Inside be quiet!

15.12.2021

The year is almost over. Time to look back at 2021 and summarize which products were launched and what else be quiet! and our industry experienced this year.

New be quiet! products of 2021

We kept ourselves busy this year and released a lot of new products. First up was the little brother of our Dark Power Pro 12. With 750, 850 and 1000 watts, the Dark Power 12 is the perfect choice for high performance gaming and workstation PCs with a high-end graphics card.

For the mainstream market we finally launched our first Pure Power with modular cables, Pure Power 11 FM. With up to 750 Watts it is perfectly prepared for most gaming systems out there. In 2022, we are planning to expand the Pure Power 11 FM range with higher wattage models. We also updated our small form factor power supplies. SFX Power 3 and TFX Power 3 replaced their predecessors. Of course, 2021 was not just about power supplies. The Silent Loop 2, our new and whisper-quiet water cooler with ARGB, is well received by the community.

On top of that, we refreshed our air-cooling portfolio with Dark Rock TF 2, Shadow Rock Slim 2 and Pure Rock Slim 2, and also expanded our product range with SSD coolers.

The MC1 and MC1 Pro M.2 SSD coolers are tiny but important products, which in the case of the MC1 also benefits PlayStation 5 gamers. In November, we presented the Light Wings, our first fans with ARGB lighting. Finally, at the end of 2021, it is possible to build a powerful and colourful pc with silent be quiet! cooling performance.

be quiet! Against noise

In summer, we added the new section “Volume & Noise” to our website, providing information about the understanding of noise and the relevance of quiet PC components.

True to our brand statement “Life Is Noisy Enough” we took the chance to not only illustrate how important quiet cooling components are, backed up with scientific facts, our social media team took the chance to make a trip to an anechoic chamber in northern Germany.

It is a great source of information to learn about the subjective perception of noise and why caring about all potential noise-emitting components of a PC matters.

High demand and supply chain hiccups

The availability of some products was and still is challenging due to cumulative effects. Besides the increased strong demand from gamers and content creators for high wattage PSUs due to new GPU generations, some unusual factors came together. The reignited mining boom for cryptocurrencies made it nearly impossible to buy high wattage power supplies in the first quarter of 2021. Because we received countless messages via social media and our support channels, we explained the situation in March in a video statement.

Production and transport normally run smoothly within global production and supply chains. Even if a transport service provider or a factory fails to deliver, there are alternative options to keep up with the demand. In 2020, world economics faced global stops due to the several lockdowns over several months. This showed that if there is a problem at step of a global process, it affects all subsequent steps of the chain. Global freight capacities are limited, in some cases real traffic jams of cargo ships have arisen at the major trading ports, so it is not surprising that the industry is still catching up even in winter 2021.
With companies switching to home office solutions for their employees, the demand for PCs reached new highs and if you consider that plenty of technical parts we need to build our products are used in other industries, such as automotive, as well the worldwide demand exceeded the supply.

After managing the challenges, the year 2021 brought, we look forward to 2022. Next year, be quiet! celebrates its 20th anniversary and we have plans we believe lots of you will like. Until then, we are working to bring our products to more markets and improve availability.