be quiet Pure Base 500 Review

 

The Build and Cooling

Although it’s a relatively compact case, building into the 500 is easy and straightforward owing to the open layout.  The only real niggle we had was getting the 24pin plug and more problematically, the cable through the 90 degree cable management baffle, as you can see we had to make perform a few contortions. 

  

 

Those large management holes in the rear edge of the PSU shroud make it easy to bring up what seems to be an ever increasing number of cables in the base of motherboard area.

  

 

Although the exterior dimensions are indeed diminutive, the 500 can still accommodate coolers up to 190mm in height, and GPUs up to 369mm long.  Having taken out own measurements, we think 190 is a little ambitious, and would put the figure closer to 185, or even 180 if you want to leave a few mm between the cooler and the side panel, as the sound absorbent lining does reduce the cooler height a little

  

 

And so the question we’ve all been asking, just how much water cooling can you fit in a Pure Base 500?  To answer that question, lets first look at the front of the case where if we remove the HDD rack the whole of the frontal areas becomes exposed.  From our measurements, there’s just shy of 90mm here, but remember the main fins are kept outward of the bulkhead, so this room is all for rads, unless of course you choose to go Push/Pull

  

 

The 500 easily accommodates our 55mm thick XSPC rad, with loads of room left over for a set of fans to add some extra pull to the air flow.

  

 

The 500 will take up to a 240mm rad in the roof, and before you thinking things are a little tight up there, let us assure you they are not, in fact, quite for from it.  Take a look at the image below and all will be explained.

  

 

Thanks to the more than generous off-sets, a normal sized 240 rad fits in here just fine, and certainly any of the numerous 240 rad based AIOs that are on the market at present.  as the tape measure below demonstrates, provided you haven’t got anything on the motherboard higher than 50mm in the region of the rad then your life is gravy.