Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

Revision 11 of the Straight Power series has been revamped and updated towards 2020. be quiet! offers an incredibly silent product and moved the series into Platinum efficiency (the Gold revisions will still exists next to the Platinum ones btw). Where Gold is the sweet spot in efficiency, platinum offers that notch more overall. I mean Platinum, Titanium offer merely a few percents more in efficiency whereas the Gold specced PSU is simply really good and more affordable. So whether or not that is worth the price premium, you get to decide. The Straight power 11, however, does tick all the right boxes.  Why should you purchase a PSU with Platinum certification then? Well, it could be workload I mean, Platinum makes sense if your PC runs 24/7. But if you game a couple of hours per day, it all becomes more trivial. We have no doubt about the quality, stability, and efficiency of this PSU series. It really performed spot on where it needs to be. That said, Good to see is that the warranty is 5-years. If as a company you do not 100% trust your product, then you certainly will not give it a higher warranty.

A word about efficiency

As with any power supply, half the maximum load rating is the point of equilibrium, the sweet-spot where it'll be the most efficient and in this case that is 94% efficiency (at 230 Volts). As such, the ~325 Watt range is actually a sweet-spot as your average gaming PC with one dedicated (yet high end) graphics card would consume roughly that during a hefty gaming session. Let's assume 175 Watts for the GPU + 100 Watts for CPU and cooling and then add to that the mobo chipset and your connected devices. So how much money do you actually save each year if you have a gaming PC compared top all these efficiency certifications? Well, Let's create a showcase. Ranging from Bronze too platinum you can buy more efficient power supplies. Over the years, it has become a bit of a marketing thing really as differences a few percent really is the margin what we are talking about here. That's also the same percentual difference in your electric bill.

50% Load in Watt	80plus	Bronze	Silver	Gold	Platinum
350 Watt	420	402,5	392	385	378
3 Hours per day	0,25	0,24	0,24	0,23	0,23
5 Days week/year	65,52	62,79	61,15	60,06	58,97

So above you can see a quick chart I created. Let's say you game 3 hours per day, 5 days a week for a full year. During gaming, you'll consume say 350 Watts (= a fairly high-end setup with perhaps a bit of overclocking right?). We assume you pay 20 cents for each KWh of energy (the average going rate in the EU). As you can see, from Bronze to Platinum the difference really is to give or take 6 euros at best for over a thousand hours of gaming. That's a full year calculation.

Aesthetics

The Straight Power 11 series looks great with its dark accents and all modular all-black cabling. The 650W PSU sticks to a new smaller ATX length at 16 cm. The cables are delivered in a dark black coating including all dark connectors, which is nice to see. Modular designs are the way to go. You use what you need in terms of wiring, keeping the innards clean and tidy, plain and simple. And overall it is a great looking power supply.
 

Pricing

Here are the final MSRPs in bold.  Straight Power 11 Platinum will available in retail stores in the coming weeks, at recommended retail prices of €125 / £109.99 / $119.90 (550W), €139 / £124.99 / $134.90 (650W), €155 / £139.99 / $149.90 (750W), €179 / £164.99 / $174.90 (850W), €215 / £199.99 / $209.90 (1000W), and €239 / £210.99 / $249.90 (1200W). US dollar prices may vary in the United States of America. The power supplies include a 5-year warranty.

Stability

Stability-wise we have very little, actually nothing, to complain about as at half load, say 300~350 watts, voltages remained to drop dead in sync. But we'll trust that some other reviews will offer you some ripple tests yet have no doubt the product will come out totally clean. Kick-ass is obviously the option for four rails, the tested model has enough power to handle a high-end graphics card. Realistically for a PC with a single graphics card, a 650 or 750 model would likely be better suited as a recommendation. If you are an overclocker/tweaker .. leave some reserve and go with a 750 or this 850W model. 

  Final words

High efficiency, low noise, and very nice and extensive modular cabling. There is little to complain here really, perhaps I must nag a little about pricing. As mentioned the difference from gold to platinum efficiency does make this product more expensive, the 650W model as tested costs €139 / £124.99 / $134.9 which is a fairly pretty sum of money for a 650W PSU. Granted we do see power supplies as a bit of an investment, they are power critical of your PC infrastructure, should last you a long time and sure, need to be silent. The straight power does tick all these boxes. We do like the 5-years warranty, but if you'd purchase a kilowatt model for example, here's where I'd find that 5-years a little shy? The build quality we cannot complain about, it is the same for performance and the power supply is really silent. Revision 11 of Straight, being modular, efficient and silent is a good product, you get choices though as both Gold and Platinum models will be available in the market. This one though, recommended by Guru3D.com as really, we cannot find anything wrong here.

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