INTRODUCTION

   Alien Isolation was just released for PC and already many of you have asked us about which graphics card and power supply combo to choose so you can have the maximum gaming experience possible. Naturally since the new GeForce series was just released by NVIDIA our primary choice is the excellent GTX 970 model since it offers a much better price/performance ratio compared to its slightly faster and quite more expensive brother the GTX 980. As for which power supply to use well the GTX 970 is a very good graphics card across the board so although it surpasses almost every single GPU model in the market (aside the GTX 980) it hardly ever gets over 200W while gaming, still we do recommend getting at least an 650W model just to be on the safe side. Because of this today we will be focusing our efforts in testing one of the latest PSU models to hit the market the Pure Power L8 730W (L8-CM-730W) by be quiet!

   be quiet! is a premium brand manufacturer of power supplies and cooling solutions for your desktop PC. be quiet! products are convincing which is proved by reaching and defending the market leadership in PSU business in Germany for five consecutive years *. This is validated and accompanied by numerous awards for both power supplies and cooling solutions. be quiet! is awarded for five times in a row as manufacturer of the year in the power supply category by the readers of the well-known German hardware magazine PC Games Hardware. Another first and second rank in the categories “fans” and “cooler” underline the high acceptance of our products. be quiet! sticks to its name: Ten years’ experience in the field of noise reduction and silence make be quiet! products probably the most silent one on the market. Undoubted fans have a large impact of the noise levels of be quiet! products. Due we are using our specially developed Silent Wings fans in nearly all of our range. They are equipped with various noise reducing features. Thanks to these we ensure a really silent operation - our products reach the best balance between cooling performance and a virtually inaudible operation. If you choose be quiet! you can be sure to get premium quality and second to none silent operation from the quietness experts.

   There are actually two sub-lines in the Pure Power line of PSUs by be quiet! the "regular" one the 700W variant of which we had the chance to test a while back and the modular one which we have here with us today. However since this line is not the high end one by be quiet! but rather the "essential" one (as stated on the box) we don't see a fully modular design so the mainboard 24pin cable is hardwired in the chassis. That being said the Pure Power L8 730W features an 80 Plus Bronze efficiency certification (up to 88% power conversion efficiency), 120mm Rifle-Bearing-Technology SilentWings L8 fan, two independent +12V rails for optimal power stability (both deliver up to 87% of the units total power output), 4 PCI-E power connectors, industrial protections (OCP/OVP/UVP/SCP/OTP/OPP) and support for Energy Star 5.2, ErP 2014, Intel Haswell platform and Intel’s Deep Power Down C6/C7 mode. So basically compared to the 700W variant of the regular line you are getting 30W more and modular cables with the 730W variant of the modular line. The question however is how well it performs especially since modular units are known to be slightly worse in terms of rail stability compared to their wired brothers.