bequiet! Silent Base

Pocah · 21 Jul 2017 at 08:59

From time to time I get to build a silent PC. Always good fun! Now an important issue with a silent PC is drive noise, which can be greatly amplified by the case itself. My typical answer is to use isolation mounts, but times move on and that method is not really practical anymore. Not only are the mounts getting difficult to find, but many manufacturers are moving away from 5.25" bays.
I haven't used a bequiet Silent case before, so I am wondering ~ I know that the isolation on the "Base 600" doesn't work very well, but the Silent looks a lot better. The ant-vibration mounts look like they should be really effective. Has anyone used these with a fast mechanical drive? Are they good?

EsaT · 21 Jul 2017 at 10:27

At least those HDD rails are completely silicone rubber intead of usual plastic rails/trays.
Which are prone to vibrations as light but hard objects if there's loose:
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/750d-hdd-vibration.18784304/

Looks quite good for preventing hard contact between drive and case while avoiding loose parts:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/beQuiet/Silent_Base_600/5.html

Myself have experience from Lian Li's mounting using this kind rubber grommets to insulate screws from case:
http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/oh-01/
Once had RAID10 of four WD Black 640GBs and couldn't tell drive access by listening noise.
Had to make control circuit for getting drive access LED of case to be controlled by signals of both motherboard and 3ware hardware RAID controller.
Of course I used about 3kg of BeQuiets combination mat for generous lining of case.
Putting small strips even to HDD cage itself.

Pocah · 21 Jul 2017 at 11:20

EsaT said:
At least those HDD rails are completely silicone rubber intead of usual plastic rails/trays.
Which are prone to vibrations as light but hard objects if there's loose:
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/750d-hdd-vibration.18784304/

Looks quite good for preventing hard contact between drive and case while avoiding loose parts:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/beQuiet/Silent_Base_600/5.html

Myself have experience from Lian Li's mounting using this kind rubber grommets to insulate screws from case:
http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/oh-01/
Once had RAID10 of four WD Black 640GBs and couldn't tell drive access by listening noise.
Had to make control circuit for getting drive access LED of case to be controlled by signals of both motherboard and 3ware hardware RAID controller.
Of course I used about 3kg of BeQuiets combination mat for generous lining of case.
Putting small strips even to HDD cage itself.

Thanks for the input..interesting drive mounts there. I will look in to those cases.

EsaT · 21 Jul 2017 at 12:47

Checking Silentpcreview forum didn't find any any experience from Silent Base.

With rather short depth of case when using long graphics cards you basically have only lower HDD cage available:
https://www.eteknix.com/be-quiet-silent-base-600-window-mid-tower-chassis-review/3/
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cases/leo-waldock/be-quiet-silent-base-800-window/
Others tend do have some more depth.

What kind budget and case size you had in mind?
Though in steel cases besides size weight is also thing to take into account in full towers...
(creeping way over 15kg with proper mass damping of panels)

Pocah · 21 Jul 2017 at 16:30

EsaT said:
Checking Silentpcreview forum didn't find any any experience from Silent Base.

With rather short depth of case when using long graphics cards you basically have only lower HDD cage available:
https://www.eteknix.com/be-quiet-silent-base-600-window-mid-tower-chassis-review/3/
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cases/leo-waldock/be-quiet-silent-base-800-window/
Others tend do have some more depth.

What kind budget and case size you had in mind?
Though in steel cases besides size weight is also thing to take into account in full towers...
(creeping way over 15kg with proper mass damping of panels)

Oh that's interesting. Luckily the graphics card (probably) won't be a problem here, because it's not a games PC. At the moment it is only spec'd for two mechanical drives, but the ability to add more would be useful. If the worst comes to the worst I still have some of the rubber isolation mounts that I used to use for this sort of thing, they will allow additional drives to be placed in the unused 5.25" bay - but as I said before I am trying to get away from that approach since the isolation mounts and 5.25" bays are getting increasingly hard to source.

EsaT · 21 Jul 2017 at 18:49

Well, if it isn't for gaming PC that gives more freedom in space requirement.
Though I guess if case will be in use for long time you never know if it gets high end graphics card...

Besides Fractal Design Define R-variants Nanoxia's Deep Silence cases would be one option.
Those have metal trays with HDDs attached to them using rubber insulated screw:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Fractal_Design/Define_R5/4.html
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Nanoxia/Deep_Silence_3/5.html

IIRC Antec was the first to use such trays in its P180 which was one of the first silencing aimed cases.
Now at least P280 uses different plastic tray:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Antec/P280/5.html
(I like reviews with good pictures for seeing details reviewer doesnt look at/tell)

For lots of drives Lian Li's PC-A76 has 12 3.5" bays, but needs user to add at least mass damping or combination mat of bitumen and foam.
(light weight aluminum more prone to vibrations than steel)
Though like you said they've just followed fashion of limiting configurability by dropping number of 5.25" bays to two.

Guess I just have to keep using my nine year old PC-A71B which had about all the best details, some of them removed from succeeding models.
With five 5.25" bays there's good space to access also rear of fan control panels.
Though now with Aquaero 6 XT and poweradjust coming could replace two with one.
(then again Zalman MFC2 has that PC's power consumption meter thingy)