Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 650W & 850W PSU Review
by E. Fylladitakis on February 2, 2015 11:40 AM ESTDark Power Pro 10 650W Hot Test Results
From the tables below, it can be seen that the output power quality of the be quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 650W PSU is average. FSP designs do not usually excel when it comes to power quality and this is no exception, with the voltage ripple on the 12V line going up to 68mV when the unit is fully loaded. If the PSU is heavily cross-loaded, the ripple increases even further. These figures are well within the 120mV limit of the ATX design guide but certainly not impressive for a flagship series product. The voltage regulation on all of the lines is about 2.5%, a good but unremarkable figure.
| Main Output | ||||||||
| Load (Watts) | 132.35 W | 328.7 W | 486.47 W | 645.37 W | ||||
| Load (Percent) | 20.36% | 50.57% | 74.84% | 99.29% | ||||
| Line | Amperes | Volts | Amperes | Volts | Amperes | Volts | Amperes | Volts |
| 3.3 V | 3.8 | 3.37 | 9.5 | 3.34 | 14.25 | 3.3 | 18.99 | 3.28 |
| 5 V | 3.8 | 5.08 | 9.5 | 5.05 | 14.25 | 4.97 | 18.99 | 4.95 |
| 12 V | 8.21 | 12.21 | 20.51 | 12.14 | 30.77 | 11.98 | 41.03 | 11.92 |
| Line | Regulation (20% to 100% load) |
Voltage Ripple (mV) | |||||
| 20% Load | 50% Load | 75% Load | 100% Load | CL1 12V |
CL2 3.3V + 5V |
||
| 3.3V | 2.6% | 12 | 18 | 20 | 26 | 16 | 28 |
| 5V | 2.6% | 16 | 20 | 24 | 30 | 16 | 32 |
| 12V | 2.4% | 22 | 36 | 50 | 68 | 74 | 30 |
High ambient temperatures have an impact on the energy conversion efficiency of the be quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 650W PSU, but not overly so. The average nominal load (20-100%) efficiency is reduced down to 90.1%, a justifiable drop of 0.8% for an ambient temperature increase of about 22°C. Again, the efficiency peaks at 50% load, but at 91.4% this time, presenting a 0.9% drop.
Due to the higher temperatures, this time the cooling system of the Dark Power Pro 10 650W PSU behaves more aggressively, speeding up the fan even at lower loads. The PSU does maintain reasonably comfortable acoustic levels with a load up to 350 Watts, beyond which point the fan has to increase its speed in order to counter the increasing energy losses. At heavy loads and with an ambient temperature of over 45°C, the Dark Power Pro 10 650W unit is clearly audible but not overly so, while the cooling system manages to maintain good internal temperatures.
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Mondozai - Monday, February 2, 2015 - link
Terrible prices. The EVGA G2 850W is an awesome PSU. It has a whopping 10 year guarantee and for half the price at that.Skip, skip, skip.
Samus - Monday, February 2, 2015 - link
I feel sorry for the people in Europe where this is one of the best options they have, when North American market has so much competition from EVGA, Corsair, Coolermaster and Antec, making be cool! pretty irrelevant here.If I were going to recommend a PSU in this price class I'd go for a pure-breed Seasonic unit or a PC Power and Cooling unit while you can still find them...
But EVGA's 10-year warranty is killer, especially since the only PSU failure I've had was after 5 years.
E.Fyll - Monday, February 2, 2015 - link
Actually, you should not be. All those brands are readily available in Europe as well.Samus - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
Actually, on the whole, the only thing European Consumers have more choice in is cell phones and possible automobiles. Electronic choices reign supreme in North America, especially computer component selection. Corsair only markets three of their eight models in the EU because only 3 were certified by the restrictive regulatory requirements.SmokingCrop - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
One can buy all the Corsair series in Belgium/Netherlands: CX, CXM, RM, CSM, HXi, AX, AXi, VSOxford Guy - Monday, February 2, 2015 - link
The G2 is noisy and its temperature performance is worse than the Corsair RM 850.tabascosauz - Monday, February 2, 2015 - link
I own a G2 750 and it's perfectly quiet under heavy OC.Temperature performance is worse than the RM? How so? In cooling? I don't believe that, considering the extremely agressive passive fan profile of the RM. Performance at temperature? Perhaps. The RM does feature good vreg on some rails and efficiency is not bad. Not that I'd spend even a second of my time looking at the RM750 though, with those horrible electrolytics.
Antronman - Monday, February 2, 2015 - link
Except the RM has had terrible user ratings because of generally terrible quality on that line of PSUs. Whereas the EVGA G2 PSUs and P2s are Superflower made.SmokingCrop - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
Depends what wattage you take, the 750W is excellent.No fan till about 375W as well, without having to worry that your cheap ass capacitors will fail after 5 years because of the heat..
darkfalz - Monday, February 16, 2015 - link
I've had 4 of 5 Antec supplies eventually die on me (2 SmartPower 350, 2 Earthwatts 380). All died gracefully (usually the standby voltage ie. failing to turn on or resume from standby the first symptom). I think the shortest lived one was maybe a year and the longest lived about 4 years. My Earthwatts 500 still works and powering my E8500 based system. I'm not convinced they are a quality brand, especially at the lower end (the kind that are bundled with their cases). They are a rebrander too, so you really don't know what you're getting. TBH I don't expect power supplies to last forever, you just hope when they go they go peacefully.