Endorfy Arx 500 Air: Extra airflow at volume below 50 litres

Exterior

When something is “worth it” and it’s bigger than enough for some, making a smaller version is definitely a good idea. Something similar happened with the Arx 700 Air, from which the scaled-down Arx 500 Air was derived. It has taken all the good qualities and also the wider range of features of the original case. This includes, for example, five pre-installed 140mm fans. So there is no shortage of proper air circulation, and the only question is the noise level.

Conclusion

In the system cooling tests, the Arx 500 Air performed very well. Almost as well as its bigger sister. In CPU cooling, the case came in second place along with the larger variant of itself. In graphics card cooling it tends to lag behind a bit, but compared to the competing cases we’ve already tested, it performs well.

As with the Arx 700 Air, there’s the notable absence of a fine dust filter. Although the front larger perforation will trap larger particles, it can’t handle the smaller ones. Apart from this shortcoming, there is nothing about the case that you would find bothersome. There is plenty of room inside the case. Both from the hardware mounting side and the other, where there is plenty of room to create a neat cable management. In terms of the build on the case, everything fits together beautifully, nothing sticks out, and the metal plates are solid as well. Most of all, I like how Endorfy has created a case that makes use of the usually empty spaces as well. For example, with the fan on the tunnel or the additional two 2.5″ storage mounts directly on the rear frame.

Thanks to the wide platform, the case has enough space for convenient mounting of components, their connection and also for easy cable management. Five Velcro pull-tabs and dozens of clips are available to simplify the process. But if you’re not into neat cable management, that’s okay. The case offers you up to 35 mm of space to “stuff” your cables behind the tray.

Although it may seem unbelievable, for 99 EUR you get almost the same things as with a larger case. You’ll already have five 140mm Stratus 140 PWM fans pre-installed. These are able to cool even the most power-hungry hardware efficiently right from the get-go. The only downside is still the lack of a fine dust filter. But this is already compensated by the ten euro lower price compared to the larger model, and so the Arx 500 Air also deserves the “Smart buy!” award.

English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš

• Contents
• Exterior
• Interior
• Test methodology
• CPU and GPU cooling tests
• Motherboard cooling tests
• SSD cooling tests and under-ceiling temperature
• Conclusion