be quiet! Pure Base 500DX Case Review - Mesh Thermals, Noise, & Quality

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe original be quiet pure bass 500 completely failed to peak our interests it was another mid-tower we knew would have subpar airflow in the 80 to $90 range depending on the configuration and it wasn't cheap enough to excuse faults or expensive enough to make it offensively bad we're much more interested in the new variant the DX DX stands forward deluxe which might or might not have been completely made up by be quiet on the spot when we asked what it stands for so the 500 DX the gist of it is that it's a slightly higher end airflow focused model of the be quiet 500 you end up with the tooling being more or less the same except with a significant change to the front panel this case is part of the pure baseline traditionally the least expensive of be quiet three case families the D axis priced at $100 a little more than the original but it comes with an additional fan RGB lighting and a mesh front panel today we'll be reviewing the 500 DX and the pure base 500 against each other before that this video is brought to you by Squarespace Squarespace is what we've been using for years to manage our own gamers Nexus store and we've been incredibly happy with the choice Squarespace makes ecommerce easy for those interested in starting stores but it also has powerful tools to build all types of websites photo galleries for photographers resume and portfolio sites and small business sites are all easily done through Squarespace having built a lot of client websites the old way before running GN full-time we can easily recommend Squarespace as a powerful fast solution go to squarespace.com slash gamers Nexus to get 10% off your first purchase with Squarespace the press released for the 500 DX informed us that it has a quote playful but elegant design and in spite of that deeply unpleasant description which seems a plagiarized from an Aston Martin ad it is to its credit improved over the original peer base 500 so the front panel is somewhat familiar if you've seen case reviews from the past six months or so you've probably at some point seen the Lian Leal and Cole but not the new land quilted mesh just the land cool and the front of it similar obviously the land cool had a lot of problems with cooling and it was not the perfect case it was far from it the land cool - it was also far from the perfect case but they're making a lot of improvements and pretty soon they'll have potential very competitive product before that's come out though be quiet has worked to push it's pure base 500 DX which has in some ways a similar front but in significant ways and improved version of that so there's a bit more ventilation and the default fan configuration is set in such a way that it's actually a very strong performer which you'll see in our thermal test today and is you despite having still a giant plastic bar in the middle for RGB LEDs be quiet ends up with the fans based enough from the front of that bar that it's able to get enough pressure to still cool the components and that's really the concern with this stuff we're not everyone wants just a straight mesh front panel because at some point they do all start looking the same so you can try and deviate and through some unique design approaches like this but it's important that the companies do the proper testing to make sure they can still get the airflow required to be sufficient and be quiet has more or less done that with this case we were genuinely surprised with how well it performed and you'll see that in the performance section later a quick notes it comes with three fans so it's got three 140 ml pure wins two fans pure is if you also have trouble with their naming scheme pure means cheap that's their lowest end it's just a nice way of saying budget and then dark is be quiet i and and silent falls somewhere in the middle so anyway three pure wins to 140mm fans and they are about 900 1000 RPM in there somewhere plus or minus 10 percent as usual it's got a power supply shroud it has holes punched in it but I mean how useful that is kind of depends on the pressure setup of the case and other than that I think we can just start with Patrick's build notes and then we'll go through the thermal discussion a RGB lighting is smooth on the 500 DX and defaults to a solid be quiet orange so some credit is due for customizing the lighting profile on the integrated RGB controller baked and profiles can be cycled through with a button on the front panel or lighting can be controlled via a three pin 5 volts header the front panel LEDs are connected with spring-loaded pins so the panel can be removed without unplugging any cables and a major upside of using a physical Hardware button to control LEDs is that you don't have to use a garbage software that everyone wants to make these days there's an additional strip of LEDs along the top edge of the case but these are less visible than the ones on the front in a well-lit room and the default orange lighting looks much stranger on the interior of the case than the exterior customers planning to augment the fans on the black model may want to stick with more black fans the stock pure wanes vans blend in perfectly while the beige Noctua fans that we used for one of our thermal tests were partially visible the top filter is a good example of a minor touch that makes the case feel significantly more expensive the filter is contained in a plastic frame with a beveled edge that fits precisely into a depression on the top of the case although slapping a bare rectangle of mesh onto the chassis would have functioned equally well the original 500 includes an identical filter as an optional accessory but comes with a flat plastic cover installed instead so this is one area where the original case comes with more options than the DX but frankly we're happy to leave that cover behind the cover is designed purely for noise suppression rather than dust filtration and check the noise testing section in this for more detail on that so in our book this is a straight downgrade from just leaving the top of the case bare especially since most cases end up quieter on lower rpm fans that don't need to fight impedance as much the 500 DX then is moving in a direction which we think is better than the original eliminating the more complex plastic cover is probably part of the reason the 500 DX isn't that much more expensive than the base model the mesh cover appears to be simpler to manufacture and therefore probably less prone to QC issues the noise suppression cover requires exact placement of eight separate specially shaped magnetic strips and a pad of noise damping foam as well as manual finishing of the frames corners to make it fit flush with the case this is excessively intricate it definitely costs more money to do it this way and it definitely has at some level some kind of QC cost one of the magnets on our non DX sample slightly overlaps the foam pad doubling the height of the filter at that corner and making it stick up noticeably so there's still chance for QC here but it's easy enough to fix that one the mash cover on the other hand uses a four magnetic strips without any strict requirements for size or placement for rare earth magnets at the corners and a simpler edge shape users should generally forgo the top filter entirely when using top exhaust but be quiet stock configuration is set up for negative pressure so the filter may still be helpful the front panel is the main attraction of the DX upgrade as we alluded to earlier the ventilation gaps are smaller than the size of the mesh sections on the front of the case would suggest since the reinforcing plastic frames block a large portion of them the frame can't be any narrower towards the edges without significant retooling since this is where the clips are located for attaching to the chassis but the almost six centimeter wide strip in the middle that holds the LEDs is purely a sacrifice to aesthetics and it looks an awful like one of the land cool cases what remains for air flow are to open strips approximately 5.5 centimetres wide on each side great pains were taken to ensure a flush panel especially around the front i/o where there are several extra plastic hooks the 500s front panel also has small plastic spacers along each side to hold it away from the edge of the chassis the 500 DX doesn't need them because the plastic is less delicate in that location both front panels are fairly stiff but can be yanked off without fear of damaging the case unlike some other ones on the market the original 500 used mesh strips along the sides of the front panel combined with three tiny removable filters along the sides in the bottom while the 500 DX is much more straightforward combining the mesh front panel with a single standard magnetic filter we like this filter it hooks into the chassis on one side and is magnetic on the other so it sucked like a door ideally the filter would be accessible without disassembling the case at all as with the dark base pro 900 but that's a rare feature these days the bottom filter is wide it covers the full length of the case and it ejects from the front all positive points the side panel attachment is the same as on many other be quiet cases including their top-of-the-line dark base pro 900 revision 2 and although it makes sense for the pure base line we hope that they come up with something more advanced in the future for their high-end cases it's the usual fragile metal tabs punched out of the steel of the side panel that slot into the holes on the case on one side and I'm thumbscrews through the glass on the other both work fine and be quiet does a good enough job at shaping its steel side panels with rails to keep them rigid and sliding into the correct positioning but there are better ways to do this like the NZXT h7 10 system all thumb screws on the case other than the ones through the panel are captive for what that's worth what other manufacturers might call a cable management bar has been dubbed an SSD panel by be quiet this panel is designed to hold two SSDs so they're visible from the interior of the case but with the cables hidden behind a removable plastic insert variant ly be quiet logo as cable management bars go this isn't our favorite but bear in mind that it is completely removable by loosening a single captive thumb screw and that there are plenty of other SSD mounting locations the main problem is that the cable gap along the edge of the panel routes cables at a right angle that's great for boards that have their 24-pin power connectors pointing out from the edge of the board like EVGA is dark series but it makes it more difficult to route cables into other things like normally oriented 24 pin or PCIe power cables there are also no cable tie points anywhere on the SSD panel which is something of a missed opportunity although there are plenty elsewhere accounting for the space taken up by the noise damping foam there's about two centimeters of clearance between the motherboard tray and the side panel for routing cables front i/o is one USB type-c port and one USB 3.0 port there's also a mic jack and a headphone jack the original 500 included 2 USB 3 ports one of which has been retrofitted into the DX's type C only having a single USB type a connector available on the front panel is a little rough especially given the limited usefulness of a type C on both ends retooling just to add a port to the front panel would be expensive but this alternative field's more like a side grade than a the locks feature time to move into the thermal section this is a review of the 500 DX not the pure base 500 we therefore performed many tests using the 500 DX more than usual even but only a couple comparative tests on the pure base 500 original for the DX we ran the standard test suite plus one test without the superfluous front and top filters and one test with an additional 100 40 mil pure Wayans to fan for a total of four and soulless front intake for the 500 we did one stock test one test using the included mesh top rather than the plastic cover and one test with three fans configured to match the 500 DX the 500 only comes with two well start with the 500 series be quiet cases only and then move on to comparative charts the baseline CP temperature during the first tortured test is 49 degrees Celsius over ambient which only dropped to 45 degrees DT with the removal of the front panel while leaving the front and top filters in place the two exhaust fans in the rear of the case are the ones primarily responsible for CPU cooling and their efficacy isn't directly dependent on the front panel removing just the optional filters from the front and the top of the case lowered CPU DT to 47 degrees not quite as good as removing a whole panel but much more practical for daily use adding another front intake fan to the case had no significant impact on CPU thermal vs. baseline for this specific build configuration the original 500 had a baseline CPU temperature of 66 degrees massively increased over the DX and hot enough to cause some brief and minor throttling as the logged CPU temperature brushed up against the 100 degree mark testing with the mesh top filter instead had a slightly better result with a 64 degrees Celsius delta T over ambient average emulating the DX is 3 fan configuration helps slightly more and push the average down to 58 degrees over ambient that's still much much worse than the baseline for the DX the front panel really does make a difference in these and we wouldn't recommend the non DX comparatively 49 degrees is the lowest stock CPU temperature of any be quiet case we've tested we have a back catalog of them that you can see in previous reviews if you're curious for more to be fair to the other cases the company's name is be quiet they have a specific focus and it's not they're all performance but we maintain that lower noise levels can often be attained with more carefully thought-out cooling by reducing the fan RPMs rather than brute forcing RPMs against all the impedance that the special panels create comparing the 500 DX to other mesh fronted cases like the rlo 6 at 48 degrees over ambient and the fact that will mattify - at 51 reveals that it does hold its own compared to the rest of the chart the Fraxel mashup I see and the Coolermaster age 500 mesh are closer to being direct competitors here and we've mentioned several times that the mesh by seed stock levels are a weak point you really need to add extra fans its average CPU temperature is 54 degrees Celsius thanks to the less than ideal stock configuration even the age 500 mesh averaged a degree higher at 50 C which is with an error the pure wanes - fans that are included with this case aren't the best or the fastest that'd be quiet has to offer but their 140 millimeters there are three of them and they're configured in a somewhat unusual way that NZXT has proven with its age 500 series it can still work there are two exhaust fans dedicated to CPU cooling so the relatively neglected GPU will be the tougher test GPU torture for Jess to be quiet 500 cases is up next GPU temperature and the stock configuration was 52 degrees over ambient and it resisted attempts to improve from that baseline removing the front panel resulted in an average temperature within error of stock at 53 degrees and removing the filters produced an even worse average of 55 degrees Celsius over ambient we've seen this kind of thing before especially in these similarly configured NZXT eh 500 negative pressure setups create less predictable airflow patterns and altering those patterns can have unforeseen side effects if the negative pressure setup encourages cool air to flow in often through the PCIe covers at the rear of the case or even through the top of the power supply shroud then allowing the front intake fan to push more air into the case may result in worse air flow to the GPU overall which loses that pressure advantage at the rear side of the case adding the second front intake fan also had no significant impacts on GPU thermals the 500 DX isn't a massive upgrade over the 500 for GPU thermals that it was receive you thermals but the 500s baseline GPU DT is 56 degrees Celsius and is still definitely worse using the mesh top rather than the solid cover allowed the top section of the case to interact less with the hot exhaust from the GPU and average temperature climbed slightly it's a 57 degrees matching the d-axis fan configuration it still only brought the average down to 55 degrees Celsius over ambient so the mesh front panel is better comparatively 52 degrees for the GPU is closer to average on our charts than the CPU thermals work but it's still in good company for stock thermals performance isn't quite as good as the Coolermaster age 500 blanc mesh is 49 degrees Celsius average but several degrees better than the stock mesh if I sees average of 58 degrees a build with radiators merits fans with higher static pressure but for air cooled systems be quiet has at least included enough fans to start with and for once they've shipped a case that is practical for an air-cooled system the fire strike extreme test resulted in only slightly higher GPU temperatures than the torture test averaging 53 degrees Celsius over ambient that's still beaten by the age 500 Bosch at forty nine point three and still better than the match for icy at 60 degrees GPU thermals with our configuration are fair but given how touchy the negative pressure configuration is that will vary with the system layout the stock configuration works well for a system like ours buyers of this case should definitely play around with the fan placement to find the ideal layout for their own system with CBO temperatures are already good in the stock torture test even with the added heat from a GPU workload the deaq's should do even better in the pure CPU blender rendering workload average CPU temperature was 36 degrees which ties it with the H 500 match and easily beats the mesh Phi C is 40 degrees Celsius average the age 500 PS and the silverstone are v02 are the only stock results that beat it and only by a couple degrees and a test with the RL 0 6 the stock fans reduced to 1000 RPM makes the cut as well it should be clear by now that the 500 DX has good CPU thermals the GPU accelerated render resulted in a GPU temperature of 25 degrees Celsius over ambient that's not quite up to the level of the P 400 a at 23 degrees or the H 500 match at 24 degrees but as close focusing on a more traditional front to back airflow pattern with positive pressure wouldn't help the GPU temperature but it would help control where air enters the case and direct it through filters we prefer to err on the side of better air flow and commit to cleaning the dust out of the case more frequently but three stock fans is enough that users can choose for themselves among the many different configurations doing a test earlier with the 500 fans matched to the 500 DX's accomplished part of the purpose of our standardized fan test but installing our usual set of three narco fans allows see how the DX is cooling potential matches up to some other cases using the same vent as always there are flaws to this but this was a heavily requested user test and you can watch our separate video on the ups and downs of this approach 46 degrees CPU temperature is very strong relative to the rest of the cases on the chart beaten only by the p400 argb we do the standardized fantast with two 140mm fans in the front intake slots and one 120 mil in the rear if possible and apparently that works as well as the stock negative pressure setup for CPU throws at least it does when you use much higher rpm fans than the 900 to 1000 rpm ones that be quiet ships GPU DT averaged 51 degrees Celsius over ambit not much better than the stock test for the same reasons that we discussed in the GB torture section previously it's a respectable temperature but much nearer the middle of the pack then the CPU results was with a standard front to back airflow pattern using these fans the 500 DX that matches the P 400 a RGB and the H 5/10 elite for GPU cooling noise is obviously an important concern for all of the quiets cases perhaps a little less so than usual for the airflow focus DX though we measured the noise level of the original 500 to be 35.9 DBA and the noise level of the 500 DX to be 37.6 DBA noise levels are measured 20 inches away from the front of the case with fans at 100 cent speed and the CPU and the GPU fans controlled to a lower speed as usual so we don't detect any significant difference in noise between the mesh top and the plastic cover since the top panel was above and points it away from the decibel meter when using the stock fans we'd recommend using the mesh top filter or nothing at all the 500s plastic cover offers no advantages stock noise levels for the 500 are already at our 36 DBA threshold meaning that the original torture results can be compared to this noise normalized thermal chart the 500 DX required lowering the fan case fans that is to 85% speed logs as approximately 850 rpm to meet the threshold that's a fairly small reduction compared to our usual amount required to get matched fronts with cases down to 36 DBA accordingly the 500 DX performed well here with the CPU temperature not much higher than the torture result averaging 52 degrees it's cooler than all the cases other than the 220 T airflow and the fans XP 400 argb which are tied at 51 degrees and you're talking error at that point or test variance for GPU temperature the DX average 54 degrees as usual that's nearer to average compared to other GPU temperatures on the charge but still acceptable the p400 argb still is better by a couple degrees as does the H 7/10 but the only cases that beat it by a large margin are ones with direct GPU cooling like the DIY pcs honda of all things and our custom configuration in the lan leo 11x out the original pure base 500 was well received by a lot of others and for that reason that means that you are free to disagree with our opinion on it if you'd like but from an objective standpoint from a functional standpoint the original not this one but the original peer base 500 we just don't like it the thermal performance is not there it's straight bad and it's not priced in a way as stated earlier that it was it wasn't like offensively bad because the price wasn't offensively high for the performance but it also wasn't groundbreaking and so it just ended up somewhere in the middle where it was generally a nun exciting case the only thing I had going for it was this is a cheap case for be quiet by be quiet standards and that's pretty much the reason you bought the pure base 500 this one is massively improved and it has good thermal performance so everyone wins here the case has a $100 price point which is maybe a little less tempting than the 70 to $85 range of the original 500 skews based on what they're listed at online today but this is in fact a better case than the original pure base 500 the 500 DX is competitive with other mesh frontage cases if you want to look into competition because you're curious about what other options you have in this price range the original Coolermaster Age 500 blank no letter at the end of it just aged 500 was one of the best $100 cases with the mesh front unfortunately when the tariffs came along Coolermaster increased according to Coolermaster its prices because of the tariffs because it was going to lose money otherwise allegedly or not making off at least so they increase the prices of everything by at least 18% so you might not be able to find out it the price point it should be anymore other worthwhile notes would be the fractal mesh fic which should by all accounts be a $70 case that's what it launched at but its pricing is also all over the place the P 400 a RGB which seems perpetually out of stock but is a phenomenal competitor if you can actually get it and then you might also be interested in looking at the cheaper end the NR 600 and maybe adding some fans but these are all head-to-head very competitive it will mostly come down to things like radiator support and then what you like from a personal look standpoint because thermally they're all pretty good they're in that class of cases where they're at the top end so they're kind of at the area where plus or minus one rank in the case hierarchy doesn't matter a whole lot as once you start talking about plus or minus ten ranks that it really starts to matter another note to this is the first be quiet case we've reviewed that makes use of RGB effects at all beyond some basic strips around the panel edges they haven't gone overboard the a RGB effector we think generally well-done and without being obnoxious it's also a legitimately quiet case in spite of the front and you know one of the things that we've tried to make a point of over the last few years including with a pure bass 600 I think it was is that you can make it quieter case often by ventilating it like it seems maybe to some it might seem counterintuitive but if you punch a whole bunch of holes on the front of the case you can reduce the fan rpm because now you don't need as much static pressure to get past a giant wall of sound damping material or just a giant wall of metal or plastic and so you can run lower rpms and you end up with actually a lower noise level then you would with all of the material there's one place there's a flaw in that approach and that's the type of noise so if you are and there are people like this if you are really sensitive to certain types of noise or you're a bit of a sophisticate I guess when it comes to noise then you in the approach we're talking about may still end up with a different pitch that for one reason or another might be unacceptable and that's completely subjective we can't really speak to that but that's the place where there's potentially a downside and that's why there's still a completely valid reason to have noise damping cases on the market it's just it's not for everybody so anyway this one does a good job of maintaining the quiet part of the be quiet name it does a significantly improved job of thermals over the original and we can actually recommend it and anyone who watches our channel regularly knows that that statement means a lot so yeah that's it for the the be quiet pure bass 500 DX it is a good case and an objective sense and in this price class there's not a ton of competitors maybe four or five other ones that are meaningful and a lot of them are out of stock or overpriced so we give you the list check them out but otherwise if you like this case go for it because other than the stuff we listed in the build section if none of that applies to you it's a good case so thanks for watching subscribe for more go to store de camões XS net to support us directly by doing things like picking up our shirts or our mod mats and you could also help us out on patreon.com/scishow and axis I'll see you all next timethe original be quiet pure bass 500 completely failed to peak our interests it was another mid-tower we knew would have subpar airflow in the 80 to $90 range depending on the configuration and it wasn't cheap enough to excuse faults or expensive enough to make it offensively bad we're much more interested in the new variant the DX DX stands forward deluxe which might or might not have been completely made up by be quiet on the spot when we asked what it stands for so the 500 DX the gist of it is that it's a slightly higher end airflow focused model of the be quiet 500 you end up with the tooling being more or less the same except with a significant change to the front panel this case is part of the pure baseline traditionally the least expensive of be quiet three case families the D axis priced at $100 a little more than the original but it comes with an additional fan RGB lighting and a mesh front panel today we'll be reviewing the 500 DX and the pure base 500 against each other before that this video is brought to you by Squarespace Squarespace is what we've been using for years to manage our own gamers Nexus store and we've been incredibly happy with the choice Squarespace makes ecommerce easy for those interested in starting stores but it also has powerful tools to build all types of websites photo galleries for photographers resume and portfolio sites and small business sites are all easily done through Squarespace having built a lot of client websites the old way before running GN full-time we can easily recommend Squarespace as a powerful fast solution go to squarespace.com slash gamers Nexus to get 10% off your first purchase with Squarespace the press released for the 500 DX informed us that it has a quote playful but elegant design and in spite of that deeply unpleasant description which seems a plagiarized from an Aston Martin ad it is to its credit improved over the original peer base 500 so the front panel is somewhat familiar if you've seen case reviews from the past six months or so you've probably at some point seen the Lian Leal and Cole but not the new land quilted mesh just the land cool and the front of it similar obviously the land cool had a lot of problems with cooling and it was not the perfect case it was far from it the land cool - it was also far from the perfect case but they're making a lot of improvements and pretty soon they'll have potential very competitive product before that's come out though be quiet has worked to push it's pure base 500 DX which has in some ways a similar front but in significant ways and improved version of that so there's a bit more ventilation and the default fan configuration is set in such a way that it's actually a very strong performer which you'll see in our thermal test today and is you despite having still a giant plastic bar in the middle for RGB LEDs be quiet ends up with the fans based enough from the front of that bar that it's able to get enough pressure to still cool the components and that's really the concern with this stuff we're not everyone wants just a straight mesh front panel because at some point they do all start looking the same so you can try and deviate and through some unique design approaches like this but it's important that the companies do the proper testing to make sure they can still get the airflow required to be sufficient and be quiet has more or less done that with this case we were genuinely surprised with how well it performed and you'll see that in the performance section later a quick notes it comes with three fans so it's got three 140 ml pure wins two fans pure is if you also have trouble with their naming scheme pure means cheap that's their lowest end it's just a nice way of saying budget and then dark is be quiet i and and silent falls somewhere in the middle so anyway three pure wins to 140mm fans and they are about 900 1000 RPM in there somewhere plus or minus 10 percent as usual it's got a power supply shroud it has holes punched in it but I mean how useful that is kind of depends on the pressure setup of the case and other than that I think we can just start with Patrick's build notes and then we'll go through the thermal discussion a RGB lighting is smooth on the 500 DX and defaults to a solid be quiet orange so some credit is due for customizing the lighting profile on the integrated RGB controller baked and profiles can be cycled through with a button on the front panel or lighting can be controlled via a three pin 5 volts header the front panel LEDs are connected with spring-loaded pins so the panel can be removed without unplugging any cables and a major upside of using a physical Hardware button to control LEDs is that you don't have to use a garbage software that everyone wants to make these days there's an additional strip of LEDs along the top edge of the case but these are less visible than the ones on the front in a well-lit room and the default orange lighting looks much stranger on the interior of the case than the exterior customers planning to augment the fans on the black model may want to stick with more black fans the stock pure wanes vans blend in perfectly while the beige Noctua fans that we used for one of our thermal tests were partially visible the top filter is a good example of a minor touch that makes the case feel significantly more expensive the filter is contained in a plastic frame with a beveled edge that fits precisely into a depression on the top of the case although slapping a bare rectangle of mesh onto the chassis would have functioned equally well the original 500 includes an identical filter as an optional accessory but comes with a flat plastic cover installed instead so this is one area where the original case comes with more options than the DX but frankly we're happy to leave that cover behind the cover is designed purely for noise suppression rather than dust filtration and check the noise testing section in this for more detail on that so in our book this is a straight downgrade from just leaving the top of the case bare especially since most cases end up quieter on lower rpm fans that don't need to fight impedance as much the 500 DX then is moving in a direction which we think is better than the original eliminating the more complex plastic cover is probably part of the reason the 500 DX isn't that much more expensive than the base model the mesh cover appears to be simpler to manufacture and therefore probably less prone to QC issues the noise suppression cover requires exact placement of eight separate specially shaped magnetic strips and a pad of noise damping foam as well as manual finishing of the frames corners to make it fit flush with the case this is excessively intricate it definitely costs more money to do it this way and it definitely has at some level some kind of QC cost one of the magnets on our non DX sample slightly overlaps the foam pad doubling the height of the filter at that corner and making it stick up noticeably so there's still chance for QC here but it's easy enough to fix that one the mash cover on the other hand uses a four magnetic strips without any strict requirements for size or placement for rare earth magnets at the corners and a simpler edge shape users should generally forgo the top filter entirely when using top exhaust but be quiet stock configuration is set up for negative pressure so the filter may still be helpful the front panel is the main attraction of the DX upgrade as we alluded to earlier the ventilation gaps are smaller than the size of the mesh sections on the front of the case would suggest since the reinforcing plastic frames block a large portion of them the frame can't be any narrower towards the edges without significant retooling since this is where the clips are located for attaching to the chassis but the almost six centimeter wide strip in the middle that holds the LEDs is purely a sacrifice to aesthetics and it looks an awful like one of the land cool cases what remains for air flow are to open strips approximately 5.5 centimetres wide on each side great pains were taken to ensure a flush panel especially around the front i/o where there are several extra plastic hooks the 500s front panel also has small plastic spacers along each side to hold it away from the edge of the chassis the 500 DX doesn't need them because the plastic is less delicate in that location both front panels are fairly stiff but can be yanked off without fear of damaging the case unlike some other ones on the market the original 500 used mesh strips along the sides of the front panel combined with three tiny removable filters along the sides in the bottom while the 500 DX is much more straightforward combining the mesh front panel with a single standard magnetic filter we like this filter it hooks into the chassis on one side and is magnetic on the other so it sucked like a door ideally the filter would be accessible without disassembling the case at all as with the dark base pro 900 but that's a rare feature these days the bottom filter is wide it covers the full length of the case and it ejects from the front all positive points the side panel attachment is the same as on many other be quiet cases including their top-of-the-line dark base pro 900 revision 2 and although it makes sense for the pure base line we hope that they come up with something more advanced in the future for their high-end cases it's the usual fragile metal tabs punched out of the steel of the side panel that slot into the holes on the case on one side and I'm thumbscrews through the glass on the other both work fine and be quiet does a good enough job at shaping its steel side panels with rails to keep them rigid and sliding into the correct positioning but there are better ways to do this like the NZXT h7 10 system all thumb screws on the case other than the ones through the panel are captive for what that's worth what other manufacturers might call a cable management bar has been dubbed an SSD panel by be quiet this panel is designed to hold two SSDs so they're visible from the interior of the case but with the cables hidden behind a removable plastic insert variant ly be quiet logo as cable management bars go this isn't our favorite but bear in mind that it is completely removable by loosening a single captive thumb screw and that there are plenty of other SSD mounting locations the main problem is that the cable gap along the edge of the panel routes cables at a right angle that's great for boards that have their 24-pin power connectors pointing out from the edge of the board like EVGA is dark series but it makes it more difficult to route cables into other things like normally oriented 24 pin or PCIe power cables there are also no cable tie points anywhere on the SSD panel which is something of a missed opportunity although there are plenty elsewhere accounting for the space taken up by the noise damping foam there's about two centimeters of clearance between the motherboard tray and the side panel for routing cables front i/o is one USB type-c port and one USB 3.0 port there's also a mic jack and a headphone jack the original 500 included 2 USB 3 ports one of which has been retrofitted into the DX's type C only having a single USB type a connector available on the front panel is a little rough especially given the limited usefulness of a type C on both ends retooling just to add a port to the front panel would be expensive but this alternative field's more like a side grade than a the locks feature time to move into the thermal section this is a review of the 500 DX not the pure base 500 we therefore performed many tests using the 500 DX more than usual even but only a couple comparative tests on the pure base 500 original for the DX we ran the standard test suite plus one test without the superfluous front and top filters and one test with an additional 100 40 mil pure Wayans to fan for a total of four and soulless front intake for the 500 we did one stock test one test using the included mesh top rather than the plastic cover and one test with three fans configured to match the 500 DX the 500 only comes with two well start with the 500 series be quiet cases only and then move on to comparative charts the baseline CP temperature during the first tortured test is 49 degrees Celsius over ambient which only dropped to 45 degrees DT with the removal of the front panel while leaving the front and top filters in place the two exhaust fans in the rear of the case are the ones primarily responsible for CPU cooling and their efficacy isn't directly dependent on the front panel removing just the optional filters from the front and the top of the case lowered CPU DT to 47 degrees not quite as good as removing a whole panel but much more practical for daily use adding another front intake fan to the case had no significant impact on CPU thermal vs. baseline for this specific build configuration the original 500 had a baseline CPU temperature of 66 degrees massively increased over the DX and hot enough to cause some brief and minor throttling as the logged CPU temperature brushed up against the 100 degree mark testing with the mesh top filter instead had a slightly better result with a 64 degrees Celsius delta T over ambient average emulating the DX is 3 fan configuration helps slightly more and push the average down to 58 degrees over ambient that's still much much worse than the baseline for the DX the front panel really does make a difference in these and we wouldn't recommend the non DX comparatively 49 degrees is the lowest stock CPU temperature of any be quiet case we've tested we have a back catalog of them that you can see in previous reviews if you're curious for more to be fair to the other cases the company's name is be quiet they have a specific focus and it's not they're all performance but we maintain that lower noise levels can often be attained with more carefully thought-out cooling by reducing the fan RPMs rather than brute forcing RPMs against all the impedance that the special panels create comparing the 500 DX to other mesh fronted cases like the rlo 6 at 48 degrees over ambient and the fact that will mattify - at 51 reveals that it does hold its own compared to the rest of the chart the Fraxel mashup I see and the Coolermaster age 500 mesh are closer to being direct competitors here and we've mentioned several times that the mesh by seed stock levels are a weak point you really need to add extra fans its average CPU temperature is 54 degrees Celsius thanks to the less than ideal stock configuration even the age 500 mesh averaged a degree higher at 50 C which is with an error the pure wanes - fans that are included with this case aren't the best or the fastest that'd be quiet has to offer but their 140 millimeters there are three of them and they're configured in a somewhat unusual way that NZXT has proven with its age 500 series it can still work there are two exhaust fans dedicated to CPU cooling so the relatively neglected GPU will be the tougher test GPU torture for Jess to be quiet 500 cases is up next GPU temperature and the stock configuration was 52 degrees over ambient and it resisted attempts to improve from that baseline removing the front panel resulted in an average temperature within error of stock at 53 degrees and removing the filters produced an even worse average of 55 degrees Celsius over ambient we've seen this kind of thing before especially in these similarly configured NZXT eh 500 negative pressure setups create less predictable airflow patterns and altering those patterns can have unforeseen side effects if the negative pressure setup encourages cool air to flow in often through the PCIe covers at the rear of the case or even through the top of the power supply shroud then allowing the front intake fan to push more air into the case may result in worse air flow to the GPU overall which loses that pressure advantage at the rear side of the case adding the second front intake fan also had no significant impacts on GPU thermals the 500 DX isn't a massive upgrade over the 500 for GPU thermals that it was receive you thermals but the 500s baseline GPU DT is 56 degrees Celsius and is still definitely worse using the mesh top rather than the solid cover allowed the top section of the case to interact less with the hot exhaust from the GPU and average temperature climbed slightly it's a 57 degrees matching the d-axis fan configuration it still only brought the average down to 55 degrees Celsius over ambient so the mesh front panel is better comparatively 52 degrees for the GPU is closer to average on our charts than the CPU thermals work but it's still in good company for stock thermals performance isn't quite as good as the Coolermaster age 500 blanc mesh is 49 degrees Celsius average but several degrees better than the stock mesh if I sees average of 58 degrees a build with radiators merits fans with higher static pressure but for air cooled systems be quiet has at least included enough fans to start with and for once they've shipped a case that is practical for an air-cooled system the fire strike extreme test resulted in only slightly higher GPU temperatures than the torture test averaging 53 degrees Celsius over ambient that's still beaten by the age 500 Bosch at forty nine point three and still better than the match for icy at 60 degrees GPU thermals with our configuration are fair but given how touchy the negative pressure configuration is that will vary with the system layout the stock configuration works well for a system like ours buyers of this case should definitely play around with the fan placement to find the ideal layout for their own system with CBO temperatures are already good in the stock torture test even with the added heat from a GPU workload the deaq's should do even better in the pure CPU blender rendering workload average CPU temperature was 36 degrees which ties it with the H 500 match and easily beats the mesh Phi C is 40 degrees Celsius average the age 500 PS and the silverstone are v02 are the only stock results that beat it and only by a couple degrees and a test with the RL 0 6 the stock fans reduced to 1000 RPM makes the cut as well it should be clear by now that the 500 DX has good CPU thermals the GPU accelerated render resulted in a GPU temperature of 25 degrees Celsius over ambient that's not quite up to the level of the P 400 a at 23 degrees or the H 500 match at 24 degrees but as close focusing on a more traditional front to back airflow pattern with positive pressure wouldn't help the GPU temperature but it would help control where air enters the case and direct it through filters we prefer to err on the side of better air flow and commit to cleaning the dust out of the case more frequently but three stock fans is enough that users can choose for themselves among the many different configurations doing a test earlier with the 500 fans matched to the 500 DX's accomplished part of the purpose of our standardized fan test but installing our usual set of three narco fans allows see how the DX is cooling potential matches up to some other cases using the same vent as always there are flaws to this but this was a heavily requested user test and you can watch our separate video on the ups and downs of this approach 46 degrees CPU temperature is very strong relative to the rest of the cases on the chart beaten only by the p400 argb we do the standardized fantast with two 140mm fans in the front intake slots and one 120 mil in the rear if possible and apparently that works as well as the stock negative pressure setup for CPU throws at least it does when you use much higher rpm fans than the 900 to 1000 rpm ones that be quiet ships GPU DT averaged 51 degrees Celsius over ambit not much better than the stock test for the same reasons that we discussed in the GB torture section previously it's a respectable temperature but much nearer the middle of the pack then the CPU results was with a standard front to back airflow pattern using these fans the 500 DX that matches the P 400 a RGB and the H 5/10 elite for GPU cooling noise is obviously an important concern for all of the quiets cases perhaps a little less so than usual for the airflow focus DX though we measured the noise level of the original 500 to be 35.9 DBA and the noise level of the 500 DX to be 37.6 DBA noise levels are measured 20 inches away from the front of the case with fans at 100 cent speed and the CPU and the GPU fans controlled to a lower speed as usual so we don't detect any significant difference in noise between the mesh top and the plastic cover since the top panel was above and points it away from the decibel meter when using the stock fans we'd recommend using the mesh top filter or nothing at all the 500s plastic cover offers no advantages stock noise levels for the 500 are already at our 36 DBA threshold meaning that the original torture results can be compared to this noise normalized thermal chart the 500 DX required lowering the fan case fans that is to 85% speed logs as approximately 850 rpm to meet the threshold that's a fairly small reduction compared to our usual amount required to get matched fronts with cases down to 36 DBA accordingly the 500 DX performed well here with the CPU temperature not much higher than the torture result averaging 52 degrees it's cooler than all the cases other than the 220 T airflow and the fans XP 400 argb which are tied at 51 degrees and you're talking error at that point or test variance for GPU temperature the DX average 54 degrees as usual that's nearer to average compared to other GPU temperatures on the charge but still acceptable the p400 argb still is better by a couple degrees as does the H 7/10 but the only cases that beat it by a large margin are ones with direct GPU cooling like the DIY pcs honda of all things and our custom configuration in the lan leo 11x out the original pure base 500 was well received by a lot of others and for that reason that means that you are free to disagree with our opinion on it if you'd like but from an objective standpoint from a functional standpoint the original not this one but the original peer base 500 we just don't like it the thermal performance is not there it's straight bad and it's not priced in a way as stated earlier that it was it wasn't like offensively bad because the price wasn't offensively high for the performance but it also wasn't groundbreaking and so it just ended up somewhere in the middle where it was generally a nun exciting case the only thing I had going for it was this is a cheap case for be quiet by be quiet standards and that's pretty much the reason you bought the pure base 500 this one is massively improved and it has good thermal performance so everyone wins here the case has a $100 price point which is maybe a little less tempting than the 70 to $85 range of the original 500 skews based on what they're listed at online today but this is in fact a better case than the original pure base 500 the 500 DX is competitive with other mesh frontage cases if you want to look into competition because you're curious about what other options you have in this price range the original Coolermaster Age 500 blank no letter at the end of it just aged 500 was one of the best $100 cases with the mesh front unfortunately when the tariffs came along Coolermaster increased according to Coolermaster its prices because of the tariffs because it was going to lose money otherwise allegedly or not making off at least so they increase the prices of everything by at least 18% so you might not be able to find out it the price point it should be anymore other worthwhile notes would be the fractal mesh fic which should by all accounts be a $70 case that's what it launched at but its pricing is also all over the place the P 400 a RGB which seems perpetually out of stock but is a phenomenal competitor if you can actually get it and then you might also be interested in looking at the cheaper end the NR 600 and maybe adding some fans but these are all head-to-head very competitive it will mostly come down to things like radiator support and then what you like from a personal look standpoint because thermally they're all pretty good they're in that class of cases where they're at the top end so they're kind of at the area where plus or minus one rank in the case hierarchy doesn't matter a whole lot as once you start talking about plus or minus ten ranks that it really starts to matter another note to this is the first be quiet case we've reviewed that makes use of RGB effects at all beyond some basic strips around the panel edges they haven't gone overboard the a RGB effector we think generally well-done and without being obnoxious it's also a legitimately quiet case in spite of the front and you know one of the things that we've tried to make a point of over the last few years including with a pure bass 600 I think it was is that you can make it quieter case often by ventilating it like it seems maybe to some it might seem counterintuitive but if you punch a whole bunch of holes on the front of the case you can reduce the fan rpm because now you don't need as much static pressure to get past a giant wall of sound damping material or just a giant wall of metal or plastic and so you can run lower rpms and you end up with actually a lower noise level then you would with all of the material there's one place there's a flaw in that approach and that's the type of noise so if you are and there are people like this if you are really sensitive to certain types of noise or you're a bit of a sophisticate I guess when it comes to noise then you in the approach we're talking about may still end up with a different pitch that for one reason or another might be unacceptable and that's completely subjective we can't really speak to that but that's the place where there's potentially a downside and that's why there's still a completely valid reason to have noise damping cases on the market it's just it's not for everybody so anyway this one does a good job of maintaining the quiet part of the be quiet name it does a significantly improved job of thermals over the original and we can actually recommend it and anyone who watches our channel regularly knows that that statement means a lot so yeah that's it for the the be quiet pure bass 500 DX it is a good case and an objective sense and in this price class there's not a ton of competitors maybe four or five other ones that are meaningful and a lot of them are out of stock or overpriced so we give you the list check them out but otherwise if you like this case go for it because other than the stuff we listed in the build section if none of that applies to you it's a good case so thanks for watching subscribe for more go to store de camões XS net to support us directly by doing things like picking up our shirts or our mod mats and you could also help us out on patreon.com/scishow and axis I'll see you all next time\n"