Verdict
The king of modular keyboards is back. With its ingenious clip-on numpad section, the Be Quiet! Dark Mount is a TKL and full-size gaming keyboard in one, making it incredibly versatile. It’s also whisper quiet, built to a high standard, and packed with extra buttons. Not all its features feel essential, though, and it does come at a high price.
- Versatile modular design
- Incredibly quiet
- Loads of extra features
- Keyswitches feel great
- Expensive
- Slightly dull design
- Modular system a little stiff
The Be Quiet! Dark Mount marks the start of Be Quiet!’s adventures into making gaming PC peripherals, and it makes for quite the entrance. It’s packed with features and functions that most other keyboards simply can’t offer, making it instantly among my favorite keyboards thanks to its versatility. Its most notable feature, other than whisper-quiet typing, is its ability to come apart, with the numpad section and multimedia buttons able to be removed and placed in different positions.
If this core feature set seems familiar, you’d be right to think so. For a start, the likes of Asus tried such a system before with its Claymore and Claymore 2 keyboards. Then there’s Mountain, which made the similar Everest Max keyboard. It’s that company that was bought by Be Quiet! a few years ago, and, as such, the Dark Mount is effectively the successor to the Everest Max. Given that the Everest is currently on our best gaming keyboard guide as the best modular keyboard, the Dark Mount has some strong pedigree. However, there’s a lot more going on here than just a change of brand.
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SpecsGlorious GMMK3 to the Monsgeek M1W SP – I’ve always come back to the Everest Max.
Also incorporated into the numpad section are two rows of OLED-backlit programmable buttons, which can be configured to show whatever image you like and perform all manner of functions, from opening apps, typing out a whole load of text, putting your computer to sleep, and running complex macros.
There’s also a multimedia buttons section that can be attached to the top of the board. It can either go on the top right or top left and provides play/pause, skip/back, and mute buttons, plus a volume roller and left, right, and select buttons for navigating its built-in screen. This screen provides functions such as a built-in stop watch/timer, controls for the keyboard’s backlight brightness and pattern, keyboard profiles, and further media control.
On its rear, this keyboard has a USB-C socket for its detachable cable, while on the underside are square rubber feet on top of which you can place several more rubber feet – held in place by magnets – to raise the back edge of the keyboard.
The keycaps on this board use hard-wearing PBT plastic (rather than ABS) and use doubleshot injection molding to form the legends (letters/numbers). This doubleshot method means the legends can never wear away, unlike with screen-printed legends.
Underneath the keycaps are Be Quiet!’s own-brand switches with linear (45g) and tactile (55g) options available. They’re classic Cherry MX-style switches with a cross mount for the keycaps. However, in designing its particular switches, Be Quiet! has concentrated on low noise and stability above all else. To that end, they come with lubricant pre-applied to the switch internals and the key stabilizers, for a very smooth feel, while the tolerances on the switches are also very tight, so there’s noticeably very little wobble to the keys.
Further helping to reduce noise are three layers of sound-dampening inside the board. There’s a layer of foam between the switches and the PCB, another under the PCB, and then a denser silicone pad fills the bottom housing. The former helps dampen the higher frequency rattles of the keys, while the silicone pad helps eliminate the echoey, hollow sound that can affect some keyboards.
One thing to note about these switches is that they’re not analog, optical, or hall effect. They’re just standard metal-on-metal contact switches. That means you can’t set up any of the clever new analog functions that have been appearing recently in some gaming keyboards, such as the Rapid Trigger and Snap Tap functions on the Razer Huntsman V3 Pro. You can, though, hot-swap the switches for any other 5-pin Cherry MX-style switches.
Also included with the Dark Mount is a padded wrist rest that magnetically attaches to the front of the board and is split into two sections – one for the main board and one for the numpad. You also get a keycap puller, a 2m long braided USB-A to USB-C cable, and eight of the magnetic feet (four with rubber bases and four extension pieces with plastic bases). The cable is reasonably thick and tough, but it’s not as thick as the old Mountain keyboard’s one, and it doesn’t have the convenient USB-C to USB-C extension cable of that board either.
Also not featured, when it comes to cabling, is the under-board cable routing of the Everest. On that board, the USB-C socket was in the center of the underside of the board, and you could route the cable out from the sides, the front, or the back of the board. Here, though, the USB-C socket is just on the back of the board.
DesignDrop CSTM80, the Lofree Flow 100, or the Razer Blackwidow V4 75%, all deliver more of a visual impact.
Not that the Dark Mount is devoid of ways to liven up your desktop. The line of light that runs all the way round the edge of the board is an attractive touch and, along with the per-key RGB backlighting, it can be used to create all sorts of custom lighting patterns.
Be Quiet!’s IO Center software doesn’t yet have the sort of clever game integration as you’ll find with Logitech and Razer peripherals, so it can’t automatically switch between different modes or lighting settings when you fire up a game. However, it has plenty of built-in patterns, and you can fully customize all the lighting.
What’s more, the programmable OLED buttons on the numpad, while primarily there to provide a pictorial clue as to the function of the button, can also just be used to jazz up the look of the board. You can put your gaming avatar on them, your favorite game character, or whatever else you like to make for a fun look.
SoftwareRazer Huntsman V2 measured 46dB.
As for the performance of the modular design of this keyboard, the principle works as well as ever. The system that joins them is easy to use yet secure, with a sliding mechanism on the numpad pushing the connection parts out from the required side. Little plastic pieces are provided for covering up the exposed connections on the sides of the keyboard and numpad but I found I simply didn’t use these at all – the connections are well hidden enough.
One improvement compared to the Mountain Everest is that the connection is secure enough that you can pick up the board and the numpad will stay attached. On the Everest, it hangs alarmingly loose. However, the downside to this is that it’s not quite as easy to detach the parts. On the Everest you could just pull up and away slightly and the numpad would detach. On this board, you need to much more firmly pull them apart first.
Meanwhile, the multimedia section and programmable buttons are nice to have but didn’t feel overly essential, I’ve similarly never got into the habit of using stream decks, though, so your mileage may vary. Regardless I can see a simpler, cheaper version of this board that just has the plain modular keyboard and a fixed play/pause and volume media control would appeal to many users.
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