be quiet! Light Wings PWM 140mm fans stayed relatively quiet across the RPM range, with little audible wind noise at higher speed.
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Final Thoughts
Our white Shadow Base 800 FX sample has a rather tasteful and understated design in our humble opinion. The white model is all white, including the USB ports, case-side cables, and even the fan hub PCB on the FX model. Starting with the exterior and completely detachable front panel things get interesting. be quiet! has jumped on the RGB bandwagon and embedded LEDs into that slim front panel. Instead of traditional wiring, you will find small PCBs on both the case and the panel. You can pair their header to your motherboard too, so you could even have the effects match the RGB of other hardware, such as your motherboard, RAM, graphics card and more. Of course, the inclusion of the ARGB controller is matched by its ability to control the fans too. Having synchronised PWM control is awesome, and sticks to be quiets roots as a cooling brand first. Being able to balance noise levels and cooling performance easily is certainly appealing to me. There is enough space for three 140 mm fans in the front, and be quiet! supplies you with a retail-quality unit in this part of the chassis out of the box, while a removable dust filter keeps dirt and grime out of your case. The overall cooling performance on this case is great though, and with a huge mesh front panel, mesh top, and four high-quality Light Wings fans, dealing with the increasing TDP of graphics hardware should be a bit easier here. There’s a full-length filter on the top and bottom, along with the mesh front panel. The Shadow Base 800 FX thermal results are good for both the CPU and GPU. Noise-wise, the four Light Wings 140mm fans are fairly quiet overall even at full speed. The Shadow Base 800 FX features cable bar that helps in keeping your build neat and tidy. This not only enhances the aesthetics but also improves airflow. Once the system is assembled, which is not only easy but functional as well, the finished interior look is extremely clean, which is not only due to the included Velcro strips and many mounting hooks behind the motherboard tray. It also helps that there is a long and slim gap between the shroud and motherboard tray as this means that you won't see anything except the plug on the bottom edge of the motherboard. Targeting high-end hardware, Shadow Base 800 FX is built with large components in mind thanks to its 550mm (L) x 247mm (W) x 522mm (H) dimensions. This means room for up to an E-ATX motherboard, 250mm-long PSU, 430mm graphics cards, and a 180mm CPU cooler. Speaking of cooling, we find space for another 140mm on the bottom, and another 140mm on the rear. All spaces are also compatible with 120mm fans. Meanwhile, liquid-cooling aficionados can fill the top and front sections with up to 420mm radiators with push/pull configuration support, all while leaving room for eight 2.5in or four 3.5in drives and vertical GPU positioning, though do be aware the PCIe riser cable is not included. Last but not least, I/O comprises two USB 3.2, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, plus 3.5mm audio jacks. Alright, let's address the negative points of the be quiet! Shadow Base 800 FX first as I had to take a really hard look at the chassis to now be able to point out something tangible. It would have been nice to maybe see one or two extra 3.5" hard-drive cages. The same mentality may be applied to the a PCIe x16 riser. Suggested prices start at 149.90 EUR for the Shadow Base 800 Black and reach 209.90 EUR for the Shadow Base 800 FX White (the black variant is 10 EUR cheaper). For the Shadow Base 800 DX Black/White variants, there should be no difference in price, with both being 169.90 EUR. It’s not a cheap case, but considering it’s a premium brand, the extraordinarily high build quality and extra features, it’s not overpriced either, it’s very competitive with other premium offerings.
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be quiet! has engineered a compact, extremely functional and well-rounded chassis that follows the mantra of German engineering - it is not the cheapest, but checks off everything from quality to design and functionality. be quiet! has simply taken a winning formula and jazzed it up with some very impressive ARGB integration. Which version is right for you is not for me to say, but if you do choose the 800 FX, I really can’t fault it. It’s well made, runs cool and quiet, and it looks utterly fantastic. The case has 3 years of warranty.
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