be quiet! SFX L Power 600W PSU Review

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Packaging, Contents, Exterior & Cabling

Packaging

The box is small, since be quiet!'s PSU is compact. You'll find an 80 PLUS Gold badge in the top-right corner, along with a "Full Cable Management" tag. The middle features a picture of the PSU with its modular panel front and center.

Around back, be quiet! lists the available cables and connectors, along with cable length. We always appreciate when companies provide this information, though we always double-check their measurements since it's not uncommon to find discrepancies. There's also a diagram showing the SFX L Power 600W's dimensions, along with a power specifications table.

Contents

Physical protection inside the box isn't great: the PSU is only covered with bubble-wrap. It would have been better if be quiet! used packing foam instead, though that would have required a larger box. There's an SFX-to-ATX bracket on top of the PSU, also protected by bubble-wrap, plus a user's manual.

That manual is the same across both SFX L Power models. The rest of be quiet!'s bundle includes a set of fixing bolts and screws for attaching the SFX-to-ATX adapter. The adapter will come in handy if you want to install this PSU in a normal ATX chassis, although the short modular cables may be problematic in larger cases. 

Exterior

Up front, a small power switch is installed right next to the AC receptacle, while the exhaust grille sports a familiar honeycomb design.

A be quiet! logo is stamped onto both sides of the SFX L Power 600W. There's a large power specifications label on the PSU's bottom side, too.

The modular panel hosts eight sockets, three for the peripheral and SATA connectors, two for PCIe cables, one for the EPS cable, and two for the 24-pin ATX connector.

There is nothing extraordinary about this PSU's external design. What matters most is inside, though.

Cabling

Besides being short, the cables are flat and made of darkened wires. As we've mentioned before, we prefer flat cables over round ones since they don't interfere with airflow as much. Given that this PSU is destined for small cases with limited interior space, airflow is immensely important.


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Aris Mpitziopoulos
Contributing Editor

Aris Mpitziopoulos is a contributing editor at Tom's Hardware, covering PSUs.

  • reghir
    Not sure take a look at NewEgg reviews which show 3 users reporting DOA units
    Reply
  • AC____
    How does it compare to Corsair's?
    Reply
  • Aris_Mp
    The SF600 has higher performance. This is shown in the relative performance chart. However in the overall noise score the SF600 is much higher as well, because its fan profile gets highly aggressive once you load its minor rails. In real life conditions where the minor rails are lightly used, it is quite silent.
    Reply
  • Aris_Mp
    DOA can happen for several reasons, with hard shipping conditions being one of them.
    Reply
  • expert_vision
    You know what baffles me? How is it possible that no monitoring is offered in today PSUs ? I used to have a HighPower PSU 10 years ago that had a simple 7 segment display, showing instantaneous power draw in watts, and a 3 header pin for FAN RPM. You'd think by today that would be standard. But no, instead they put freaking RGB in everything ...
    Reply
  • HERETIC-1
    Too expensive when you cheap out on a 85C primary cap.
    Reply
  • below
    I had bought one of them a few weeks ago and after installing in bitfenix portal case it has start to randomly make noises. I had rebuild my block two times just to make sure that there is nothing except PSU fan itself making that noise. The noise is comparably with very old HDD's or even Floppy crunching, its super annoying and only appears in PSU working state (when fan at the bottom) and mostly on high load, also noise could be very loud

    Also I have found some review on Spanish (I think) from amazon about this PSU and customer have exactly the same issue, so looks like it could be design problem.
    This PSU is a winner of most comparisons an reviews everywhere and I very dissapointed that none of reviewers couldn't find such awfull issue for quiet PSU.

    Also it should be a shame for company named 'be quiet' that it's 'silent wings' in that PSU making that horrible noises.
    Reply