Verdict: Unncecessarily complicated and inefficient
Be quiet!' is a command you'd expect to hear from an irate schoolteacher addressing an unruly child, rather than as the name of a company. I certainly don't appreciate being ordered about, least of all by a company that wants me to buy its products.
The Dark Power Pro is made by Topower, the same company that manufactures Tagan PSUs. It's a modular 600W PSU, so you don't have to spend ages tidying away cables that your PC doesn't need. Strangely, that's where the modernity ends, as the Dark Power Pro has only two 12V rails, each rated to deliver 20A for a maximum combined output of 480W. Alongside the standard 3.3V, 5V, -12V and 5VSB rails, it also has a -5V rail, something that was dropped from the ATX spec way back in June 2004, as only ISA cards needed a -5V rail. This unnecessarily complicates the design of the Dark Power Pro.
As the Dark Power Pro has only two 12V rails, the power distribution is simple, with CPU1 and CPU2 being fed by 12V1 and everything else being powered by 12V2. Again, this contradicts the ATX spec, which states that 12V loads above 18A should be divided across multiple rails. In our tests, the 5V rail's output dropped to a paltry 4.46V at 100 per cent load - well below the 4.75V required by the ATX spec - while the output from the 5VSB rail dropped to 4.67V. At least the other rails delivered sufficient voltage at 100 per cent load. Having said that, the Dark Power Pro isn't particularly efficient, averaging 78 per cent efficiency at 100 per load. It also emits an unpleasant smell at 100 per cent load, which is probably a result of the fact that it runs hot.
CONCLUSION
The design of the Dark Power Pro contradicts many tenets of the ATX spec, and it's neither particularly efficient nor capable of delivering a stable voltage on its 5V and 5VSB rails. It isn't the priciest PSU we've seen but, with little to recommend it, our reply to 'be quiet!' is 'leave it on the shelf!'
