Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 650W PSU Review

A look inside the Dark Power Pro 10 650W

One of the most important features of this power supply is the Silent Wings fans, a proprietary design by Be Quiet! with a FDB (self-lubricating bearing) and ribbed blades. Be Quiet! says that this fan will only generate 17.5dB(A) at maximum load; The test conditions are uncertain but we are sure that the fan did not reach its maximum speed, as the aerodynamic noise of an 1800RPM fan alone would generate much more noise.

The OEM responsible for the Dark Power Pro 10 650W power supply is Fortron-Source, also known as FSP Group, a company which is focused on efficient designs of average power output. Note that the more powerful units of the series do not share the same OEM and their quality and performance might be entirely different than that presented in this review. The assembly quality of the 650W version is good, with only a few soldering joints obviously made by hand but still are well done.

Two Y capacitors and one X capacitor initiate the first level of the filtering stage. We found two more Y capacitors and one more X capacitor on the main PCB, alongside with two filtering chokes. Surprisingly, there is also a MOV in there, a component which FSP loathes and never installs in their own units. A basic heatsink holds the input bridge rectifier.

The APFC starts with a large choke and two Matsushita 270μF/450V industrial grade (rated at 105°C) capacitors. There are three transistors and a boost diode on the heatsink near the edge of the main PCB, which are the active components of the APFC circuit. Another heatsink next to it holds the primary side transistors. Only two inversion transistors have been installed, forming a half-bridge configuration and letting us wonder whether a full-bridge configuration would increase the efficiency of this design even further.

The basic metallic slab next to the main transformer is the heatsink of the active components forming the secondary stage. Four transistor form an efficient converter which generates a single 12V output, which is then divided via four OCP channels (which can be merged). The 3.3V and 5V lines are generated on the vertical daughterboard, where two DC to DC converters chop the 12V line down to spec.