Thank you be quiet! for sending us a review unit!

There are many factors to take into consideration when selecting a power supply for your computer. The processor (CPU) and graphics card (GPU) are the most demanding and you should follow their guidelines (at a bare minimum!) when designing your gaming desktop. 1000 watt power supplies are not cheap with many of the top brands priced well over the $150 price tag of the Pure Power 12.

The Pure Power 12 1000W Power Supply supports the PCIe 5.1 standard with the 12V-2x6 600W connector for the RTX 50 series GPUs. The Pure Power 12 is backwards compatible with the PCIe 5.0 standard used on the RTX 40 series as well. There are also three PCIe 6+2 connectors for previous generation video cards. One thing to note is that the Pure Power 12 has one 12V rail which makes powering the most demanding graphics cards a breeze. Years ago you had to make you were using connectors from different rails to ensure a balanced power draw.

The purpose of a power supply is to draw the AC power from the outlet to DC power for your components. Ideally, this should be an efficient process and not annoy your electricity provider too much. 80 Plus is a voluntary certification process ensuring that the power supply is at least 80% energy efficient with loads of 10%, 20%, 50%, and 100%. Per be quiet!’s website, the Pure Power 12 is up to 92.9% efficient. This is excellent, though sadly I don't expect it to change ComEd’s opinion of us compared to our more power efficient neighbors.

There are a reasonable number of connectors and I was able to power my three SSD’s, hard drive, motherboard, and RGB fans without issue. My ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Hero motherboard has one 8-pin and one 4-pin CPU connector. By default, the Pure Power 12’s CPU power plug has two 8 pin connectors. You can split one of them in two by squeezing the two plastic prongs together to separate them. My only complaint with this power supply is that it is not modular. You cannot remove unneeded power cables or customize the power connection whatsoever. One benefit of non-modular power supplies is that you don't have to worry about losing your spare cables. I prefer using thumb screws so I opted to use those instead of the standard screws provided.

be quiet! excels at making fans that don’t produce a lot of noise without sacrificing performance. The 120mm fan in the Pure Power 12 is no exception. The fan is temperature controlled and the blades are designed to reduce turbulence. When placed in my be quiet! Light Base 600 DX case with a NZXT cooler my system was 41db running and 49db under a heavy load. It’s very quiet and performs as advertised!

When it comes to building a gaming rig, there should be no cutting corners with the components you use. The Pure Power 12 is a worthy contender if you need a lot of watts at a good price point. The 10 year warranty is encouraging and tells me that be quiet! stands behind their products. Ideally, my next power supply will be modular, but I’m perfectly happy with this one and hope to use it for quite some time.