Be Quiet! Pure Power 11 FM 1000W PSU Review

Be Quiet! Pure Power 11 FM 1000W PSU Review

Meet today’s review candidate, the be quiet! 11 FM Pure Power, this round available as 850W and 1000W models. the FM series is a popular completely modular power supply with outputs of 550W, 650W, 750W 850W, and 1000W 80Plus gold certification. The Pure Power 11 FM is a completely modular variant of the Pure Power 11 geared at more general computer users who appreciate the variety of modular cables and 80 PLUS Gold efficiency.

Efficiency wise in the year 2022, things do not matter that extensively anymore; we have seen most power supplies climb upwards into the domain of gold towards platinum. Everything else is already invented. So the only thing left is efficiency and manufacturing the greatest quality PSU your money can get you. The 1000 Watt PSU as tested today has an 80 Plus Gold certification, indicating at 50 percent load, this puppy is 92 percent efficient (at 230V) (at 230V). Bronze, Silver is the more economical choice, but preferable Gold or Platinum and Titanium is what you want; that upper stack in hardware is more expensive, though. The age of boring beige-painted PCs has to end. We wanted neatly formed, cooled, and preferably illuminated PCs with side windows so we could actually look at the inside of the PC. Really lovely to look at, however that caused another difficulty. We now had the lovely looking cases where you could look inside, however resulted in ripping the hairs out of your head as there were yellow, red, and black wires flowing from the PSU everywhere. So the power supply got another role; beauty. It needs to look decent. Another problem was overcome by grouping cords and providing you the choice to choose the wires you want to utilize. We call it cable management nowadays. Sound levels originating from your PSU; the high-rated PSUs normally have one fan, and up to a few years ago, a lot of manufacturers did not pay attention to all that noise then; the Pure Power 11 FM is one of the more silent items we’ve ever examined. For Be Quiet!, the third factor was adopting silent high-performance fans, particularly with smart-fan technology (changing fan speeds dependent on heat) (variable fan speeds based on heat).

Bronze, Silver, but truly Gold, Platinum, and Titanium are the most energy-efficient certification levels available. And, while we are confident that if a model is ever created that is 98 percent efficient, we will see a Plutionuim model, Titanium is now the best the industry has to offer. This is what you want if your computer is on 24 hours a day. It does, indeed, cost quite a bit of money. And, as you are probably aware, efficiency is critical; many years ago, PSUs were rated as low as 70% efficient, which means that 30% of the power consumed simply vanishes somewhere in the electric circuitry, while you pay for it on your electricity bill.

The Be Quiet! Pure Power 11 FM series is now available in five models, 550, 650, 750, 850, and 1000 Watts. Admittedly, we see little reason for kilowatt power supplies these days unless you are a hefty overclocker or need something really efficient for cryptocurrency mining. An average high-end PC these days (and yes, multi GPU isn’t a thing anymore these days also) will be fine with, say, a 650~750 Watt PSU as a modern Ryzen 9 5800 XT PC under full computational load paired with, say, a GeForce RTX 3080 consumes maybe 400~450 Watts. We do always state this though, calculate and double up your wattage, as at half the PSU load, your power supply will be the most efficient. Bronze, Silver, but truly Gold, Platinum, and Titanium are the most energy-efficient certification levels available. And, while we are confident that if a model is ever created that is 98 percent efficient, we will see a Plutionuim model, Titanium is now the best the industry has to offer. This is what you want if your computer is on 24 hours a day. It does, indeed, cost quite a bit of money. And, as you are probably aware, efficiency is critical; many years ago, PSUs were rated as low as 70% efficient, which means that 30% of the power consumed simply vanishes somewhere in the electric circuitry, while you pay for it on your electricity bill. However, energy consumption is on the rise again, soon we’ll see 450W graphics cards, and yeah processor power states can reach ~250 Watts as well. But let’s start up the review.

Energy efficiency certification
be quiet! offers the PP 11FM series PSUs as a Gold rated power supply as certified by the 80 PLUS organization (the people that certify and test efficiency). We already explained a little what that literally means. But what does such a certification entail? Well, 80 Plus (trademarked 80 PLUS) is a voluntary certification program intended to promote efficient energy use in computer power supply units (PSUs). Launched in 2004 by Ecos Consulting, it certifies products that have more than 80% energy efficiency at 20%, 50% and 100% of rated load, and a power factor of 0.9 or greater at 100% load. That is, such PSUs will waste 20% or less electric energy as heat at the specified load levels, thus reducing electricity use and bills compared to less efficient PSUs. Sometimes, rebates are given to manufacturers who use 80 Plus-certified PSUs.