be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 850W Power Supply Review

By Aris Mpitziopoulos
published

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High Performance And Dead Silence

This PSU carries on the traditional of the previous-generation Dark Power Pro series, offering high performance along with low noise levels. The Dark Power Pro 11 with 850W capacity is the quietest PSU tested so far, including the silent RM units by Corsair. be quiet! does excellent work, achieving this result without exploiting a semi-passive mode, which we believe is useless when you have a fan that can operate problem-free at such low speeds. This is exactly the case for the SilentWings 3 fan in the Dark Power P11-850.

Compared with the previous Dark Power Pro 10 model with similar capacity, the Pro 11 has small differences in noise output at up to 70-percent load. However, with a full load it achieves a significant noise reduction of 4 dB(A), according to the data provided in be quiet!'s reviewer's guide. The  Dark Power Pro 11 units with 1kW and 1.2kW capacities have a larger noise difference compared with their predecessors, reaching 5.5 dB(A) and 8.9 dB(A), respectively, at full load operation.

All three Dark Power Pro 11 units are currently available worldwide, while the lower-capacity members of this line (550–750W) will be available within the second half of this year (possibly in August) and initially in the European market. The prices of the 850, 1000 and 1200W units in the U.S. are $200, $240 and $280, respectively.

The Dark Power P11-850 is a good PSU that will please those with high-end PCs who want the quietest PSU money can buy. There are passive units available that emit zero noise, but in the best-case scenario, their capacity reaches 600W and they typically have only four PCIe connectors, so they cannot adequately support a high-end gaming system.

Although the assembly and soldering quality could be better, especially since this unit has to compete with high-end implementations from Flextronics, Delta and Seasonic, which mostly feature flawless build quality, it is still acceptable. Also, FSP used only high-quality Japanese caps that increase reliability, even under tough conditions.

Moreover, the Dark Power P11-850 uses one of the best fans available for this kind of operation, capable of 300,000 hours of operation according to be quiet!

FSP proves it is able to deliver excellent performance.

Aris Mpitziopoulos is a Contributing Editor for Tom's Hardware, covering Power Supplies.

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Aris Mpitziopoulos
Aris Mpitziopoulos
Contributing Editor

Aris Mpitziopoulos is a Contributing Editor at Tom's Hardware US, covering PSUs.

6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Xivilain
    For lower wattage units, I'd be interested in seeing fanless designs. But it doesn't seem like BeQuiet! is targeting that market, which is sad, because there are lots of HTPC builders out there demanding silence in their living rooms. Anyawy, great review!
    Reply
  • Aris_Mp
    fanless designs target a very specific market segment mostly because of their increased cost. From the moment you can have inaudible operation at light-mid loads with a proper designed, normal PSU I would highly prefer it especially since it can deliver more power when needed (but with the fan spinning at high enough speeds), than a passive one which will be restricted at 550 - 600 W tops.
    Reply
  • Shankovich
    For lower wattage units, I'd be interested in seeing fanless designs. But it doesn't seem like BeQuiet! is targeting that market, which is sad, because there are lots of HTPC builders out there demanding silence in their living rooms. Anyawy, great review!

    I don't see why you cannot have a lower powered unit at 80PG and have the fan run at a low speed. I got a HX750i because I need to give a FirePro W9100 very stable power, but the principle is the same: fan turns on at some higher wattage usage (for me it's 300, but for 80PG I'd say 200 is safer). Even when the fan turns on, can't hear it at all (it has a test button).

    If someone makes a 600W PSU that has this kind of fan profile, that would be a score. It won't technically be fanless quite, but the fans won't even get past 15dB for average user power usage, and around 20dB at max settings. Why all this? Will lower the price since a lower efficiency can be used.
    Reply
  • Giannis Karagiannis
    Since you can have the fan spinning at very low rpm or not at all during light and normal use I can't see a point in having a fanless PSU. During heavy loads, when you need more than 300 watts of power, I believe the noise from the PSU fan would the last thing that would be annoying you.The heat produced be the rest of the system components would be so much that you would need active cooling anyway

    Another very comprehensive review. Keep up the good work! I would also like to see more reviews for power supplies in the sub-100$ price range.
    Reply
  • dudmont
    "The prices of the 850, 1000 and 1200W units in the U.S. are $200, $240 and $280, respectively." Yikes!
    I'm not convinced that a quieter PSU is where it's at. It's cooling fans that create the big noise, not the PSU and it's fan.
    Reply
  • Aris_Mp
    be quiet! informed me that this design/platform was actually designed by one of their engineers and not by FSP, which only helped them build it through their production facilities (since be quiet! doesn't have a PSU manufacturing line).

    So in other words be quiet! didn't just bought this platform from FSP but they designed it on their own and FSP just produced it for them.

    Until now I wasn't aware of it but now that I am, I wanted to make things right and provide the proper credit to be quiet's engineer that designed this platform (whose name is unknown to me).
    Reply