be quiet! Silent Base 601 Orange Mid-Tower ATX Computer Case, two 140mm fans, 10mm extra thick insulation

Pros: Beautiful, incredibly easy to work with, and with a quiet cooler, it is barely audible under normal loads. Unless I go out of my way to make my room silent, other ambient noise is louder. Despite concerns about it being a hot case, with good coolers, peak temperatures have not been higher than with other cases.Cons: Runs a little hot during routine use. A high-quality CPU cooler (I have a Noctua) and at least one additional 140mm case fan are requirements. I wouldn't run a hot CPU with stock cooling in this case. Also, it costs a bit more than other alternatives and there's an upcharge for the version with the window.I really want to reiterate just how good this case looks. I got the orange trim and window. It's like production art from Blade Runner. It's also incredibly well designed and easy to work in. Both sides pop off with a button press, dust filters are all accessible. Everything is high quality. Aesthetics and quality of manufacture & design were my primary reasons for buying the case. The sound dampening is a nice extra as far as I'm concerned.OK:Reality check #1: This isn't going to make standard desktop hardware silent. A fan spinning at over 1000 RPM makes noise. If you have a CPU fan, a GPU fan, and 2-4 case fans all spinning at a high RPM, you will hear them, even with a well-designed case. The noisiness of your coolers, and the temperature/rpm fan curves you set in your BIOS are going to make a BIG difference in terms of how much noise you hear. If you want a truly silent machine, a case like this isn't the answer by itself. All passively-cooled components inside a mesh case is probably a better bet for true zero noise, but that's a specialty build.Reality check #2: Sound insulation is also thermal insulation. Fans set to run at slower, quieter speeds are going to push less air in and out of the insulated case. With my setup, the temperature of my (admittedly somewhat hot-running) Ryzen 3700X is rarely below 40 degrees and often hover around 50 during web browsing, office work, or older games. That's not going to break anything, but it's higher than normal. Fortunately, I have not noticed any big difference between this case and other non-mesh cases when upgraded fans are running at full tilt under heavy load. But you *do* want a high-end CPU cooler, and you *do* want an additional front case fan.Qualitative test #1: I unplugged the fridge and washer/dryer in my apartment to kill ambient noise and muted my computer. I opened three web browsers with about 30 tabs between them, played a 1080p video in the background, have Discord running, and ran a long task ( du / ) on Windows Linux Subsystem all at the same time. I can barely hear a thing. Certainly nothing that would be noticeable while watching a quiet scene in a movie or with the ambient noise in many rooms. Still I wouldn't put it on top of your desk right next to your podcasting mic; a truly silent computer is a specialty project.Qualitative test #2: 3DMark stress test or running a recent AAA game muted. 6 fans spinning at high speed and it sounds like you'd expect a desktop computer to sound, but on the quiet end of that. Like a window fan on a medium setting, not the kind of jet engine sound that a PC can sometimes make. I only get this kind of noise while running a high-end game, and it's really not loud enough to distract from a game with the volume on.I hear that the foam insulation is especially good for the clicks on spinning-platter hard disks, but I can't speak to that. I also couldn't tell you how it handles the noise from liquid cooling.All in all, this is a fantastic case. I personally would like it if there were a replacement front panel with an opening to see the front case fans. That's really the only thing I can think of that would improve this. I'm a happy customer.My suggestion is to get a quiet, top-rated CPU cooler and one high-end quiet 140mm fan. Mount the new fan on the rear of the computer and set its curve so it runs at some minimum speed no matter what. Move the two decent but not stellar fans that come with the case to the front and set them to only turn on when the CPU hits 50 degrees or so. During light use, all you'll have running is your CPU cooler and a quiet fan blowing out of the back of the machine.

I absolutely love this case. Nondescript but beautiful. Extremely quiet. Material quality is excellent. Came with lots of hardware and bays for mounting stuff, and cable management is easy. I've owned many cases, and this one is by far the best. Highly recommended for people who need a super quiet case. Cooling hasn't been an issue but I also have an enormous three fan AIO cooler. I use as primary desktop PC for use in music production and live intstrument recording in a small studio. After 2 years, I'm still just as happy with it. Well worth the money, which is hard to say these days.

I have had this case for over a month now, and it's awesome!!! I ordered it because of the reviews saying it was quiet as can be. It is very quiet and, for me atleast, the temperatures have been ok. While playing gta 5 on 1080p (I have my pc hooked up to my 55 inch tv, not a monitor) temps with the stock air cooler were around 65-70* C without an overclock. The wealth prism cooler that came with my 3700x was adequate enough to keep temps down, but was very loud with or without the side pannels open. I recently purchased the dark rock pro 4, and 3 silent wings 3 120mm fans, and you cannot hear it at all. I use this pc as a home entertainment system. Setting up the pc in this case was not difficult at all. Cable managment was easy with the provided straps, and the mounting points all throughout the case.

This case was a great replacement for my cheaper noisy case. Just beware, there are no real instructions. I guess for experienced builders this isn't an issue. I was scratching my head trying to figure out how to mount my 3.5-inch HDD. Eventually, by looking at images on the Be Quiet website, I realized there are 4 rubber things that you have to pop into the HDD cage so that you can screw the hard drive into place. The 2 3-pin fans confused me for a bit until I realized you had to plug a connector right into the power supply and then the fan speed switch is on the outside. You won't be plugging the included fans into your motherboard. The instructions don't cover all the configuration changes inside the case and the various places to mount fans. But the case is really quiet when not gaming. When my fans kick in on the GPU you can hear it, but overall a great improvement over my original $89 case.