Final Thoughts
Being the first power supply that I have seen from be quiet! I am very impressed. I can see why be quiet! is such a popular brand in Germany. Now this is not their first power supply and looking at previous models it seems they have continued to add features and improve on each consecutive model. What you end up with is an extremely sleek and powerful power supply that also offers great performance.
Talking about performance the Dark Power Pro 10 did great in our tests. Voltage regulation on both the 12V and 5V rails was under 1% and the 3.3v rail was just over 1%. That means you are going to have very stable power delivery to your components. Also this power supply is 80PLUS Gold certified so you are going to have 90% efficiency at 50% load and 87% efficiency at 100% load.
Of course with a name like be quiet! you would expect all of their products to keep with the theme of silence and the Dark Power Pro 10 is no exception. They use their own SilentWings 135mm cooling fan which I could barely tell was even running. We are going to be doing a review of their SilentWings fans to show you just how well they perform. The unit itself has a dual-layer housing with rubber sleeves which isolate your system from PSU noise and vibration. These features make a unit like this perfect for home theater system where sound is of course a big factor.
This unit does feature modular cables meaning that you only use the cables you need. This means you don’t have a bunch of cables laying around in your system, which makes for better airflow. The connections on the power supply and the ends of the modular cables are labeled so you know exactly where to plug everything in. I was actually surprised at the number of modular cables included, you can connect quiet a lot of hardware with this unit. You can also connect up to 4 case fans to the unit, which is a big plus. Another cool feature of this unit is the Overclocking key. With a flip of a switch you can change between quadruple independent +12V rail mode and high-performance single-rail operation.
Besides everything that I have listed above the last thing that I wanted to mention was just how sleek this power supply is. It is going to look great in in your system! be quiet! offers this unit in wattages from 550 all the way up to 1200W. be quiet! also back each unit with a 5 year warranty. I can not seem to find the Dark Power Pro 10 for sale in the US yet so no word yet on pricing. This is one of the best power supplies we have seen all year! Overall ThinkComputers gives the be quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 550W Power Supply a 9 out of 10 score and our Editor’s Choice Award!
Pros:
– Sleek design
– Extremely quiet
– Great performance
– Modular connections and cables are labeled
– 5 year warranty
Cons:
– No carrying bag / case for modular cables
– Availability in the US
