be quiet! Pure Base 500DX Review: Straying from Tradition

As you might guess given its name, German case manufacturer be quiet! has always been known for its focus on silence. So when the Pure Base 500DX landed at our doorstep, we immediately began wondering how the company intends to live up to its name with this airflow-focused chassis. With its huge front intake strips, the Pure Base 500DX is a chassis that’s fundamentally different from what we’ve come to expect from the be quiet! brand. 

Internally, the Pure Base 500DX is in most ways identical to the Pure Base 500 from 2019. Except 500DX comes with lots of RGB, an extra fan, and an open mesh front panel, losing out on the dampened facade of its older brother. The Pure Base 500DX is available in white and black (we tested the white model), and comes with a tempered-glass side panel that matches the color of the rest of the case. With a price tag of $100, the Pure Base 500DX is aimed at the premium end of the budget market. It’s also angling for a spot on our best PC cases list, especially considering the amount of extras that come standard here for a relatively modest price. 

Specifications

Features

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The Pure Base 500DX might be the most un-be quiet! case the company has ever built. It’s the first chassis from be quiet! that comes with addressable RGB, and the huge mesh front intake is arguably the last thing to come out of be quiet!’s factory. The two front RGB strips at the center of the chassis each have 14 individually addressable LEDs, and the internal strip that hides above the tempered glass panel has another 10.

Touring around the sides, the Pure Base 500DX offers a relatively compact ATX tower, with dimensions no bigger than an ATX case needs to be. On the left is a tempered-glass side panel that comes without tint, and a right panel that hides system cables and also includes a sheet of noise damping material on the inside. Given the rest of the case’s design, this doesn’t help noise levels, but the damping material is likely simply a holdover from the Pure Base 500, allowing the company to save money on tooling. 

The top of the chassis has a magnetic fine mesh to hide the screws and radiator mounting assembly. 

The front I/O resides at the top front corner of the chassis, consisting of a USB 3.0 Type-A port, a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C port, separate mic and headphone jacks, along with a power button and a button to cycle through the RGB modes – of which there are many. The only thing we’d like to see here is another USB-A port.

Internal Layout 

The internal layout of the Pure Base 500DX is about as bog-standard as it gets, and that’s a good thing. Gone is the excessive space at the front for external drives and tons of HDDs. There’s room in the front of the upper section of the chassis for mounting two 2.5-inch drives in sight, along with a ‘be quiet!’ embossed cover for hiding away the cables. The rest of the drives can be mounted behind the motherboard tray and in the HDD cage under the PSU shroud, as we’ll detail in a moment.

At the bottom you’ll also find a vented PSU cover with handy cutouts in just the right places to guide cables to your GPU.

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Moving around back, there's plenty of room for cable management and lots of Velcro straps, which will help keep things tidy during assembly. The backside of the motherboard tray can hold two more 2.5-inch drives.

The spec sheet also lists support for a fifth 2.5-inch drive. After some digging, we found the spot at the bottom of the hard drive cage under the PSU shroud – though using it will come at the cost of room for the second 3.5-inch drive.

Cooling 

For cooling, the chassis comes with three 900 RPM Pure Wings 2 fans that use voltage control for regulation (3-pin). Although we’d prefer to see PWM control, at this price point the latter is far from expected. There aren’t many cases in this range that come with three quality fans included as standard, let alone a trio of PWM spinners. The top of the chassis can support up to a 240 mm radiator and the front a 360 mm unit. 

Don’t try installing a 280 mm unit at the top of the chassis, as although it does support two 140mm fans, there is only 31mm between the motherboard and the top of the chassis. Adding a 280mm radiator to the mix will likely lead to serious space issues, particularly on motherboards with big VRM heatsinks. 

be quiet! equipped the Pure Base 500DX with two air filters: one at the bottom of the chassis that slides right out the front, and one behind the front mesh. To get to the front filter, grab the front panel at the bottom and give it a strong tug to remove. Being delicate won’t get the job done here. Thankfully, the RGB lighting connects through contact points rather than a cable that plugs in, so you won’t be ripping anything apart as the front panel suddenly jolts loose.