Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 650W & 850W PSU Review
by E. Fylladitakis on February 2, 2015 11:40 AM ESTDark Power Pro 10 850W Cold Test Results
Again, for the testing of PSUs, we are using high precision electronic loads with a maximum power draw of 2700 Watts, a Rigol DS5042M 40 MHz oscilloscope, an Extech 380803 power analyzer, two high precision UNI-T UT-325 digital thermometers, an Extech HD600 SPL meter, a self-designed hotbox, and various other bits and parts. For a thorough explanation of our testing methodology and more details on our equipment, please refer to our How We Test PSUs – 2014 Pipeline post.
Being an 80 Plus Platinum certified unit, it is not surprising that the Dark Power Pro 10 850W PSU delivers excellent electrical performance. The average conversion efficiency of the unit within the nominal load range (20% to 100%) is 92.8%, surpassing even the peak efficiency of the less powerful 650W version, while this time the efficiency peaks at 94.5% at 50% load. It performs fairly well under very low loads too, maintaining acceptable efficiency levels with a load down to 60 Watts. With a load of just 5%, the efficiency drops down to 76.9%.
Considering its power output, the Dark Power Pro 10 850W balances thermal performance and acoustics almost perfectly. The cooling fan remains inaudible with a load up to about 400 Watts, at which point it will speed up in parallel with the load to meet with the increasing thermal losses. Even with the PSU at maximum stress however, the SPL levels do not exceed 40.4dB(A), which is a fairly comfortable level for common home and office environments. Considering what sort of components are needed to get up to such a load (e.g. high performance GPUs and a fast CPU), the PSU noise will likely be dwarfed by the noise of the rest of the system.
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Howard - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
phase != fazeHrel - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
44db at 500W? Seasonic blows this crap out of the water. I'm really surprised, normally stuff made in Germany is top quality.ShieTar - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
be quiet! were one of the first companies to provide silent components. They had the top quality a decade ago, but the Asian and American companies caught up in the meantime.Also, 50% of the German population have a significantly lower income now than they had 15 years ago, so be quiet! started to put more focus on having cheap products as well. That should not have affected their top-line, but apparently it does.
Cpt. Obvious - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
I've owned one PSU from be quiet! It was about a decade ago and they were one of the few companies that tried to market quiet components at the time. Unfortunately that PSU didn't last long. After only a few months it blew up and I ended up replacing it with a top of the line CoolerMaster unit. This was a bad move as CM just didn't know anything about the design of PSU's at this time. So less than a month later I had another dead PSU and took to frankenstein together a few PSU's I had laying about about just so I got my machine up and running. The day after I got myself a Zippy/EMACS 460W PSU. (HP2-6460P)If you've never heard of them it's fine. They have next to no presence in the retail market, but are very well known for their server PSU's. If you read between the lines you will realize that this means they are built like tanks and about as stealthy as a M1 Abrams. It also cost about twice as much as the retail brand PSU's but they are nearly impossible to kill and can deliver way more current than what's specified, and they are still in production today...
sawe - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
Main reason for buying one these are low noise and fan controller. There was no mention of the controller ?