be quiet! Dark Power Pro 13 1600W ATX 3.0 PSU Review
A PSU for the highest-end systems
be quiet! has just launched their Dark Power Pro 13 series of power supplies, adding new 1300W and 1600W units to their updated ATX 3.0 power supply lineup, offering buyers 80+ Titanium efficiency levels (up to 94.5% efficient), and two 12VHPWR connectors. On top of that, overclockers can switch this PSU from being a PSU with six 12V rails to a PSU with a massive, singular, 12V rail.Â
Today we will be testing be quiet’s Dark Power Pro 13 1600W power supply, a PSU that can deliver enough power to fuel even the hungriest of workstations, or the most heavily overclocked gaming PCs with ease.
With 2 12VHPWR connectors and a 1600W power budget and two 12VHPWR outputs, be quiet’s Dark Power Pro 13 PSU is capable of powering two RTX 4090 graphics cards with relative ease. This is great news for people who want to built a high-end workstation, who could make use of two ultra-high-end graphics cards at once. Alternatively, heavy overclockers can use this PSU to fuel high-end overclocking-grade RTX 4090 GPUs that feature dual 12VHPWR inputs.
For users of GPUs with 6+2-pin PSU connectors, the Dark Power Pro 13 features six of these power connectors, which should deliver more than enough power to fuel multiple high-end graphics cards.
10-Year Warranty
be quiet’s Dark Power Pro 13 1600W power supply is backed up by a 10-year manufacturers warranty, guaranteeing that users of this PSU will have a usable lifespan that is a decade long. This is a huge warranty that promises users that their PSU should be good enough to last several system upgrade cycles without any issues. That’s the level of confidence that be quiet has in their PSUs. Think of how many times you will likely upgrade your PC over the next 10 years, and know all of those upgrades are unlikely to require a PSU change.Â
Quiet and Efficient
If be quiet’s power supplies aim for two things, they are power efficiency and low noise levels, and when creating a 1600W PSU, you know that be quiet needs to achieve both. The higher your PSU’s efficiency is, the lower its heat production will be. If you create a PSU that wastes a minimal amount of power, that means that your PSU is converting a minimal amount of power as heat, which helps manufacturers create quiet power supplies.Â
With the Dark Power Pro 13 delivering up to 1600 watts of power, be quiet needed to aim for 80+ Titanium efficiency levels to minimise the PSU’s heat production, allowing be quiet to cool their PSU effectively without noise levels becoming too high at high loads. Even at full 1600W loads, be quiet’s Dark Power Pro 13 1600W power supply has noise levels of 31.1 dB(A), which is whisper quiet.
Overclocking Key
One of the critical features of be quiet’s Dark Power 13 Pro 1600W is its “Overclocking Key” option, which allows users of this power supply to convert the unit from being a PSU with six separate 12V rails to turn it into a PSU with a single massive 12V rail. This function is useful to overclockers as it makes it incredibly difficult to overload any of the Dark Power Pro’s 12V rails or activate the PSU’s protection mechanisms unnecessarily while overclocking.Â
For most users, keeping the Dark Power Pro 1600W in its stock 6x 12V rail configuration is optimal, but if you are overclocking, there are benefits to having a single colossal 12V rail over separate 12V rails.
Power Delivery Options
The Dark Power 13 Pro has a huge number of power output options, including two 12VHPWR outputs (which can deliver a combined 1000 watts of power), two 8-pin CPU power connectors (1x 4+4 and 1x 8-pin), up to six 6+2-pin power connectors, 16 SATA connectors and 5 PATA (Molex) connectors. All of the cables that are included with this power supply are sleeved. Â
