be quiet! Pure Base 500DX Case Review

With the Pure Base 500DX you get three 140mm Silent Wings 3 fans located in the front and back of the case.  A total of five 140mm fans can be installed with two up front, two at the top and one in the back.  If you fan of choice is 120mm a total of three can be installed up front ideally to handle the popular 360mm AIO coolers.

Speaking of AIO coolers the Pure Base 500DX supports five different radiator sizes in three locations and ironically match the fan support. 

I find it interesting that the position of the HDD rack is such that a full length radiator and fan could be installed while keeping the rack in place.  If you are looking to go with thicker radiator or a push/pull fan configuration the rack may need to be removed.

When considering a watercooling loop your case choice will almost always dictate what you can and cannot install.  With the Pure Base 500DX there isn’t much space.  The area occupied by the motherboard extends to the edge where the primary cable passthru is located.  Next to that is for SSD mounting followed by radiator and fan mounting.

Given the location there isn’t much room for a pump and reservoir unless you decide on something small using a DDC style pump and much smaller reservoir.  It would be my recommendation to stick with AIO cooling with the Pure Base 500DX and focus your efforts on exploiting the ARGB support.

To give you a sense of scale I dropped in a MSI Z390 Ace motherboard which fit exactly how you would expect.  The Ace is a standard ATX sized motherboard using all three mounting holes and with the board installed you still have plenty of cable routing space and the fan mounting points across the top are offset enough to clear the motherboard heatsinks.

Clearance at the bottom of the motherboard is tight so you’ll need to ensure only single slot cards are used and the cable access holes line up quite well with the front panel and USB connections.  Another area to keep an eye on is near the exhaust fan, as many of you know motherboards are now coming with integrated I/O covers and with a 140mm fan installed you don’t have much room at all.  In fact I tried installing a MSI X299 Gaming Pro Carbon and it wouldn’t fit as the I/O cover was hitting the fan.

Of course the way around this is to either remove the I/O cover or use a smaller fan.