be quiet! Dark Base Pro 901 Case Review

Lighting

When you power your system on for the first time you’ll see the RGB strips on the power supply cover and front of the case light up. You’ll also notice the control panel on the front of the case light up. One thing that is really cool is that the RGB controls on the case show a live view of what color / effect the rest of the strips on the case are running.

be quiet! Dark Base Pro 901 Case be quiet! Dark Base Pro 901 Case be quiet! Dark Base Pro 901 Case be quiet! Dark Base Pro 901 Case

I would say since this is such a large case you will likely want to get a couple of RGB strips if you really want to light up the inside of the case.

Performance

Here is the breakdown of the test system we use for cases.

Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
Motherboard: ASUS Prime X570-Pro
Graphics Card: EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Gaming
Memory: G.SKILL Trident Z Royal DDR4-3200 16GB
Storage: Lexar NQ100 480GB
Power Supply: Cooler Master V850 Gold I
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Pure Rock Slim 2
Case: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 901

We will be testing the Dark Power Pro 901 Pro in both its silent mode (how it ships) and the high airflow mode by replacing the front panel with the high airflow panel and removing the silent panels on the top of the case.

We will be using AIDA64 for temperature readings and a RisePro Sound Level Meter to record sound levels. Sound levels are taken 5 inches from the front of the case as well as from the side of the case. Keep in mind with this case the fan speeds remain the same. These are not PWM fans so even when we put full load on the system the fans will not ramp up like other cases.

Idle readings are taken on the Windows 10 desktop after the system has been on for 1 hour. Load readings are taken using AIDA64’s system stability test with both the CPU and GPU selected. First up we have our temperatures for both the CPU and GPU.

bequiet darkbase pro 901 cpu idle bequiet darkbase pro 901 cpu load bequiet darkbase pro 901 gpu idle bequiet darkbase pro 901 gpu load

And for our noise levels…

bequiet darkbase pro 901 side idle bequiet darkbase pro 901 side load bequiet darkbase pro 901 front idle bequiet darkbase pro 901 front load

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