Asetek Forte Wheel Base Review

What is the Asetek Forte Wheel Base?

We recently released our review of the impressive Forte formula wheel, and it’s safe to say it was a bit of a hit. Now, we’re going to take a look at the Asetek Forte Wheel Base, to see if we like it just as much as we liked the steering wheel.

The Forte wheel base I’m looking at today is just one of three wheel bases that Asetek currently offer. The Forte sits slap-bang in the middle of this lineup and is capable of producing 18Nm of peak torque.

The other two wheel bases include the La Prima, which is Asetek’s more budget-orientated wheel base capable of up to 12Nm of peak torque. Then there is the Invicta which is the top-of-the-range wheel base which can create a whopping 27Nm of peak torque.

Personally, I believe that the Forte is the wheel base you should consider, and I’ll tell you why later in this review.

But before I jump into the review, I wanted to disclose that the guys at Asetek sent me this wheel base for review. As with all reviews, this does not impact the outcome of this review in any way.

Who are Asetek Sim Sports?

In our Forte steering wheel review, I looked into who Asetek is and why you should be interested in them as one of the more impressive sim racing companies. If you’re after an overview, I recommend going ahead and checking out our Forte steering wheel review.

Price

For now, I’m going to jump right into the price of this Forte wheel base. As I mentioned, this wheel base is middle of the road when it comes to performance in the Asetek wheel base range, and it occupies that middle ground in terms of price as well.

While the La Prima wheel base can only be purchased in a bundle, and the Invicta costs north of €1,300 or $1,500. The Forte costs just a little over the $1,000 and just under €900.

To put that price into perspective, the Simucube 2 Sport, which is relatively comparable in performance, is priced higher than the Forte at €1230 or $1200. And the Fanatec DD1 costs €/$1200.

That comparison makes the Asetek Forte look pretty reasonably priced, undercutting two of its direct competitors.

• Buy the Asetek Forte Wheel Base – $1,049.99 / €882.34

The design of the Asetek Forte Wheel Base

However, there are a few areas of this wheel bases design that I don’t think are quite as nice as the two other wheel bases I just mentioned. The design is an area where some people will really like it and others not so much.

I’m in the middle of both categories. There are parts of the design that I really like, such as the inclusion of LED light strips. These bring a real sense of cool to the wheel and tie it together nicely with the Forte steering wheel and the pedals, both of which feature similar LED lighting.

You can change this LED light strip to any colour to match the lighting across the rest of your sim rig, or if you’re not a fan you can turn it off completely.

The rest of the Forte wheel base’s design is relatively standard for larger direct drive wheels. It’s a rectangular black box with grooves carved into each side, not too dissimilar from the grooves found in more recent small-form factor wheel bases.

These grooves and the gloss black logo plate across the front of the base are small pieces of design flair. A fine but noticeable line runs through the middle of this wheel base, almost slicing it in half.

I’m not quite sure why all pieces weren’t constructed as a single piece; instead, they were split in half, but it does look like a weird crease down what should be a long, elegant piece of metal.

Materials and construction

Most of the wheel base is constructed from aluminium, however, the part of the design which I’m not as keen on is the choice of plastic over metal at both ends of the chassis.

And the front part of the wheel base is the part which you’ll be able to see when sitting behind the wheel. I’m unsure whether this is for cost saving, or because it’s easier to mould the strange shape at either end of the wheel base. But whichever it is, it does detract some what from the overall premium feel that this wheel base should have.

Other than that, this is a relatively sleek-looking wheel base, and to be fair, you won’t be spending too much time staring at it while on track.

Asetek Forte Wheel Base Build Quality

Overall, the exterior build quality seems pretty decent. The casing is nice and sturdy thanks to the aluminium design, although it’d be nice to see some of the small niggles addressed on future products. The line that runs around the wheel base and the plastic across the front and back detract a little.

Now, I’m not take the wheel base apart and dive into the internal build quality as that’s not what I do. But if that sort of thing tickles your pickle, I’d highly recommend checking out Will at Boosted Media as he does some fantastic deep dives into the more technical side of sim racing products.

Connection Ports

Around the back are a good number of connection ports. You’ve got your usual power port, but then you have a huge number of USB-C ports. These allow you to connect your pedals, and I’m presuming they’ll be used for additional peripherals such as handbrakes or shifters in the future.

Underneath all of the USB-C ports are two additional connections designed for the power button and the kill switch. These additional buttons are included as separate items with the Forte wheel base.

They are designed to be mounted directly to your sim rig and allow easy access to turn the wheel on or off and pressing the emergency stop if something goes a bit sideways.

Both of these buttons come in their own housing with mounting points at the bottom. However, they can also be removed from the casing and mounted to your sim rig however you like.

Mounting

Speaking of mounting, there are a range of options for mounting this Asetek wheel base to your rig. Before I go any further, I’d highly recommend using a sim rig and not mounting this beast to a table or desk. I haven’t tried it, but it’s certainly strong enough that it’d probably break something.

You can choose between various mounting styles, from bottom mounting which is fairly standard, to side or front mounting if you have an 8020 sim rig.

The wheel base itself features a couple of grooves on the bottom which include T-nuts. These aren’t too dissimilar from how some Fanatec wheels mount to a rig. Slide the T-nuts into a position which aligns with your sim rig mounting platform, and you can then screw in from the bottom.

This is possibly the easiest way many will choose to mount the Forte wheel base. It’s important to note that the two T-nut channels are spaced 87mm apart, which may not align directly with your sim rig. If that’s the case, you could either drill some custom holes into your wheel plate or look at Asetek’s other mounting options.

What about bottom mounting the wheel base?

You do have other bottom mounting options, including a tilting bottom mount and a static bottom mount. You’ll see I’ve gone for the static bottom mount, as this gives me an area where I could mount the two switches as well.