One of my first meetings of the week here at CES 2016 is with be quiet!, a German based company that focuses on silent cooling, power supplies, and now cases. We see them every year, and long-time readers may remember our former PSU editor Christoph Katzer by name is actually our contact. They are not exhibiting too much this year – their newest items are new secondary colors of cases or a new version of the Pure Power 9 power supplies that offer almost full modularity. Thus the show for them is an ability to synchronize with media, partners, and talk shop with potential customers.

What interested me is how be quiet! is growing. It turns out that 2015 has been a great year for them. The introduction of cases over 2014 and focusing on several specific models for quiet operation now accounts for up to 30% of the company revenue, with revenue on the whole doubling in 2015, now being an easy seven figures (official numbers have not been released, but it gives a sense of scale). Growth has been occurring in localized pockets worldwide, although new processor and chipset launches can help with peak sales beyond regular deals and combo offers. Their design team for all three segments (PSUs, cooling and power supplies) numbers fifteen maximum. I also asked about consumer vs B2B markets, but we were told that the B2B market is quite aggressive, and the bigger players have the advantage there so for now it is not so much a focus. For the future, we were told to look out on the water cooling scene as they have internally developed their own pump for quiet operations, although it may be this time next year before we see any demonstration units.