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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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 ?