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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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.