The Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 1500W PSU Review: Big Power
by E. Fylladitakis on January 10, 2022 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- PSUs
- be quiet!
- 1500W
- 80Plus Titanium
Hot Test Results (~45°C Ambient)
Switching to hot box testing, as expected, the Dark Power Pro 12 1500W PSU faces a very small efficiency drop when the ambient temperature is very high. That is because the active components of the unit are extremely efficient and resilient to thermal stressing, otherwise it would be practically impossible to output this kind of power with such a platform at all. The average efficiency reduction is 0.6%, with a marginally higher drop of 0.7% at 100% load.
Despite the relatively high conversion efficiency of the Dark Power Pro 12, the platform still needs to cope with very high raw thermal losses inside a very hot operating environment. Thermally, the Dark Power Pro 12 performed better than what we initially hoped for. Although the internal temperatures of the unit are always high – going higher than 70°C on the major active components – the temperature is not greatly affected in relation to the unit’s load. As such, even at maximum load, the Dark Power Pro 12 still copes well with the thermal losses and keeps on operating seamlessly.
The key element behind the Dark Power Pro 12’s ability to withstand such thermal losses in such a hot environment is the Silent Wings cooling fan that, under these operating conditions, is anything but silent. The thermal control circuitry of the PSU is reading the very high temperature and reacts to it by putting the fan to work, boosting its speed up to 100% before the load is even 50% of the unit’s rated capacity. The result of this approach may be a very loud PSU but, apparently, Be Quiet!’s engineers knew better than sacrificing reliability over acoustics.
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SirDragonClaw - Thursday, January 13, 2022 - link
I have multiple machines running 3090s with 12900Ks and a few with Ryzen 5900x's and 3080s. And all the machines use 650 or 700 watt PSU's and have had zero issues even with multi week sustained rendering loads on both the cpu and gpu. People need to stop fear-mongering about transient loads when it isn't a problem.haukionkannel - Monday, January 17, 2022 - link
The single 3090ti needs minimum of 1000w power supply... So yeah it is "useful" even with one GPU... though 3090ti is extremely expensive (as all Nvidia new versions of 3000 series) and not much faster than normal 3090... But that 1000w requirements is real, so if you oc also you cpu... 1500w is not overkill... if you have newer $6000-7000 to buy PC of that scale.icedeocampo - Tuesday, January 18, 2022 - link
Mining is one.And also for those who load their machines all of the time - they'd want it to be at the most efficient load for the PSUs which around 50% or so.
HarryVoyager - Monday, January 31, 2022 - link
RTX 40 and RDNA3 top end cards are expected to be exceptionally power hungry.In particular, because RNDA3 is expected to use chiplets to significantly increase its processing power, and nVidia's won't be ready yet, nVidia is expected to respond by running their top cards very far past their power/performance sweet spot. Rumors are the 4090 may require two of the nVidia 12 pin power connectors.
Of course, there is a limit to what they can actually do. While people say they won't mind a 450W-500W GPU if it performs, the heat load is going to be... interesting... to say the least.
Mr.Vegas - Monday, February 7, 2022 - link
1.Most PSU have peak efficiency at 50% load.2. Heat: when you have huge PSU that runs below its max power it will never get hot nor turn on the fan, im running Digital 1200W PSU myself so it only spins the fun when it gets to high load like 600-700W
3. People still but Threadrippers [and soon Intel HEDT] and build home Servers
4. People that mine
Belldandy - Monday, January 10, 2022 - link
Workstations can still have multiple gpu's and mining rigs as well.Also the coming rtx4090 is rumored to consume 600watts. So a 1.5kw psu will ideally be loaded between 50-75% continuously so that's quite suitable.
austinsguitar - Monday, January 10, 2022 - link
vary disappointing temperature/noise performance honestly. This is a pass imo.meacupla - Monday, January 10, 2022 - link
afaik, this temperature/fan speed curve is pretty normal on >1200W PSUsaustinsguitar - Monday, January 10, 2022 - link
idk man. 40db at 1200watts sounds pretty ehh to me.meacupla - Wednesday, January 12, 2022 - link
Well, if you don't like the fan curve, then get a lower power PSU, because these >1200W PSUs are all like that. There's just a physical limitation with current technology used in PSUs.