Introduction

We would like to thank Be Quiet! for supplying the review sample.

Be Quiet! is probably the largest German company in the PSU and CPU-cooling market. They, as their name implies, mainly focus on providing products with a quiet operation as German users are generally very sensitive to noise, so all of their products are equipped with silent fans of high quality.

The newest additions to Be Quiet’s portfolio of products are the fresh L8 units that belong to the Pure Power series. These mostly address the mainstream and mid-end market segments. The new models are six in total, and all of them are equipped with affixed cables to restrict production costs and achieve a lower retail price. We already reviewed the CM L8-730W here, and the L8 ones are also 80 Plus Bronze certified, featuring, according to their manufacturer, exceptionally quiet operation due to the silent 120 mm fan with rifle-bearings. Since Be Quiet! is well known for their low-noise products, we have no reason not to believe them. However, our sound-measuring equipment will be the final judge of that.

Today’s menu has as the main dish for the Chromas the Pure Power L8-500W that is equipped with two +12V rails. It can also deliver its full power continuously at up to 40°C ambient, has up to 88% efficiency, and all of its native cables are sleeved in order to provide improved airflow inside the chassis, and to look nice! According to Be Quiet!, this unit is also ready for the Intel Haswell platform, so it supports Intel C6/C7 sleep state energy requirements. We will of course verify or debunk this claim through our tests, especially since it is very hard for budget units to achieve Haswell compatibility as their cost-saving design does not cope well with highly unbalanced loads on all rails.