be quiet! Pure Base 500 Review 11

be quiet! Pure Base 500 Review

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Value and Conclusion

  • The be quiet! Pure Base 500 with the glass window has an MSRP of US$85 excl. taxes, while the solid variant clocks in at US$80.
  • Excellently engineered features and functionality
  • Can hold six hard drives
  • 360 mm radiator in the front will fit
  • Ships with two 140 mm retail-grade fans
  • Secondary cover for airflow included
  • Extremely clean assembly result
  • Well placed openings for cable management
  • Unique bracket for SSDs hides cables beautifully
  • Large hooks in motherboard tray for zip ties
  • Velcro strips included for easy cable management
  • Even the largest air coolers will easily fit
  • Thin 360 mm radiator will fit without sacrificing HDD cage
  • Dust filter in all intake area
  • Three colors to pick from
  • No reset button and HDD activity LED
  • No vertical expansion slots if you want to show off your GPU (and buy a PCIe flex cable)
  • Thumb screws for windowed side panel—other brands have found ways to make it look cleaner
So, I am honestly trying to find things that are wrong with the the be quiet! Pure Base 500. I know, I say this often when it comes to cases, but bear with me: this case is the perfect example.

be quiet! is selling the Pure Base 500 for $85 MSRP. Let that sink in. For that price, you get two 140 mm retail-grade fans, a solid and mesh top cover, and a solid, sturdily framed case with a high-quality glass panel. All that makes for a good buy to start with. Now consider the fact that you can install a whole six hard drives, especially considering that you may even throw a thin 360 mm radiator into the front without sacrificing any storage. When I say thin, essentially every 360 mm all-in-one unit on the market will fit. But even those who don't want to use liquid cooling will find clearance of up to 190 mm for CPU coolers. That means you will be able to mount the biggest dual 140 mm towers in the Pure Base 500 without issue.

While the interior layout of the chassis is pretty traditional, be quiet! has also thrown in some of their own engineering and tooling in form of the unique SSD bracket. Here, you may install two drives beautifully without showing off any cables while hiding your system leads in the process—no grommets required.

So to really find something wrong with the chassis, I have to look hard. The be quiet! Pure Base 500 is missing a reset button and the HDD activity LED. The latter could get really annoying if you, for example, opt to sacrifice the 3.5" drives in favor of a thick 360 radiator and then rely on SSDs without an indicator of whether your 8K video render is still going or the system has frozen, for example.

And to really make the Pure Base 500 perfect, I would have loved to see some more of that German engineering for a different way to mount the glass panel without basic thumb screws.

So in short, the be quiet! Pure Base 500 sets the bar high for a case of $80 (solid panel) to $85 (windowed) in terms of an excellent balance between features, build quality, and price.
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Budget
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Nov 29th, 2024 19:49 EST change timezone

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