The case supports three external 5.25" drives, seven 3.5" internal drives, and two 2.5" drives on the backside of the motherboard tray. Alternatively, two more 2.5" drives can also be supported using drive cages that take up two of the seven 3.5" spots.
Support for seven 3.5" drives comes from a pair of specially designed removable cages. Be Quiet! has come up with a design where the hard drives are connected to anti-vibration rails. The new rails are equipped with anti-vibration rubber silicone that reliably absorbs any vibrations. Moreover the cages can be configured without tools, allowing for the quick installation of drives.
In fact the tool-less theme can be found throughout the Silent Base 800, as the case features completely tool-less 5.25" bays, 3.5" bays and 2.5" trays.
When it comes to cooling, the Silent Base 800 is just as flexible, shipping pre-loaded with a pair of 140mm Pure Wings 2 fans and a rear 120mm Pure Wings 2 fan. There is also room for an optional two 120/140mm top fans, a 120/140mm bottom fan and a 120mm side panel fan. The fans have been installed using rubber mounting brackets, which eliminates vibration and therefore reduces noise.
Those wanting to install liquid-cooling are in luck as the Silent Base 800 supports a front 120/140mm radiator, top mounted 240/280mm (slim type) radiator or a rear 120mm radiator. The Silent Base 800 also has you pretty well covered when it comes to high-end air-coolers, large graphics cards and big power supplies. CPU coolers can stand as high as 170mm, which means monsters such as the 165mm tall Noctua NH-D15 will fit without a problem. Be Quiet! says that graphics cards as long as 290mm will fit with the hard drive cages still installed, but we feel 280mm is more realistic. This ruled out the Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 980 cards which are over 290mm long. That said, if you remove one of the hard drive cages (both for SLI) then graphics cards as long as 400mm will fit. Likewise, your power supply can be huge, stretching up to 290mm long.
The motherboard tray offers plenty of access for routing cables and comes complete with four large rubber grommets as well as a large cut out in the tray where the CPU socket is located allowing for access to the rear side of the motherboard so that large aftermarket coolers can be installed without having to remove the board. There is plenty of room for cable management behind the motherboard as users can enjoy at least 22mm of room which is more than most cases. Overall the Be Quiet! Silent Base 800 looks great inside and out – let’s load it up with some hardware.
