BeQuiet Straight Power 11 550w review

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A few weeks ago I was one of the lucky ones to be selected to test/review one of the new BeQuiet psu's so finally after much disasters and being laid up for a week here is my review.

BeQuiet Straight Power 11 550w psu.
Fully modular cables.
80+ Gold rated.
Japanese 105°C-rated capacitors.
Size 160x150x86mm (LxWxH).
Warranty 5 Years.

Unboxing
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You get the PSU, a manual, some screws for mounting the unit to the case, a few cable ties, a UK and a EU power lead and two bundles of cables.

You get the following cables:-

1x 20+4 pin for the motherboard.
1x 4+4 pin for the cpu.
2x single 6+2 pin pci-e cables.
1x sata cable with 4x connectors.
1x cable with a single molex and 3x sata connectors.
1x cable with a pair of molex and a pair of sata connectors.
1x molex to floppy connector.

The mix of sata and molex on the same lead just seems a strange decision and led to me having to use all of the cables. I would have much preferred a cable with 4x molex on it and then the other two could have had 4x sata on each.

The cables are covered in a good quality, heavy black braid with black shrinktube at the ends.

A quick look at the PSU.
Rear
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Label side
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As you can see, 549.6w of it's 550w are available across the quad 12v rails. Any modern, good quality PSU should be able to supply all or near enough all of it's power across the 12v rails where it is needed most. The 12v rails are split as follows:-

12v1 Sata, HDD, FDD, 20+4 pin motherboard.
12v2 4+4 pin cpu.
12v3 6+2 pin PCI-e 1.
12v4 6+2 pin PCI-e 2.

The manual states that if using a single PCI-e lead then it should be plugged into the PCI-e 2 connector.

Connections
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The PSU end of the motherboard cable is split into a 20 pin and a 8 pin connector which explains the pair of sockets.

Plain side
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No bright, in your face branding just a subtle embossed brand name.

135mm Silent Wings 3 fan
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No hybrid fan mode, just a very quiet fan.

The PSU is a good weight and looks good. I love the fan grill.

What it is powering
Intel i7 4790k overclocked to 4.6Ghz @ 1.26v
Asus Maximus VI Hero
4x 4Gb Samsung Green overclocked to 2133mhz @ 1.5v with timings also tightened up
Inno3D GTX 1070 iChill X3
Creative Soundblaster Z
2x 200mm Aerocool Silentmaster fans (rear exhaust)
2x 200mm Bitfenix Spectre Pro fans (front intake)
Zalman ZM-MFC2 multifunction controller
Lamptron FC2 fan controller

Watercooling

Alphacool VPP655 Vario with Heatkiller D5 top
Alphacool Eisblock XPX
Aquacomputer GTX 1070/1080 full cover block
EK-MOSFET ASUS M6G
Coolgate CG360 360mm rad
Coolgate G2 360mm rad
6x Powercool Glacier 120mm fan
6x OCUK/Silverstone SST-FQ121WC 120mm fans
1x XSPC water temperature monitor

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Testing
I have no fancy PSU testing equipment so settled on OCCT's PSU test which is brutal and will draw the most power from your components. Using this I managed to get up to 367w at the wall so it's not exactly a heavy load for this PSU but the best I could manage. I fired it up and let it run for 90 minutes to get the PSU working as hard as I possibly could. During the test the fan remained completely silent and didn't ramp up at all. Just before the 90 minutes were up I checked the thermometer I had placed at the exhaust of the PSU and it only read 22.5 degrees C (ambient was 18.7 degrees C) so the fan is doing a very good job while being extremely quiet. This may change at higher loads but I am unable to test this.

Conclusion
This is a very good PSU. It has a quality finish and is very quiet (as far as I could test). It only has a pair of 6+2 PCI-e leads but to be honest if you were thinking of SLI or Crossfire then you should be looking at a PSU of more than 550w anyway. The pair of leads only having a single 6+2 pin connector on each makes for a neat and tidy set up unlike most psu's that have a pair of connectors that means you usually have to try to hide the ugly second connector away so that is a problem that doesn't exist with this unit.

The sata and molex cables I found to be awful due to the mix of connectors on two of the leads. Having only three molex connectors mixed in with sata connectors across two seperate leads is just messy. I know drives these days use sata connectors and I am fine with having more of those than molex connectors but for crying out loud keep them on their own leads. I only have two SSD's but have 2x fan controllers, a water pump, water temp monitor, 3x leds all of which require a molex connector and I had to daisy chain a load of splitters together to power them all. This turned out to be very messy seeing as I ended up using all of the cables apart from one of the PCI-e cables. Not ideal!

At the end of the day it comes to the question of would I buy one of these PSU's? Unfortunately the answer would have to be no. Don't get me wrong, it is a excellent PSU that is very quiet and efficient, it's just extremely overpriced at it's current price of £105.95 and the warranty is only 5 Years which is considerably behind BeQuiet's rivals. The Seasonic Focus Plus 550w is gold rated and fully modular yet is £26 cheaper (even the platinum version is £9 cheaper) than the BeQuiet and has double the warranty length at 10 years. Antec's Earthwatts Pro 550w which is semi-modular has a 7 year warranty and is £30 cheaper than the BeQuiet. I think BeQuiet needs to have a solid rethink of their pricing and warranty as there is little here to justify the premium price.
 
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