Conclusion

Be Quiet! designed the Silent Base 600 to be a high quality, cost-effective case focused on low-noise operation. In terms of quality, the materials used are very good and the overall build is durable enough for a typical ATX tower case. The core chassis however seems to be more of a retrofitted old design rather than a modern case, with low clearances and few usability features. Modern gaming systems, especially those designed with low-noise operation in mind, often make use of liquid cooling solutions in order to achieve acceptable thermal performance levels. The Silent Base 600 is incompatible with a very large percentage of the currently available all-in-one coolers, as well as being incompatible with very tall air coolers. The designer did install holes for the use of large external liquid coolers, but such a cooler defeats the core purpose of the Silent Base 600 by transferring a major noise source outside of the case.

Even though the core design of the chassis seems is what it is, the design does deliver excellent noise insulation as promised. The Silent Base 600 has excellent sound-dampening capabilities and the stock cooling fans are barely audible even at their maximum speed. With its stock cooling fans down at their minimum speed and a quality low-noise CPU cooler, the Silent Base 600 should be more than capable of providing seamless and completely silent operation with a medium-power CPU and GPU installed. For advanced gaming systems, especially multi-GPU systems or systems with significantly overclocked components, the cooling system of the Silent Base 600 should definitely be upgraded. The installation of more fans or loud components in the Silent Base 600 will certainly make the overall system audible, yet the acoustic insulation of the case will in any case dampen that noise, resulting to comparatively better acoustic performance. In extreme circumstances, where the inability of installing large coolers/radiators becomes an important factor and forces the user to compensate with additional airflow, the noise output of the Silent Base 600 can match or even exceed that of more spacious cases with greatly superior thermal performance.

In summary, we discovered that the Be Quiet! Silent Base 600 practically is a remodeled older chassis that is heavily balanced towards low-noise operation. The thermal performance of the Silent Base 600 leaves much to be desired, but the acoustic performance is truly exceptional. However, in North America Be Quiet! is fighting an uphill battle against the competition when it comes to value. The Silent Base 600 is the first case that we have seen to this date that is more expensive in the US rather than in the EU, and it already is expensive in the EU. With a retail price of $127 at the time of this review, the Silent Base 600 is going to face very steep competition, as much more advanced cases are available near this price point.

Testing & Results
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  • tarqsharq - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link

    Interesting case, but are those Radeon 5850's in there?!
  • RaichuPls - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link

    Should be reference R9 290Xs if I'm not mistaken.
  • QinX - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link

    It says ATI Radeon on the side so those are likely HD5850's the 290X is AMD Radeon branded and the reference cooler design is different for those.
  • NiteshD - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link

    Well if you need two GPUs to test the noise insulation, you could do far worse than those 5850s - a pair of those under load would be like a propeller aircraft!
  • tarqsharq - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link

    True that. I saw the sides of them and had a flashback to when I used to have one... yeeeaaars ago.
  • colinstu - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link

    they need those old cards so they can actually test how well the case can keep those cool ;)
  • DanNeely - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link

    The thermal testing is done with fanless space heaters standing in for the CPU, GPU, etc. It's not clear what what the fans used in the advanced noise test are, I wouldn't be surprised if they're both standalone fans not fans attached to heatsinks/cards.
  • BrokenCrayons - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link

    Since the build photos are more about helping readers put the case internal design into perspective, the use of older hardware probably isn't a big problem. Why use the latest GPU, motherboard, etc which puts it at risk of being damaged from frequent rebuilds when you can use older hardware that might already be dead or is at least expendable when putting together something that's only for photography?
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link

    Correct. The 5850s are solely for photography reasons. We aren't using them for testing.
  • marc1000 - Sunday, November 20, 2016 - link

    plus they are red, and match the power cables. I do not like these loose cables, but for photography and a "worst cabling case" comparison, they are great. I imagine sleeved independent cables would be much nicer to organize, but there is no point in complaining about it. the photo works, and that's it.

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