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.