Packaging, Contents, Exterior And Cabling
Packaging
On the front of the small box is a picture of the PSU with its modular panel exposed; the native cables are meticulously hidden in the background, proving that they are indeed stealth thanks to their darkened wires. The 80 PLUS Silver icon is near the top-left corner. Around back, be quiet! provides some interesting info including a diagram that shows the available connectors and cable lengths. You'll also find the unit's dimensions and power specifications. Two paragraphs provide some details about be quiet! in English and German. Right next to those paragraphs, a short list shows the product's interesting features, the most important being that its conception, design and quality control were performed in Germany.
Contents
The box's contents are protected by a cardboard sheet, and the PSU is stored in bubble wrap. We would prefer to see packing foam instead. be quiet! obviously wanted to keep the packaging compact and foam wouldn't allow this.
The bundle includes several zip-ties, a set of fixing bolts, the user's manual (common to all Pure Power 9 models) and the necessary cables.
Exterior
We like the high-quality finish, and an orange accent around the fan and its specially-designed blades looks interesting.
Up front, the exhaust grille doesn't cover the entire side, and a power switch is installed next to the AC receptacle.
be quiet!'s logo is stamped onto one of the sides. The other side hosts a power specifications label.
Around back, the modular board only includes five sockets. Three of them are for peripheral cables, while the remaining two are for PCIe cables featuring two connectors each. Sleeving on the native cables goes all the way back into the chassis, and as you can see from our photos, there is a plastic grommet in the exit hole to protect the wires.
This PSU's dimensions are compact, so you won't have a problem fitting the L9-CM-600 into a smaller chassis.
Cabling
Thankfully, only the absolutely necessary cables are fixed (specifically the ATX and EPS ones) and they're sleeved, while the modular cables are flat. Finally, all cables are stealth, so if you use a chassis with a black painted interior, it will be easy to hide them.
But my largest complaint would have to be voltage regulation (line regulation) under different load scenarios on page 6.
If only the PSU itself was outstanding as well:ouch:
For less than $10 more you can usually find excellent Seasonic and SuperFlower Leadex Gold units, which makes it really hard to say this PSU is anything more than "meh"
Not all group regulated designs are exactly the same way. We see in Seasonic's S12ii series a group regulated design that actually crossloads very well. This seems to be one of the worst on the ladder.
@Aris: Why is Inactive PWR_OK to DC_LOSS better at a higher value? Once the PWR_OK signal is dropped, wouldn't you want the unit to shut down as quickly as possible, not prolong it?
"The power-good signal lasts longer, so when it drops, the voltage level of the +12V rail is already below 11V."
When the pwr_ok to DC_loss is higher (*meaning that it has a positive , not negative value) that means that the motherboard will already have been shut-down. (*from what i've understand, at least)
Normally when AC is removed, the PWR_OK signal should be de-asserted at least 1ms before voltages go out of spec in order not to stress the VRMs of the mainboard and of other components (e.g. VGA, HDD, SSD, etc.).
The only way to address this issue is to have a circuit on the mainboard checking the input voltages and give the shut down order when these go out of spec. In other words to completely bypass the power_ok signal coming from the PSU. But this will cost money and after all a PSU oughts to follow ATX spec's guidelines.