Tonight is Halloween night, or All Hallows’ Eve. If you are a kid (or if you’ve got a kid), chances are you’ll be out Trick or Treating. If you’re the more social type, you might be at a costume party. But if you’re a little more of a homebody, you might be staying in this Halloween. You can probably expect most of the Insider staff to be home playing their favorite horror titles.
Still, a marathon gaming session is no reason to avoid being festive. We’ve teamed up with BeQuiet! to build a performance gaming PC with some Halloween flair. The key element in this build is the new SilentBase 801 chassis. This case is also available with silver or black trim, but we picked orange to evoke jack o’lanterns and candy corn. (We’re kidding of course. Candy corn is disgusting.) Keep in mind each version of the Silent Base 801 is also available with or without a tempered Glass side window. If you want to check out the exact case we used, there’s more info on the Newegg webstore.
Adventures in the Upside Down
Right off the bat, you’ll probably notice that something about this build is… off. But don’t be alarmed! Yes, the whole motherboard is flipped upside down; and yes, that’s intentional. Anyone who’s built a PC before has probably noticed that the rear panel, and the panel for mounting the motherboard, are usually riveted or welded the chassis frame. Not so on the 801. These pieces form one single bracket which can be removed by undoing nine screws and then simply reversing how the bracket sits in the case. There’s a lot more you need to do if you want everything to look just right, however. Because we wanted our cable management to be on-point, we ended up stripping our 801 down to its bones so the all fan and front I/O cables could be re-routed. Even then, we couldn’t get the USB 3.0 cable entirely over to the other side.
I’m loathe to call the 801s reversible mounting options a gimmick, because I do actually think it’s genuinely cool feature. In reality, it doesn’t affect anything about the way your PC will operate, and does take a lot of patience to get right. But it’s super unique way to customize a PC chassis, and BeQuiet! has pulled it off pretty well, all things considered.
Gimmicks aside, there’s a lot of attention to detail put into this case that hardcore PC builders and enthusiasts will appreciate. Performing cable management in the 801 is sublime. The reverse side of the backplane is set probably at least a 1.5” to 2” deep, which means that even if you aren’t inclined to do cable management, you can easily stuff all of your cables in there and not have to worry about putting the cover back on. But if you want to take the time to do cable management, you’ll likely appreciate the rubber-grommetted passthroughs, and strategically placed openings for smaller wires. There are also plenty of tie-down points, with plenty more if you’re willing to use some of the other holes stamped into the metal. The case accessory box also includes a generous number of hook and loop strips.
For 3’5”HDD bays, the silent Base 801 comes with a two-drive bracket located in the PSU shroud area. If you need more hard drive space, take a look at the five plastic rectangles towards the front fan fittings. Each of these can be popped out and replaced with another bracket for holding drives. There’s another bracket just behind where the motherboard’s CPU socket would be, and this can accommodate 2.5” drives.
The PSU shroud itself runs the full length of the chassis, and has four bezels on top that can be popped out for cable routing. There’s also a trim piece with the BeQuiet! logo on it that can be removed and placed on the other side of the shroud for when the case is built in its upside configuration. Mounting our BeQuiet Straight Power 850W PSU was a breeze.
We used air cooling for our build, since BeQuiet! also provided us with a Dark Rock 4 cooling block, but if you’re more inclined to go with a water cooled solution, there are two 240mm radiator mounts, one on the top and one on the front. The top fitting is a panel which can slide out and completely free of the chassis, to make installing a radiator a breeze.
And as always, BeQuiet! Goes to great lengths to live up to its name. Calling this chassis the “Silent Base” is apt, since the preinstalled fans make very little noise even on the highest speed, and the front and side panel covers come with a layer of sound-dampening material.
Overall, doing this build in the Silent Base 801 was a joy, even despite the challenges involved in flipping everything upside-down. This case delivers all of the core features an enthusiast PC builder is looking for, and also does something to set itself apart from the pack.
Happy Halloween
We’re celebrating Halloween in style with our black and orange build based on the Silent Base 801 PC case from BeQuiet!. This is a system with the power to play all of our favorite spooky titles and look good doing it. However you decide to spend your Halloween, have a fun and safe evening – and try not to eat too much candy.
