Final thoughts and rating

HEXUS Snapshot:

...keen price and a decent feature-set combine to make it absolutely worthy of being on a shortlist for the next upgrade cycle.

be quiet! ticks almost all of the requirements of a mid-range PSU with its Pure Power L8 630W. It's well-built, near-silent at mid-loads, produces high efficiency, solid ripple suppression and reasonable, if not outstanding, voltage regulation. Priced at just over £60 and being semi-modular to boot, we'd only recommend that the firm takes increases cable-length and, being picky, tightens up on line regulation for the future 'L9' variant.

be quiet! has proved that you don't have to spend a fortune on a power-supply unit that's capable of powering the latest PC builds. Keen price and a decent feature-set combine to make it absolutely worthy of being on a shortlist for your next upgrade cycle.

The Good

Keen price
High efficiency for 80 PLUS Bronze
Looks good
Modular cabling

The Bad

Cables are relatively short*
Being ultra-critical, voltage regulation can be wayward

Update

be quiet! informs us that lengthening the main cables to 55cm has been instigated by a running production change. Retail-bought models are strongly likely to have this change in place.

HEXUS Rating

be quiet! Pure Power L8 630W

HEXUS Awards

be quiet! Pure Power L8 630W

HEXUS Where2Buy

The reviewed supply is available from Scan.co.uk.

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

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Looks good - especially the price. :) I might be looking for a PSU for a new build at Christmas time, and this looks worth serious consideration.

Especially as (according to Scan) the Straight Power equivalent (Gold rated and 5% more efficient than this Pure Power) is nearly 50% more to buy.

An impressive PSU with an even better price tag. I would definitely go with this instead of an OCZ ZS or XFX Pro unit if I were to make a new build, cheaper and semi-modular, doesn't get much better :p

It's a shame the warranty isn't 5 years or more like some other manufacturers, but you can't argue with the price! :) Might be tempted to try one of the on my next build (an HTPC / light gaming PC). Has anyone any experience of RMAing a PSU to Be Quiet!? Just wondering whether it would mean sending a faulty unit back to Germany…?

I have this installed in a a Fractal Define R3 case. In my experience it certainly is not inaudible at low to medium loads, not much better in fact than the PSU it replaced in that regard. Indeed I would not have bothered had I known what it would be like. Also afflicted with coil whine. Somewhat fed up with reviews touting PC kit as effectively silent when they are not.