BeQuiet! Pure Base 500DX: Hit the orange bullseye

You have probably heard of BeQuiet!, whose components are one of the best in the high-end category. The reworked novelty (Pure Base 500DX) of the year-old case (Pure Base 500) was introduced two months ago and finally got to our editorial office for testing. The main improvement over the previous version is very efficient cooling thanks to additional fans in the equipment and added perforation.

Testing methodology

Not using all the supplied fans would probably be a sin, especially when the maximum noise level that can be produced at the highest speed (900 rpm) is 39 dBA. This means that it is useless to try other alternative layouts or number of fans than what the manufacturer provides us with.

Testing runs in household conditions, where I’m trying to get the most accurate results. During the testing, the air temperature in front of the case is 23 degrees Celsius and the minimum noise that I can measure with the Voltcraft SL-100 sound level meter is 32.8 dBA. The sound level meter sensor is aligned to the center of the top of the case at a distance of 15 cm, for the best possible measurement of the difference of the fan speeds which I control using the motherboard. For easy comparison to other cases, the fan speeds are always regulated to fixed noise levels.

The individual components were being heated up for 10 minutes in FurMark synthetic load tests and in parallel with Prime95 (custom settings). This period is long enough for all components to heat up sufficiently. Between tests, there are then 15-minute cooling breaks during which the temperatures of the components (and also the temperature of the air in the case) return to default.

Noise levels of individual modes:

• 36 dBA
• 38 dBA
• 39 dBA