be quiet! Silent Base 802

[testman78]

Introduction

Generally corporations take a well-liked product and re-release it to the market with a brand new aesthetic, or barely revamped design. Respected and widespread German {hardware} producer be quiet! has unveiled its newest chassis, the Silent Base 802. This case adds a third element to the Silent Base series, which is known for its balance of quiet cooling and flexible use with excellent airflow. The manufacturer has made some changes, particularly in terms of flexibility. You can now choose between different front and lid parts. There is a choice between corresponding elements made of air-permeable mesh or a closed design. This is already the most visible innovation in contrast to the Silent Base 801. Unlike this original Silent Base 800, the 802 features both a closed-off front panel and a mesh front panel, allowing users to choose between noise isolation and airflow. The top of the case also features noise isolating and high airflow top panels. The manufacturer has removed the optional striking colors of the predecessor. The case is available in black or white, with either a tempered glass side window or a sound-insulated steel side panel.



The Silent Base 802 has the following specifications:




Packaging & Contents

As always we begin with packaging. It's a simple yet informative thing to show as when you purchase a chassis, you probably do not want any defects and scratches on it. The Silent Base 802 comes in a pretty plain cardboard box with monochrome graphics. This double-reinforced cardboard box is recyclable. On the front there is a shot of the case. Logo and Silent Base 802 printed on the front.



On the back there is an exploded view of the case and a listing of some of the main features. A brief description of the case is printed in multiple languages.



The sides of the packaging present the main features of the case alongside the complete technical specifications.




Opening the box up the case itself is protected by two large pieces of Styrofoam and a cloth bag. The accessories are in a large brown box, which is fixed in the lid.



There are mesh panels for both the front and top of the chassis, so you can pick and choose between a focus on silence or airflow.




The scope of delivery includes all important screws and five reusable cable ties made of Velcro, extensive and illustrated operating and installation instructions and one additional mounting frame for 3.5″-/2.5″ hard disks.







Look at the side of one of the protection Styrofoams because this is where the legs of the chassis are.




A Closer Look Outside

The next task is to make a detailed description of the external appearance of Be Quiet! Silent Base 802. This brand undoubtedly knows how to do things, we always have towers of exquisite quality in their manufacture and with highly studied details to provide just what enthusiastic users are looking for in professional assemblies. The size of the case are 539 x 245 x 507 mm (L x W x H), and it may possibly accommodate motherboards as much as E-ATX. It's a chasis built in steel of a forceful thickness and rigidity that you notice as soon as you open it and start working on it. Despite the use of plastic elements for the feet, the front and the power supply cover, the Silent Base 802 looks solid and weighs approx. 10.5 kg. The design of the left side part depends on the purchased variant. You can choose between a completely closed and insulated side panel or a side panel made of tempered glass. The side itself has nothing special, this glass has a metal frame installed to hold it to the rest of the chassis and an white finish around it to make part of the area invisible and improve its aesthetics. The only slight gripe with the case is the minor mismatch in the shade of white between the steel and plastic panels.



The 10mm thick right side panel of the be quiet! Silent Base 802 is always completely closed in every variant and, like the front, is equipped with a 1 cm thick insulating mat. The body rests on two removable plastic legs of the same shape, except that the area of ​​the contact pads themselves with rubber stickers has slightly increased. The legs are inserted into the seats quite tightly and with great effort, but it is even more difficult to unfasten them, for which the leg must first be tilted outward and then pulled up.




What is the same in both variants is the mechanism for removing the side parts. Be quiet! has a special button on each side in the upper part of the rear section. By pressing this button the retaining lugs of the side panel are released and it can be removed upwards.



The front is completely closed and has openings at the sides through which the two pre-installed Pure Wing 2 fans can draw fresh air into the case.



The angled channels behind the openings are intended to prevent noise from penetrating to the outside. In order to reach the dust filter, the middle part in the front simply has to be pulled off upwards.




Behind the front there is another easily removable air filter and behind it the two pre-assembled Pure Wings 2 fans with 140 mm.




The fans are of high quality and durable (80,000 hours are declared, or more than 9 years of continuous operation). These are mounted on one of the usual frames and can be positioned almost anywhere up and down. Cleaning the Silent Base 802 should be child's play for everyone, given its ease of disassembly.



The dust protection filter protrudes over the entire length of the housing and can be pulled out to the front. Be quiet! has integrated the handle of the filter into the front by design, creating one of the best solutions for a comfortable filter currently available. The filter can be removed just as easily as it can be pushed back in. And that with almost perfect accessibility.



Finally we come to the front panel of the new Silent Base. One of many new additions to the Silent Base 802 is the inclusion of a USB 3.2 G2 Kind-C port, on the expense of a Kind-A port on the earlier 801 mannequin. It contains two USB 3.2 G1 Kind-A ports, with two 3.5 mm audio jacks for entrance panel audio, with a small reset button, and a big energy button. An integrated fan control enables the speed to be adjusted in three stages. The feel of the buttons on the I/O panel and the fan control are very good.



In the lid be quiet! also remains largely true to the previous design. The lid is completely closed with the exception of six ventilation slots in the rear area.



They're all magnetically removable, and there are ventilated version with filters included in the box, should you wish to actually open this bit up. The inner surface of the front side panel is pasted over with a sound-insulating material.




You may remove the rear to employ a single fan in the ceiling, which keeps everything else as enclosed as possible. You may also install a radiator of up to 360 mm here, or go for three 120/140 mm fans for active cooling.



But these openings were also designed in such a way that as little sound as possible can reach the outside. Of course, we can replace it with a long magnetic filter. The goal for the brand is to play on both counts: performance and silence.



The rear doesn't offer any big surprises. The power supply unit is mounted in the floor on a decoupled holding frame.




There are 9 growth slots in complete, with seven for the motherboard and two to horizontally mount a graphics card with a PCIe riser cable- out there individually at a further price.



Finally, you'll find the third pre-installed Pure Wing 2 fan with a frame width of 140 mm.



be quiet! has equipped the Silent Base 802 with a very large dust filter that covers the entire floor so that as little dust as possible finds its way into the interior. Another practical feature here is that the dust filter can simply be pulled out to the front.




A Closer Look Inside

We have already discussed in detail all the elements of the outdoor area and its curiosities, so now it's time to open the sides and see what we find. Once inside the Silent Base 802 , we find ourselves faced with a most classic arrangement. Thus, the motherboard will rest above the power supply. The block being hidden by a power supply cover. Since the lid is fixed, be quiet! has integrated a clever solution for mounting the lid radiator. After loosening two screws, a practical mounting frame can be pulled out in the upper area. After the radiator has been assembled, the frame is simply pushed back again and screwed into place.



The mainboard is modular. After loosening nine screws, it can be removed in combination with a large part of the rear panel. Since the side walls of the case can also be interchanged, this is generally a very convenient feature of the Silent Base 802 in order to perfectly fit into the interior of the room and table.



You can accommodate E-ATX, ATX, micro-ATX and mini-ITX references. The cutout in the tray for installing a processor cooler without removing the motherboard from the case is also preserved.



There are three cable passages on the right of the motherboard, passages with rubber covers.



The case comes with a total of three Pure Wings 2 fans (140 mm).



The lower area of ​​the body is separated from the main one by four plastic plugs fixed with latches.



You may remove for fans and, thus, additional airflow.



On the opposite side, you can clearly see exposed openings for HDD cages. The Silent Base 802 has about 27mm of room for your cables.



While up to five of these may be installed, be quiet! only provides one out of the box you have to spend a little bit of additional money if you require more 3.5" storage.



The Silent Base 802 also uses a fan controller. A maximum of six 3-pin fans are possible here. The case's I/O panel provides practical fan control. A slide switch allows you to switch back and forth between the different stages. Alternatively the fan can be activated by a PWM signal of the mainboard. You can leave the switch at 12V and use a constant maximum fan speed of 1000 rpm (~ 970 rpm, as monitored), or lower the fan voltage to 8 V (~ 740 rpm) or 5 V (~ 510 rpm) ). In addition, when PWM mode is activated and the controller is connected to the motherboard, you can configure automatic speed control of all fans through the motherboard BIOS or proprietary software.



A hard drive cage is present under the power supply tunnel. This famous cage will accommodate two 3.5 ″ / 2.5 ″ disks.



For 2.5 ″ storage, three slots are present at the back of the motherboard tray. Two of them will take place at the level of the large backplate access while a last will be present a little below. Note that everything will be removable.




We now go to the bottom of the case with the location of the power supply. The length of it can reach 288 mm. The Silent Base 802 offers a system of rubber pads for it.




Installation Process

Now we come to system installation. Adding a motherboard is done by traditional means, with pre-installed spacers and included screws.




All the cables are nicely grouped and routed, and the opening for the motherboard tray gives you unobstructed access to the CPU mounting bracket. In addition, the 27mm space behind the mainboard sled contributes to this result. Even if the cables of the power supply unit are on top of each other, the side panel can be easily closed.



Due to the shroud, you have to slide your power supply in through the opening in the back of the Silent Base 802. Before doing so, simply mount the PSU frame to your unit, which then attaches to the case frame. The maximum power supply length of 300 millimeters is also impressive.



Even with a large GPU installed in the Silent Base 802, there is ample room.



Our GPU left us a whopping 165mm of space to the front fans in the open configuration, so great potential for custom cooling loop installs. A large radiator with a pump/reservoir mounted in front should fit without any problems. For buyers who want to install water cooling in the Silent Base 802, the housing offers space in the front for radiators up to 420 mm in length and in the lid up to 360 mm.



The assembly of the hard disks is one of the few cases where a screwdriver has to be used. The SSDs are attached to the frame using four screws. The frame itself is connected to the mainboard tray with a knurled screw. If you prefer to present your SSDs, you can also mount them above the power supply cover. The installation of 3.5″ HDDs also requires the use of a screwdriver. Rubber rings are screwed under the hard disk using long screws. Then you can attach the data carrier decoupled to the frame and push it back into the slot. The Silent Base 802 has space for CPU coolers with a height of up to 185 millimeters.



The installation of all parts was done very quickly and due to the generously designed interior also possible with large hands. All in all, the finished system can be seen well in my eyes.




Performance

As hardware we use a AMD Ryzen 5 1400 on a MSI B350 PC Mate with 16GB Crucial Ballistix Sport LT grey DDR4-2666. The processor was overclocked to 3.8 Ghz and is cooled with an Alpenfohn Matterhorn Pure. For the image output a GTX 1060 6GB of Gigabte AORUS is responsible. Finally, we come to the temperatures reached in the . During the load test, Prime95 and FurMark were run for 15 minutes at a room temperature of 20 C. The system was then tested at a temperature of 20 C for the first time. Since the Silent Base 802 comes with a replaceable top cover and front cover, the load test was carried out in a total of two different scenarios. The results are shown in the table below.



Considering that the CPU is overclocked and supplied with 1.35 volts, all temperature values in all scenarios are absolutely in the green range. Even with the Silent Front and Top element in the lid there is no heat build-up. Overall, thermal performance is very good in the Silent Base 802. The case easily kept both CPU and GPU temperatures well under control.


Final Thoughts

be quiet! does it again, we have another solid case. The modular design of the be quiet! Silent Base 802 should please all types of system builders. Having the option to configure a PC case to personal preference, is very appealing. Having the choice to swap between a insulating or vented panel is a feature we really like. Both panels accomplish the design objective - the insulating top helps reduce noise slightly and the vented top improves cooling, especially when a top mounted radiator is installed. Looks are always a subjective matter. The design of the new silent base 802 is quite traditional, but with a bling factor that is in line with the current market trend. The vast amount of options for radiator placement should make planning a high-end liquid cooling loop much easier. We often see cases lacking in certain areas, when preparing for liquid cooling. With options to place radiators in three locations in the Silent Base 802, this should not be an issue. Talking about cooling be quiet! does included three of their Pure Wings 2 140 mm cooling fans and their fan controller. The integrated fan controller supports up to six 3-pin fans and a PWM hub function. This allows users to quickly adjust the cooling capacity, if required. These three fans do provide enough cooling for most people, but you have quite a lot of cooling options in this case not only for fans, but water cooling hardware as well. In terms of performance, the Silent Base 802 excels here too. Acoustics are very good, the pre-installed 140mm fans are extremely quiet even at high RPM. During testing, at idle, we could barely hear the system was running which is a huge plus for us. Thermal performance seems impressive too. Using either a large air cooler or an All-In-One liquid cooler, the Silent Base 802 keeps the system temperature well under control. With a full custom cooling loop installed, we would expect excellent results. Installation of a power supply unit is considerably simplified by the use of a frame. The dust filters located in the bottom and front of the housing can be easily removed from the front. To be future-proof, the I/O panel on the front of the case offers a USB 3.2 Gen. 2 Type C port for easy connection of peripheral devices with transfer speeds of up to 10 Gigabit per second. There are very few negatives to the Silent Base 802. For us, the only criticisms would be the stands/feet are a tad that is annoying to mount, and the minor mismatch in the shade of white between the steel and plastic panels. This is common of white case and we have seen this before in other alternatives on the market.



Overall, the Silent Base 802 PC case is a solid, feature-packed chassis. For your common builder or enthusiast, there is enough to this to keep both ends of the scale happy. The bequiet silent base 802 receives a 'WoW' award. It's an above-normal-sized chassis that offers many features. You can use E-ATX motherboards up to 285 mm wide, extensive water-cooling radiators, and 185 mm air coolers. Theoretically, you can install up to fourteen 2.5" drives or eleven 3.5" plus four 2.5" ones. The 'push-to-lock latching mechanism' is a really nice addition, as it eliminates the need for using thumbscrews to secure the side panels (except in transport). The be quiet! Silent Base 802 has an MSRP of $160 for the non-window model, and for $170 with a tempered glass facet panel. There isn't a value distinction between the black and white model of the case, which ought to please many customers as white {hardware} usually comes with a value premium. We feel is a fair price for what you are getting.