Cosair 550d vs Be Quiet Silent Base 800 computer case

I just completed the build. The case is very comfortable and spaceous so I had no trouble getting everything in, and cable management is very easy. The fact that you can mount the harddrives and SSD’s to trays is very neat, no fiddling with small screws in awkward corners. Removing the unneccesary drive bays was also very quick.
As I mentioned, I now have the 2 Fractal Design 140mm fans as intake fans. The CPU cooler has 2 120mm fans by Scythe, and the PSU is a Be Quiet! with a 140mm fan.
That’s 5 fans total, 3 of which are connected to the fan controller on the front panel of the case, the other 2 (the first cpu fan and the PSU) are automatically regulated based on temperature.
Whether the lowest setting on the fan controller provides enough cooling remains to be seen, but the case is very quiet in that setting. Sure I can hear the fans when I put my ear to the case, but of all cases I’ve built in the past, this has to be the quietest one.
The noise dampening material is very heavy and works very well. The difference when opening the front door is very noticable so it definitely works.

I’m lucky I don’t need a graphics card with a fan because they are smaller and thus louder. How well the harddrive vibrations and sound are dampened I haven’t tested yet, Gotta install windows first :wink:. The hard drive bays do have some room to move about, but the rubber grommets that hold the actual drive do absorb a lot of vibrations and movement so I imagine the hard drive bays won’t actually move when in use.

So far I’m very happy with the case, it’s great for my purpose at least! The same goes for the CPU cooler (Scythe Mugen 4 PCGH), it’s VERY quiet. A bit finicky to install like most CPU coolers but once it’s in place it’s great. It’s quite large though. It fits in the R5 just fine, but make sure you install your RAM, system fan and cpu fan before installing the cooler because you can’t really reach those once it’s mounted. I also had the 2nd CPU fan nearly touching the system fan which is why I moved that fan to the front as intake instead.