When it comes to PC hardware, manufacturers and enthusiasts alike strive for high-performance parts that operate as quietly as possible. Shouldn’t we expect the same from our peripherals? With the Dark Mount (alongside an excellent, but very different, Light Mount model), PC case and cooling maker Be Quiet enters the premium keyboard ring. The Dark Mount features silent key switches and two modular chunks you can attach to the main board in different places. The first is a "media dock" that lets you control your music and more. The second is a modular keypad portion with cool programmable LCD shortcut keys. A hidden USB Type-C connection lets you snap the pad to the left or right side of the keyboard, as you like.

These modular parts are nifty, but also the Dark Mount’s downside. With some lower-quality elements than the base keyboard, they add more than $100 to the price versus the Light Mount, which is a simple one-piece. The modules set this keyboard apart, but they make it hard for the Dark Mount to justify its lofty $249.90 price. It's a good board, but it's ultimately outclassed on value by the streamlined, Editors’ Choice-award-winning Light Mount, which offers the same switches and sound dampening for much less money.

Design: A Building-Blocks Board

The Dark Mount’s aesthetic is what you'd expect from a gaming keyboard: customizable RGB lights, and a sleek black body of metal and plastic. Fully assembled, the keyboard measures 2.1 by 18 by 6.9 inches and weighs just over 3 pounds. This makes the keyboard bigger than what's currently en vogue among mechanical-keyboard enthusiasts. Many brands are focusing on trim 65% and 75% tenkeyless models, while the Dark Mount is a bit of a bigfoot with all the modules attached.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The keycaps are made from polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) and are slightly textured, like on the Light Mount; each keystroke feels smooth enough, but your fingers won't slide off the keytops. The keycaps are solid black with shine-through letters, while eight keys on the north part of the modular keypad are thick, smooth, transparent plastic. These transparent caps cover tiny LCD screens that can be customized to show pictures or icons, a design choice vaguely reminiscent of the programmable-top keys on an Elgato Stream Deck. You can program these keys to application launches, shortcuts, or macros.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The number pad snaps seamlessly onto the keyboard's main body. A nifty, sturdy, and wide USB-C connector pops out from either side via a slider at the bottom of the keyboard, letting you mount the number pad on either side of the layout. This makes for a singular keyboard that's equally friendly to righties, lefties, and the ambidextrous. That said, if you'll only ever use the number pad in the usual (right-hand) position, this swappability is a price-boosting albatross. (Leave off the number pad, of course, and you have a pricey tenkeyless keyboard.) You can't use the number pad on its own, detached; it has no battery or wireless connectivity.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The second modular part, the media dock, clicks down onto one of two USB-C ports on the top right or left side of the keyboard. It gives you a convenient but out-of-the-way control unit for manipulating your music playback and your keyboard's RGB lights. It's not especially flexible; you can show a clock here, or a custom background picture and media controls/info. It's not a screen you can use, say, to show off system stats or CPU speeds. You're limited by the keyboard software.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The main keyboard and the modular number pad come with separate palm rests, which are lightly padded plastic. As for connecting the whole works to your computer, the keyboard has only a wired connection and comes with a braided USB-A-to-C cable. I don’t mind the lack of 2.4GHz wireless or Bluetooth for a keyboard this size, which is destined to stay put, anyway. It's the most reliable form of connection, and it’s a relief not to have to remember to charge yet another gadget.

Be Quiet also includes some magnetic, stackable bits that you can attach to the keyboard's and number pad's undersides to act as a tilt mechanism. That's a little more flexible than the typical flip-out feet, which enable only one or two lift angles.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The Key Switches: These Keys Are Ready for Bedtime

Beyond the snap-on modules, the Dark Mount's key switches are the star of this keyboard's show. Be Quiet lives up to its name with proprietary, sedate switches that deliver impressively quiet keystrokes alongside a tactile feel and a finger-pleasing level of resistance.

As a writer and casual gamer, this "type" of tactile switch is perfect for me; I enjoy the small bump on each keypress that signals a successful engagement. Some typists and many serious gamers, though, prefer to eliminate all obstacles between their decision-making and key response. The Dark Mount, like the Light Mount, is also available with linear switches. If you need ultra-sensitive, unimpeded keystrokes while you have a sleeping baby in the next room, Be Quiet has you covered. (Just keep your rage-quitting in check.)

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The Dark Mount board backs its quiet-tap switches with three layers of foam and silicon inside the keyboard housing, all in the name of absorbing vibrations and filling in empty space for noise dampening. Sound-absorbing layers aren't a new idea (they feature in plenty of other premium keyboards, such as the Asus ROG Azoth X and the Das Keyboard DeltaForce 65), but they do wonders for this keyboard compared with other builds. 

To test the difference the layers of sound-dampening make, I decided to take advantage of another one of the Dark Mount's positive features: its hot-swappable PCB and 5-pin MX switches. I was curious to hear how the switches and keycaps would sound on a different base, so I popped them off and put them into my everyday home keyboard, an Inland Gaming MK Pro 75% Keyboard. (I did the same with the Light Mount's parts when I reviewed that board.) To my surprise, there was a marked difference: Despite the MK Pro having a gasket mount and two layers of foam, I noted a chunky keystroke "thocc" versus what I heard from the same PCB and keys in the Dark Mount base.

Custom Keys: Welcome, But With Caveats

One of the quibbles with the Dark Mount, though: The extra buttons on the media dock and the number pad aren't the same switches, or quality, as the main keyboard's. The eight display keys that run along the top of the keypad (in two rows of four), while aesthetically pleasing, aren’t nearly as satisfying to press. Also, in a bit of irony, these snazzy keys make much more noise when pressed than any other buttons on the keyboard.

Of course, these buttons are intended for less common tasks than typing a letter "L," such as putting your computer to sleep, triggering a macro, or opening a file explorer or browser window. You'll press them far less often than the QWERTY crowd. But it's a touch disappointing that the nifty shortcuts are a step down on a keyboard that, in most other respects, is thoughtfully made.

The media dock, clever as it is, is also so-so in button quality compared with the main layout. The controls look promising, offering a volume roller on the left, alongside a screen that allows for simplified RGB customization, brightness control, profile switching, and hotkey customization. But the buttons and scroller leave much to be desired.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The rubbery media-control buttons are hard to get used to, and it takes some experimentation to understand how the on-screen menus work with them. The tactile scroll wheel, meanwhile, doesn’t have the pleasant rolling action of some others of its kind, and its vertical rotation makes it somewhat difficult to be precise with volume.

And, as noted above, the dock screen itself is limited in what it can show off. You can't play videos or GIFs on it, just media-file playback info or the time. It's blingy but doesn't offer much value.

Software: IO Center Does the Job

IO Center is Be Quiet's software that lets you fully customize your keyboard experience. It has all the usual features one expects from a software control utility, and launches with a useful tutorial to orient you. The stand-alone utility is Windows-only, but Be Quiet also offers a browser-accessible version that works with macOS and Linux, though with some reduced functionality.

IO Center is split into four categories: Illumination, Key Binding, Media Dock, and Product Settings. Illumination lets you choose from six presets or customize the lighting per-key. I do find the lighting around the edge of the keyboard a little distracting, but it's easy to turn off on the Illumination tab of IO Center.

The UI is approachable and easy to use, and I appreciate the options to add custom images for the media dock screen's background and for the eight LCD-topped shortcut keys on the number pad. The utility also lets you assign your macros and app-launch shortcuts for the eight LCD keys on the number-pad module.