be quiet! Pure Base 501 - Build Simplicity?

Sam Thwaytes

Feb 176 min read

be quiet! Pure Base 501 ASUS Prime RTX 5080 AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5 TUF Gaming X870

It’s been a busy few weeks, and we’ve had in the studio some very cool tech, whether it be focused on new graphics cards or cases that are here to make a statement. It’s been a fun journey but perhaps it’s time to kick back with something a little more chilled, understated. Sure, this project is still going to look amazing and should give us high end performance, but it’s not going to shouting about it. Keeping a build visually demure is a simple game, but that should always be backed up by building a rig that is as close to inaudible as possible. There are lots of different ways to go about this, and I’m sure those that have followed us for a while are expecting us to go for certain brown fans and an airflow focused case. Well….. It’s time to explore a different avenue, there are other manufacturers who specialise in low noise hardware and one we’ve seldom built with are be quiet!

Looking through the be quiet! case catalogue the Pure Base 501 appears to be exactly what we’re looking for, simple, good looking - but in a more reserved way. It looks to have good hardware support and for an ATX mid-tower it’s on the smaller end, perhaps a little reminiscent of Lian Li’s LANCOOL 207. The case made its way to the studio, so, I suppose we should have a look at it.

Case Overview

There are a few different versions of the Pure Base 501. We decided to take a look at the Airflow version with the ‘window’ (tempered glass side panel). I guess you could argue that given the project brief the standard airflow version with the metal side panel would be more understated and quieter, but we’re looking for classy - not a sleeper build! Once we’d unboxed it we found the aesthetics fit our needs exactly. The front is very minimalist, the IO panel at the top, a small be quiet! logo at the bottom with a fine mesh covering everything else. From a front of view it kinda reminds me of a mid-2000’s stereo speaker, which is no bad thing. We’ve got a tinted tempered glass panel on one side and a flat metal panel on the other - on the inside of the panel there is a sound dampening lining, which is a nice touch. On the top is a mesh panel, it doesn’t span the whole of the top, which is a shame visually, but yet it’s still looks good.

Inside there is a removable hard drive caddy, and a removable cover for the 24 pin cable (which can house 2 x 2.5 inch SSD’s and has a cut out in the middle to manage the cables). If you’re planning on filling the front of the case with either a radiator or intake fans, be aware the hard drive caddy looks like it’ll restrict airflow at the bottom. We’re going to opt for 2 x 140mm fans as intake.

Talking of fans, the case includes 2 x 140mm be quiet! Pure Wings 3. We ordered a few more to match and were quite surprised to find that the included version and the version we bought are different. The variant included with the case has 7 fins and a max RPM of 1200, whereas the high speed variant (which we bought) has 9 fins and a max RPM of 1800.

As for sizing and hardware support, here are the headlines:

Case dimensions: (L)450 x (W)231 x (H)449mm

Motherboards: up to ATX

Graphics cards: max length 368mm

Air cooler: max height 178mm

Radiator support: top up to 240mm/front upto 360mm

Fan support: top up to 2 x 140mm/front up to 3 x 120mm or 2 x 140mm/rear up to 140mm.

Power supplies: ATX PS2 up to 180mm

Parts List

How Was The Build?

Stripping down the case was about as simple as it gets, the front and top panel just pull off and the sides are attached with a couple of thumb turn screws. The motherboard assembly also went as it should, even while adding 2 more M.2 drives to usual. We particularly liked the mounting hardware of the be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5, there is a little lip where the cooler meets the mount making lining it up as easy as possible - the little things can really elevate a product! One little niggle with the build was having to remove the 24 pin cover/ssd mount to remove the front fan, which was hardly a hardship. We also had to change out the included front fan to make the intake match, it was not just an aesthetic choice, we wanted to make sure they could keep up with each other!

The cable management was very easy thanks to having a wide array of choice as to where to run the cables, made possible by there being lots of anchor points and included velcro. We think the cable management turned out amazingly in this build. I’d like to revisit this case in future with a full RGB build with an AIO and need for SATA power cable to see how it holds up when having to use additional cables.

Airflow

With only 4 fans we’re expecting the build to do ok in testing, but without being a standout performer. We’re also got a fairly tight mesh front panel and dense air filter for the intake to be drawn through, both will restrict airflow a little - but they’ll certainly stop too much dust getting in! The testing did take a little fine tuning to get right, but the results were satisfactory. You can clearly see in the airflow visualisation air being drawn in at a good pace and being passed to the air cooler and graphics card without issue. The case has no restrictions on the exhaust so there is nothing to worry about there.

Performance

It’s the first time we’ve done testing with a RTX 5080 and an Ryzen 7 7800X3D so it’s going to be interesting to see if it differs too much from the 5080/9800X3D combo we’ve tested previously during game play. We have had to skip out on testing Marvel Rivals this week as we had an internet outage during testing - which is unfortunate! Full results:

Ambient Temp 20.1°C

Cyberpunk 2077

3840x2160

Location: Ghost Town - Afterlife

Custom Preset

DLSS Super Resolution Preset - Transformer Model

DLSS Super Resolution - Performance

Texture Quality - High.

Ray Tracing - On

Path Tracing - On

DLSS Multi Frame Generation - 4X

166 - 195 FPS

65°C CPU

60°C GPU

Furmark 2

3840 x 2160

164 FPS

67°C Temp

75°C Hotspot

CPU-Z

Max Temp 68°C

Fan Speed ~1500 rpm

CPU Power Draw 82.6

It seems that during normal gaming in Cyberpunk 2077 the GPU/CPU combo keeps up well with last weeks. The be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5 is keeping up with the CPU’s thermal demands well, further evidencing that the air intake is perfectly adequate despite fairly restrictive front panelling. As for sound levels, during normal gameplay the build stayed very quiet, and during stress testing sound levels from the fans remained low.

Roundup

The be quiet! Pure Base 501 is a solid case. It’s very well built considering its price point with a wide range of hardware support. It fit with the idea of building a more subdued and mature PC well. We would love it if the case came with 2 high speed versions of the Pure Wings 3 fans instead of the lower spec versions, but that said they will still do the job. The build itself was a pleasure, it was nice to be back in the territory of simple straight forward and minimalist PC’s. During testing it’s proven to deal with airflow well, which allows performance to stay high. Overall it’s been a blast, and we’d be happy to recommend this build to any PC builder including those just starting their PC DIY journey.

Blog post written by Sam Thwaytes

Full Video Below:

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