Be Quiet! Silent Base 600 Review

Interior

The side panels are easily released with thumbscrews, but the front and roof are trickier, again requiring you to unclip them at multiple points from the inside. This makes accessing the fan mounts in these locations somewhat annoying, especially considering the Silent Base 800 has an easy access clip-out front panel – why this feature has been removed is not clear.


The internals of the Silent Base 600 are virtually identical to those of the 800. This means you get a few neat touches like built-in motherboard mounts, PCI bracket thumbscrews, a large CPU cooler cutout and a fully isolated PSU area that has rubber both on the floor and against the rear wall to quell vibrations. You can also remove the internal layer of the window on our sample to give you an extra 10mm of room for CPU coolers. However, the reused internals also mean there's nothing here we haven't seen before.

The front panel's ODD covers clip out from the inside and optical drives themselves are easily installed with tool-free clips. However, once again the optical drive cage is locked in place, reducing the flexibility of the design.


One of the only internal differences is the HDD cage arrangement – you now get one instead of two. The included cage has room for three 3.5in devices, which are again installed using rubberised mounting arms that you attach directly to your drive. These are great for minimising vibrations, but it does mean you can't use 3.5in bays to mount 2.5in drives. That said, there is a single 2.5in mount directly on top of the cage which uses regular screw holes, as well as a pair of individually removable 2.5in trays, each secured behind the motherboard tray with a single thumbscrew.

Removing three thumbscrews allows you to remove or relocate the HDD cage as well. A set of rails underneath the optical drive cage allows you to hang it off of there, or you can move
these rails into the ODD cage itself and have the HDD cage positioned there instead.


There are four main cable routing holes, each well-sized and covered with effective rubber grommets, as well as a larger one up top for threading the EPS12V connector and various fan cables through. The indented motherboard tray and extruded side panel mean that even with the panel's full coating of noise deadening material there's a substantial amount of room for storing wires, but as with the Silent Base 800 there aren't enough anchor points for out liking, and no special touches like reusable Velcro cable ties – all you get with the case is some standard zip ties and a single, sticky-back anchor point for you to stick where you like.


Water-cooling support has remained the same as well. A 240mm or 280mm radiator can be installed in the roof, but only slimline models are officially supported and the spacing of the mounting holes is fixed so not all models will be compatible. Thicker 240mm models may be possible as the holes here allow you to offset the radiator a bit, but it all depends on the height of your motherboard and memory heatsinks. Otherwise, only 120mm or 140mm radiators can be used, at least officially. However, the double fan mounts up front should make getting a 240mm radiator in possible, provided you're happy to lose either 3.5in or optical drive bay support altogether.