Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 650W

What's Inside?

The FDB fan (MGT12012LR-A25) is manufactured by Protechnic Electric, a Taiwanese company that also features in quite a few other PSUs from the likes of OCZ and Zalman. The fan is 120x120x25mm in size and at its full 1,800RPM it shifts 61CFM of air at 31dBA. So at full throttle that's quite noisy, but at least it's thermally controlled.

Thermal control effectiveness does depend on where the sensor is placed though - near the hottest components or just simply measuring internal temperatures in general? In some respects we would have preferred a pre-programmed control in relation to power use, however in very hot environments this is just as bad.

From the first picture below we can see the "P7" PCB version yet unlike a lot of other PSUs Be Quiet! uses the same base for its entire range - 450W all the way to 1,200W! That's a massive upscale in power within the same footprint.

The layout is pretty good - the single, colossal 420V OST capacitor has plenty of breathing space around it and the heatsinks are arranged so the air flows through them and is then forced out the back. Having said that, while the fan is recessed slightly from the rear honeycomb grill, there's nothing really force it downwards to cool the components before gushing out the back.


The manufacturing quality seems very good though - everything is very securely fitted and doesn't touch other components and the modular plug board is far, far neater than what we've seen with others, like the Tagan BZ series for example.