It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a new horizontal desktop PC case outside the world of HTPCs, but be quiet! has just resurrected the concept with its new glass gaming PC case. Like an old 486 PC from the 1990s, the new be quiet! Light Base 600 has a horizontal layout, and it looks a lot better than the off-white desktop cases of the dark ages too.
We spotted this new be quiet! case while we were wandering the Computex show floor. Sadly, it looks too tall to be able to comfortably mount your monitor on top of it like the classic horizontal case designs, but doing so would wreck your view of the interior anyway. It has a very different design from any of the chassis on our best PC case guide, though, and I’d love to see the horizontal form factor take off again.
The new Light Base 600 flips the motherboard tray so that it sits level with your desk, with all the expansion slots lined up vertically. It also has a dual-chamber design, which is why it’s so tall, as the PSU and cables are all hidden underneath the motherboard tray.
That gave it enough room to install a full-size be quiet! Dark Power 13 PSU in the demo system, though, which also shows there’s enough clearance above the motherboard to fit a be quiet! Dark Rock Elite CPU cooler on top of the Intel Core i5 14600K CPU.
There’s plenty of cooling available in the demo rig too, with the case sporting no fewer than seven 120mm be quiet! Light Wings LX RGB fans. Meanwhile, the three RGB strips across the front make it stand out, and the ports on the front panel are sensible centered, rather than sitting at the edge.
As a proof of concept, it clearly works, but I’d love to see where else you could take this form factor. If you could reduce the height by making it a non-dual-chamber design, using an AIO cooler, and fitting a PCIe riser for the graphics card, you could realistically put your monitor on top of it and save yourself all the space occupied by a standard PC tower case.
As someone who fondly remembers the days of CGA graphics, I also love the idea of horizontal desktop PC cases coming back to the fore. It only needs a couple of front-facing drive bays, a turbo button, and a clock speed display to complete the look. Let’s not bring back that horrible off-white color scheme though.
To see more of the latest products on display at the Computex trade show, check out our Computex news story hub. Plus, if you also miss the glory days of DOS gaming, check out our full guide on how to build a retro gaming PC, where we take you through the whole process.