With Nvidia’s latest generation of cards all having the new 12VHPWR connection (at least with the Founders Editions), it didn’t take long for power supply companies to follow suit with Intel’s new ATX 3.0 standard which adds the new cable into the mix. This also means that we are seeing a lot of new power supplies hitting the market as most companies have been adding ATX 3.0 into their product stack and be quiet is no different. Their first generation of ATX 3.0 power supplies is the Dark Power 13 lineup and they have sent their 850-watt model over. Today I’m going to check out what features they have included, be quiet power supplies have been quality units for a long time now and I’m excited to see what they have done to put their spin on things with the Dark Power 13 so let’s dive in.

Product Name: be quiet Dark Power 13 850W

Review Sample Provided by: be quiet

Written by: Wes Compton

Amazon Affiliate Link: HERE

**Disclaimer**

LanOC Reviews only covers the features of power supplies due to not having the equipment to test them up to our standards. Because of this, you will not see a performance section, a final verdict, or awards. Therefore, we prefer to call this a preview rather than a review. Thank you for understanding; we keep our standards to the absolute highest for you, our reader.

Specifications

Wattages Available

750, 850, 1000

Todays Model

Dark Power 13 850W

Continuous power

850 Watts

Peak power

950 Watts

Dimensions without cable (L x W x H)

175 x 150 x 86 mm

6.88 x 5.9 x 3.38 Inches

Weight

1.97 kg

4.34 lbs

Color

Black

Form factor

Version 3.0

Form factor EPS 12V

Version 2.92

Topology            

Active Rectifier + Full bridge + LLC + SR + DC/DC

Digitally controlled

No

Voltage

100 – 240 Volts

Frequency

50 – 60 Hz

Input current

10 / 5 A

Power factor at 100% load

>0.98

Modern standby

Yes

Power consumption in standby

<0.13 Watts

Average lifetime (h / 25°C)

>100,000 hours

Operating temperature up to

40°C

Efficiency

80 PLUS certification                           Titanium

Efficiency (%) at 230V, 2% load         73.6

Efficiency (%) at 230V, 10% load       92.0

Efficiency (%) at 230V, 20% load       94.7

Efficiency (%) at 230V, 50% load       95.4

Efficiency (%) at 230V, 100% load    93.5

Fan and cooling technology

Fan                                      Silent Wings

Fan size (mm)                  135

Bearing technology         FDB

Motor technology            6-pole fan motor

Max. fan speed (rpm)     1800

dB(A) at 10% load             7.5

dB(A) at 20% load             7.5

dB(A) at 50% load             7.6

dB(A) at 100% load          19.8

Output

Multi-rail operation (12V rails)    4

12V single rail operation              

Overclocking key             

+3.3V (A)             24

+5V (A)               24

+12V1 (A)            30

+12V2 (A)            30

+12V3 (A)            35

+12V4 (A)            35

+12V5 (A)            -

+12V6 (A)            -

-12V (A)               0.5

+5Vsb (A)            3

Max. combined power 12V (W)                840

Max. combined power 3.3V + 5V (W)      120

Hold-up time at 100% load (ms)               22.6

Power good signal (ms)                          100 - 150

Cables and connectors

Modular cables

Sleeved cables 

Maximum cable length (cm)        105

Cable length to motherboard (cm)           60

No. of cables      12

ATX-Motherboard (20+4-pin)     1

P4+4 (CPU)         1

P8 (CPU)              1

12VHPWR cable / W        1 / 600

PCI-e 6+2-pin (GPU)        4

SATA     12

PATA     3

Protection

OTP (over temperature protection)

OCP (over current protection)

OPP (over power protection)

SCP (short circuit protection)

OVP (over Voltage protection)

UVP (under Voltage protection)

SIP (Surge & Inrush Protection)

Safety certification

BSMI

CB

CCC

CE

cTUVus

CU

FCC

RCM

TÜV

UKCA

Environmental directives

Energy Star 8.0

ErP

WEEE

RoHs

Triman

Scope of delivery

Thumb screws

Screws

Cable ties

Velcro cable ties

User manual languages DE, EN, ES, FR, PL, RU, TW, CN, JP, KC

OCK slot bracket with switch / OCK jumper

Warranty (Years)

10 Years

 


Packaging

The packaging for the Dark Power 13 would surprise no one who has had a be quiet! power supply or any other product really. They stuck with the same styling that be quiet! has always used. That means a black background with the only color being the white and orange be quiet! logo in the top left corner. The left edge has a silver stripe going up it that has high-end on it letting us know the Dark Power 13 is their high-end model and the white font used for the model name down at the bottom of the box which is the largest font. The wattage is with that as well. They did also slip in the 80 Plus Titanium badge along with a badge showing this has PCIe 5.0 support. Most importantly right in the middle of the box is a picture of the Dark Power 13 which takes up most of the front. The back of the box is black as well and does have the UPC and the serial number on it as well as the wattage. Beyond that, there is a short section about be quiet! and a basic breakdown of the power output. A few extra things could be helpful for anyone shopping in retail like the power supplies dimensions and a breakdown of all of the connections which be quiet! has on their website but not on the box. 

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Inside the box, right up on top be quiet! has the documentation. Then below that everything is split up into two halves. On the left is a box with all of the cables and accessories. On the right, the power supply Is packed away in between two thick foam panels. Each cutout fits the Dark Power 13 perfectly. They also slipped in a desiccant packet just in case any moisture ends up inside.

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For documentation the Dark Power 13 850 watt comes with just one thing, its user manual. The manual covers all three wattages and does have a picture of the power supply on the cover as well.

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Rather than the traditional bag, all of the modular cables for the Dark Power 13 and other accessories come in a heavy-duty box with a similar setup to a shoe box. It’s blacked out of course because everything be quiet does is and they have the be quiet! branding and the Dark Power 13 model name on the top of the box. I like having the model name on the box which makes it easier to know what power supply the cables are for in the future if you have multiple computers.

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Photos and Features

It’s no surprise that the Dark Power 13 would be blacked out. It has a traditional sheet metal housing with a black finish and a heavy texture. When you have this bottom mounted and with the fan facing down as a majority of modern cases do, this is the side you will see. The styling is simple and clean with the textured background and for branding rather than have any color or resort to RGB lighting be quiet! has used chrome for the large Dark Power 13 logo across the side as well as the smaller be quiet! logo in the top corner. They don’t have the wattage shown here, but the simple styling gets the point across and should match any build, at least any build that has a black interior on the case.

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The back side of the Dark Power 13 is where be quiet! has hidden away the information sticker. This has all of the certification logos as well as a breakdown of the power across the rails. This is also where you will find the serial number and barcode to go with it. Of course, because they put this here, if you need to bottom mount the PSU and have the fan facing inside this is the side you will see. With the sticker having a black background it isn’t too bad looking and it does still have the be quiet! branding and Dark Power 13 model information. But it doesn’t look as good as the chromed branding on the other side.

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Being fully modular means that all of the cables can be disconnected, which also can make customizing your cables a lot easier as well. The Dark Power 13 850 Watt has all of its cable connections on the end and they have labeled everything as well both at the top and the bottom. In addition to that, each plug has a smaller label as well that shows the breakdown of what plug goes to each rail when running the Dark Power 13 in the default multi-rail mode. All of the peripheral cables on the left are on rail one. These have a compact 5-pin connection with the clip on the end not in the middle like we traditionally see. Then from there, both P8 plugs are for your CPU power connections and both are 10-pin connections running on rail two. Then in the middle, there are two PCIe 12-pin connections up top as well as the PCIe 5.0 cable aka the 12VHPWR connection at the bottom. The top plugs power two 8-pin cables each and each plug is on a different rail with the left on rail four and the right on rail 3. The 12VHPWR plug on the other hand connects to both the third rail and the fourth, they have also labeled it as 600 watts to make sure you know what it can handle. Some are rated lower so it is important to know. Then on the right, there are two motherboard plugs which both plug into the 24-pin cable, and on the PSU side have 20-pins on the larger plug and 8-pins on the smaller plug. Both run on rail one. Below that be quiet! has slipped in a small 3-pin connection, this is for the included overclock switch or jumper that will switch the Dark Power 13 from multi-rail to single rail.

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The back side of the Dark Power 13 has two layers of sheet metal with the outside layer mostly being covered in wide vertical slots then through those, we can see the honeycomb holes in the sheet behind it. Then on the left, they do have the C13 power plug which supports 100-240 volts, and above that is the power switch. I’m surprised they didn’t also just build the overclock switch in here rather than using a PCI bracket or the jumper.

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Where the Dark Power 13 stands out styling-wise is how they have covered up the fan side. While the rest of the housing is very traditional, they don’t have the wire grill cover or even the grill stamped out of the sheet metal. Be quiet! went with mesh with a large rectangle opening that covers everything but the edge. This leaves a lot of room for the 135mm be quiet! Silent Wings fan inside to move some air. This is where a company like be quiet has an advantage, their lineup of high-quality quiet fans means they can pull right from there, not go with any old off the shelf basic fan. The Silent Wing fan has a fluid dynamic bearing and when spun all the way up can reach up to 1800 RPM, but their breakdown of decibels in the spec sheet shows that the fan stays at its lowest setting from 10% up to 50% and then at 50% fan speed it moves from 7.5 dB up to 7.6 dB and then up to 19.8 dB at 100% load.

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On the opposite side as the fan, the Dark Power 13 has nothing going on. You just have the metal housing with the textured black powder coat finish.

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The Dark power 13 does come with a few accessories even without including the modular wires. The biggest thing here of course would be the power cable for the power supply itself. Being a US model it does have a NEMA5-15P plug on one end and the other end is the standard C13 plug. The cable also lets us know it is a 3x16 gauge wire with that stamped into the side. Beyond that, you get a small baggie with black mounting screws and a set of black thumb screws as well if you prefer doing things toolless. Be quiet! has also included a stack of branded Velcro wire straps and 6 small black wire ties to help with getting your wiring cleaned up. The Dark Power 13 comes with a PCI bracket with a small cable attached. This is a switch that allows you to manually switch between the multi-rail that it is in by default and single-rail mode for overclocking. They also include a smaller jumper plug if you want to keep it in the overclock mode all of the time without using the switch.

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The Dark Power 13 doesn’t have the standard flat cables that a lot of power supplies have. They have gone with a more traditional full sleeving which looks great. I still prefer the flat cables when it comes to cleaning up the wiring, however. When be quiet! packed the wiring up they didn’t just bundle it all into one wire-tied bundle. They have all of the wiring split up into groups depending on the cable type and then have Velcro straps which are nicer than a wire tie and should be more durable when being reused.

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With the change to ATX 3.0, this does mean that the GPU power cable setup has changed. The 850-watt Dark Power 13 that I’m checking out comes with two cables in total but one of the two is really more like two cables. You have the new 12VHPWR cable which is 23 inches long. If you haven’t seen this connection before you will be surprised at the smaller connection which you can see in the picture below with the older 8-pins sitting next to it. The new connection is a single connection with 12 standard plugs and four sensor cables on the side. While more compact the cable is designed to feed up to 600 watts which means you only need the one cable. The second cable is a Y cable with two 6+2 connections. Rather than the standard setup which daisy chains the second PCIe plug right off of the first, this gives each plug the full length of cable and a direct connection at the PSU to better handle power with a 12-pin connection at the PSU. This configuration gives you the flexibility for either option or to feed more power into a motherboard if needed as those sometimes have 6-pin connections. The Dark Power 13 does come with a second dual 8-pin cable, which comes bundled with the 24-pin cable. Both PCIe cables are slightly longer than the 12VHPWR cable at 24 inches long.

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For the rest of the modular cables on the Dark Power 13, the first bundle had the second PCIe cable that I already mentioned as well as the 24-pin motherboard power cable. This is 24 inches long and being the biggest cable does have a bigger sleeving than the rest of the cables. The second bundle has two CPU power cables. These are both 28 inches long to help reach that top left corner. One cable has a 4+4 pin setup for those motherboards that have a 4-pin connection. Then the second CPU power is a standard 8-pin. Both have the P8 connections on the Dark Power 13 which are 10-pin connections on the PSU side of the cable. From there we have two more bundles of cables, both with peripheral cables. One bundle comes with SATA power cables which both have three SATA connections at 23, 29, and 35 inches along the cable. The second bundle of peripheral cables has two unique cables. The top cable in the bottom picture is all SATA connection but this time around with four with plugs at 24, 33, 39, and 44 inches. The last cable has a mix of Molex and SATA power plugs. There are four plugs with the first two as SATA and the last two as Molex.

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Overall

As I mentioned at the start, we are only taking a look at the features of the new be quiet! Dark power 13 850-watt power supply, I’m not testing its performance. So I still recommend that you check out a full review that puts it to the test. But as far as features go the Dark Power 13 does have a few things going on. Starting for the basics, the Dark Power 13 line being be quiets! Higher-end models the 80 Plus Titanium efficiency is nice to see and they are claiming up to 95.4% efficiency. It isn’t listed on the clearresult website yet, however. The Dark Power 13 lineup as of right now has three wattages available, the 850-watt that I have here today, a 750-watt model, and a 1000-watt model. This covers the range that most single GPU users would need given today's CPU and GPU power usage. With this being an ATX 3.0 design you get the 600-watt 12VHPWR cable which means if you have a current-generation Nvidia card you can also avoid the ugly power adapters. But they did also include four traditional PICe 6+2 cables so you aren’t locked into just one connection type. This is great for future compatibility as well.

For styling, the blacked-out design is your typical be quiet! design. It has a traditional housing but the mesh design over the fan looks great and rather than going with RGB lighting or anything fancy the chromed branding on the side that faces out looks good and should go with anything. They also used a Silent Wing fan for cooling which should keep the noise down and adds to the overall quality compared to a basic off the shelf fan. Be quiet! packed alongside of the power supply a wide variety of cable management options with zip ties, branded Velcro straps, and the Velcro straps that the cables come within the first place. You also get both regular screws and large black thumbscrews for mounting. It's not a big thing, but having the option is nice.

As for the wiring, all of the modular wiring comes sleeved with a single black sleeve. This looks good, but I personally still prefer the flat sleeveless cables that most power supplies have been using, they are easier to fit in tight spaces and to clean up. Be quiet! did change things up on the wiring connections by dropping the number of Molex plugs down on the accessory cables and the floppy power plug is FINALLY not included, I have no idea why we have been seeing those still 12 years after floppy disks stopped being made and years before when people stopped using them.  I like that the PCIe cables aren’t the daisy-chained cables that most power supplies have, the Dark Power 13 has Y cables which give dedicated wires to each cable and also give better/cleaner power to your video cards. Then for storage, while the Dark Power 13 doesn’t come with a bag to store the cables, you do get a nice shoebox-like box. I also really like that the modular cable connections have great legends on each plug, even letting you know which rail it runs off of. Speaking of rails, the Dark Power 13 does have the option to switch from a multi-rail configuration to a single rail when using the included jumper or PCI mountable bracket with a switch. I’m not sure why that wasn’t just put on the power supply itself though, even if hidden away on the modular cable plug side.

As for pricing, the recently introduced Dark Power 13 850 watt that we have here has an MSRP of $249.99. There currently aren’t many ATX 3.0 power supplies available with the 12VHPWR cable so there isn’t much to compare the Dark Power 13 against. Of the ATX 3.0 PSUs for sale right now on Newegg with the same wattage, both are 80 Plus Gold rated which is a few steps down, and are $159.99. But even without the new cable, as far as Titanium rated 850-watt power supplies they range from $220 to $310 and are all a longer design whereas the Dark Power 13 is more compact. So it isn’t cheap, but also isn’t priced out of the competition when it comes to high-efficiency power supplies.

Live Pricing: HERE

Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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