We dropped by be quiet!’s suite earlier today to find out about the new products that they were launching at CES 2020. They were showing off a variation on their Base 500 case, the Base 500DX, new Dark Power Pro PSUs, cooler refreshes of the Pure Rock 2 and Shadow Rock 3 and an upgraded Straight Power 11 Platinum (from Gold). Here’s a bit more about each of them:
Base 500DX Case
The Base 500DX is a variation of the Base 500 that was launched at Computex last year that adds a few more premium features to the entry level case. The Base 500 will continue to be available in retail channels unchanged from the current offerings – the Base 500DX is being offered in addition.
The original Base 500DX was designed to be a quiet case, thus, was not intended to be used with high end systems. Due to this, be quiet! found that many users were putting high end hardware into the Base 500 and achieving less than desirable thermal results. The Base 500DX solves this issue by swapping out the solid front plate with a mesh front, adding an additional 140mm fan, and using mesh along the top, all increasing airflow and improving performance for higher end hardware. They also added addressable RGB light strips down the front and a USB 3.1 Gen 2 connector on the front panel. The Base 500DX will be available in white and black in March of 2020 and it is expected to sell for $99.99.
Dark Power Pro 12
On the PSU front, be quiet! is offering a new halo product PSU in the 1200w and 1500w flavors sporting the 80 PLUS Titanium certification and all digital power regulation. It’s base configuration sports 6x 12v rails, however, using the overclocking mode switch it can combine all of the rails into a single 12v rail. They expect the 1200w unit to retail at $399.99 and the 1500w unit at $449.99.
be quiet! CPU Coolers
be quiet! is refreshing its Pure Rock and Shadow Rock coolers by incrementing the model numbers by one giving us the Pure Rock 2 and Shadow Rock 3. The Shadow Rock 3 is expected to sell for $49.99 and should be sufficient for stock performance of all current mainstream processors. The Pure Rock 2 will be available at $39.99 for the silver flavor and $44.99 for the black flavor. These are recommended for mid-range and lower mainstream processors. The main upgrade to these coolers is changing the mounting mechanism to make room for taller memory and an additional heat pipe was added to the Shadow Rock 3. Both are expected to be available in April 2020.
Straight Power 11 Platinum
The Straight Power 11 Platinum is a refresh of the Straight Power 11 Gold with its main accomplishment being the achievement of 80 PLUS Platinum instead of 80 PLUS Gold for its efficiency rating. It is also expected to hit the market in the next quarter.
We will hopefully get a copy or two of the Dark Power Pro 12 PSUs in as soon as they are available so we can run them through Paul’s torture tests to see how they fare.