The be quiet! Pure Base 501 DX clocks in at $125 dollars. Considering you get three 140 mm retail fans, plenty of ARGB elements and an overall well-rounded feature set, that price is adequate. While we gave the 500 DX the "Great Value" award in 2020 when it was released at $100, the landscape for mid-tower cases has evolved drastically since then and you can find a lot of cases with fans and looks in that price range these days too. So giving the Pure Base 501 DX that same award doesn't seem the right thing to do.

But, don't take that in a bad way. The be quiet! Pure Base 501 DX may be based on a body that has been around for half a decade, but thanks to plenty of updates, this is almost not noticeable. be quiet! did an excellent job adding most of the expected features of a modern mid-tower case in this price segment to it. From the vertical GPU placement possibility to the clean window design, expanded ARGB elements and fleshed out IO panel - everything is there. The most telling sign that this body is a bit older is the fact that the ceiling can only hold a 240 mm liquid cooling setup. Back then, AIOs were expensive and didn't perform nearly as well as today. So most cases offered plenty of room for air cooling, while consumers rarely opted for 360 mm AIOs, instead picking the cheaper 240 mm variants.

The upside of this body is the fact that you still get a total of six storage bays - something that modern designs have dialed back to two or three in turn. Building inside the be quiet! Pure Base 501 DX is still a great experience, with a clean result and solid cable management thanks to the plentiful Velcro strips provided. These alleviate the need for zip ties and helps look past the fact that they are just loose Velcro strips, where other cases manage more elaborate integrations of these types of cable management aids.

So in 2025, the be quiet Pure Base 501 is still a solid pick that is tangibly held back by the fact that you can buy 280 or 360 mm AIOs below $100 now, so it may not be the right choice for those wanting to go that route. Yes, you can install such a unit in the front of the case, but that also means that you loose a bit of that intended airflow design the chassis is meant to provide. This leaves you with a well-built mid-tower case that sports some nice ARGB elements and comes bundled with some of the best fans on the market, resulting in whisper quiet idle operations and excellent thermals geared towards those who still relish air cooling their processor or find a 240 mm AIO sufficient. That limitation is also why we have coupled the Recommended Award with the "But Expensive" badge, you don't have those limitations with other cases at similar or lower price points.