• TWEAK
• Hardware
• Computer case

be quiet! Light Base 900FX

Translate from : BeQuiet! Light Base 900FX

Central Specifications

• Fully windowed front and side panel for a stunning panoramic view on all your PC components
• Impressive illumination from every angle with a massive ARGB LED strip
• 4 Light Wings 140mm PWM fans for high airflow and quiet operation
• Can be switched to inverted or horizontal layout in literal seconds thanks to intuitive handling
• Extra spacious design for up to two 420mm radiators at the same time and an E-ATX motherboard
• Support for motherboards with backside connector design

The Light Base 900 comes in four versions. The Light Base 900 FX, which we have visited, comes with four Light Wings 140mm fans, and the Light Base 900 DX, which comes with external fans. Both variants are also available in either white or black.

A tour around the BeQuiet! Light Base 900 FX

The Light Base 900 FX is a cabinet that is made to be seen. It is large and it is made with a panoramic window that covers both one side and the front. It is made of two tempered glass panels and not in one piece with the look still striking.

On the front we find power and reset buttons along with one to switch between RGB lighting profiles. They are complemented by two USB 3.2 Type A connectors, a single USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type C connector and a combined 3.5mm jack for audio.

We can also easily see another design feature that is absolutely central to the Light Base 900FX. It is the RGB Light bar that runs the entire length of the case. It is designed to create a beautiful even light all around.

The light also interacts with the other central feature of the cabinet, which is the ability to easily and quickly change its orientation.

BeQuiet has previously made cases where you could flip the internal setup so you could change which side of the case the hardware was viewed from. This has usually been a rather cumbersome process where you had to unscrew parts and move panels and cables.

BeQuiet has avoided all of that with the Light Base 900FX by simply designing the entire cabinet to be rotatable. This is one of the reasons for the very symmetrical design of the light that goes all the way around.

The feet on the Light Base 900FX can be easily removed by twisting them and then mounted on another side of the cabinet. This way, you can quickly configure the cabinet to three different orientations by simply moving the feet. All without the need for tools.

You can orient the Light Base 900FX either right- or left-facing or “flat” with the glass side up and forward. I put flat in quotes because the Light Base 900FX is a fairly large cabinet and therefore never becomes particularly flat.

The ability to quickly and easily select the orientation you want is a very nice feature. At the same time, it is much easier than the need in the past to remove and rotate the entire inner part of a cabinet.

If we jump to the internal design and layout, BeQuiet has chosen the very open “aquarium” look that has become very popular. This means that it is a two-chamber layout where the power supply, cables and any storage and USB accessories are hidden behind the motherboard.

This way you have the opportunity to have a super tidy and clean look on your system build. Light Base 900FX also supports rear-mounted connectors on certain motherboards, so if you have one of those you can get rid of almost all visible cables.

The Light Base 900FX comes with four 140mm LightWings fans installed. However, there is plenty of room for even more with support for up to 420mm radiators or equivalent fans at both the top and bottom of the Light Base 900FX.

Very practical, there are loose brackets for mounting cooling at both the top and bottom, which makes installation considerably easier.

There are plenty of cable routing where needed and you even get a pre-installed support for the graphics card. BeQuiet probably rightly imagines that the Light Base 900FX will be used in systems with powerful and therefore large graphics cards.

If we look at the back of the hidden chamber, there is also plenty of space here. The power supply is mounted vertically but there is plenty of room for cables so you can easily get things in place without having to worry too much about cable management.

However, there is a shield for this purpose that can help control the cable clutter a bit. Very conveniently, it also functions as a mounting bracket for two 2.5” SSDs.

If you want more than that or need 3.5" hard drives, there is a cage under the power supply bay with space for two 3.5" hard drives or four 2.5" SSDs. A bit strangely, BeQuiet has only chosen to include a sled for one of the two bays, so if you want to take advantage of it all, you have to buy one separately.

However, the entire cage can be easily removed if you don't need it and would rather have a more open layout in the rear chamber.

At both the top and bottom of the rear chamber we get a fan and RGB hub. There is room for six fans and six DRGB units in each hub, so there are plenty of options for easily connecting and controlling the devices centrally.

The side panel above the rear chamber is a mesh material and is equipped with a dust filter.

Test build

Of course, I also had to see what it was like to assemble a system in the Light Base 900FX. For this purpose, I used an AMD Based ATX system.

The hardware in the system consisted of:

• Motherboard: ASRock Phantom Gaming X870E Nova WiFi
• Cooling: BeQuiet Light Loop 360
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X
• RAM: Kingston Fury Renegade DDR5 @8000 MHz
• Storage: Kingston Fury Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 (2 TB)
• PSU: Seasonic Vertex GX-1000

The choice of a large 360 mm AIO was partly due to BeQuiet having sent one over and of course also to test how good the space actually is in the Light Base 900FX.

The very open and spacious layout of the Light Base 900FX meant it was super easy to get to. I started by peeling off as many panels as I could to have free access from all sides.

The compartmentalized design also meant that the power supply was easy to access. From here, it was super easy to pull cables to the right places. Nice not having to fiddle around in a small compartment at the bottom of the case.

The installation of the AIO cooler was also made easy with the bracket at the top of the case. This meant that I only installed all the parts outside the case and then moved it as a single unit into the Light Base 900FX.

Overall, it didn't take me more than about 40 minutes before everything was in place in the cabinet and I was ready to boot up the system.

All fans were connected to the two Hubs installed at the top and bottom of the Light Base 900FX. This meant that everything could be controlled centrally and easily.

It is possible to change the RGB lights and effects in the case and the installed Light Loop fans via a button on the front of the case, but it can also be connected so that it is synchronized via your motherboard and software in Windows.

With a unified system in the cabinet, I was also able to test the possibility of different orientations. It was exactly as advertised, just moving the four feet on the cabinet and moving it to another side.

It was a process that took no more than a few minutes. However, you have to be careful that the feet are mounted in the right place, as they cannot be placed anywhere you want in the grooves by the RGB light.

The feet are made of plastic and I might be a little concerned about their durability in the long run if you change them around often. They don't feel super sturdy and the mounting is quite tight which means there is a lot of strain on the thinnest part of them every time they have to be turned out or put in place.

However, I imagine that few people change the orientation of their cabinet that much.

How you prefer your cabinet oriented is of course a matter of taste or based on how your desk is arranged. However, with the Light Base 900FX it is super easy to choose exactly the one that suits you best.

At the same time, the design is also made so that the cabinet looks good in all three of the possible configurations.

Price

At the time of writing, I can find the Light Base 900FX with an online price of around 240$. This clearly places it in the high-end group and thus the expensive class of cabinets.

Conclusion

BeQuiet are good at innovating when it comes to cabinets and they have done so with the Light Base 900FX. It's not really because they invented the deep dish as it is basically "just" a dual chamber cabinet in the aquarium style that we have seen many of over the past few years.

However, BeQuiet has refined the design and with some minor feature additions created a cabinet with options that no one else on the market currently has.

They have also done it in a way that I personally think they have created a beautiful case. The consistent design style holds all the way around. It is even almost literal with their RGB light bar that wraps all the way around the case and means that it looks good no matter how you choose to turn it.

However, you are also allowed to pay for things, but that side is hard to avoid with cabinets that have a long feature list with options for a wide range of high-end systems.

We end up with a final score of 9 for a beautiful and well-made cabinet with a focus on the details for the high-end user.

Advantages

• Easy to change orientation
• Delicious design
• Implemented RGB
• Lots of space and possibilities

Disadvantages

• The feet seem a bit fragile.