The other day I received a rather large box from beQuiet. The box was for their new Dark Power Pro 10 550W (P10-550W), a semi-modular, 80 Plus Gold power supply.

The box is really big. See that? That aint no 10 ounce can of beer. That's a full sized, 12 ounce can of Leinie's Summer Shandy next to the box. I know! Big, right?

Yeah, I know. beQuiet is a German company and therefore I should be drinking a German beer, but this is all I have. So let's crack open that beer (ok.. shandy) and do a PSU review...

Whoa! That's a lot of information on the back of that box. Let's move back to the front of the box.

80 Plus Gold, Silent Wings and Cable Management..

The 80 Plus Gold logo means we should see at least 87%, 90% and 87% efficient at 20%, 50% and 100% loads.

Silent Wings is beQuiet's brand of low noise cooling fans while "Cable Management" refers to the power supply's modular cables.

Did I mention this power supply is "HIGH-END"?

Here's we see another mention of the Silent Wings fan and how it is "virtually inaudible".

beQuiet also points out that they have efficiency of up to 94%, which would actually exceed 80 Plus Gold expectations. Top performance, to me, means this power supply should have excellent voltage regulation and very good ripple suppression. There's an "overclocking key" that switches this power supply from a safe-to-use (if you tend to plug things in backwards or pinch wires inside the chassis... hey, it happens) multiple rail PSU to an arc-welding capable single +12V rail.

I'm not sure what "professional cable management" is, but it should prove to be better than the "amateur cable management". beQuiet also gives the user the sense of security with a 5 year warranty.

Yes, the back of my sample's box is more scratched up than Terminator X's pressing of the Funky Drummer. Not sure what happened there unless some guys back at beQuiet's warehouse were curling with power supplies.

Anyways... the back of the box has the dimensions of the power supply right on it, which I think is a great idea since sometimes you have limited space in a chassis to install a larger power supply and it's good to know if what you're buying is going to fit.

It may look like I used Instagram's antique filter to doctor these pictures, but no. That's how scratched up the box was when I got it.

Product conception, design and quality control in Germany!

Also on the back of the box, we have a diagram showing every cable, the connectors on that cable and their lengths. You'll also see the "overclocking key" on this diagram, which is a cable that plugs into the power supply that leads to a switch that can be mounted to the back of the chassis. Flipping the switch switches between single and multiple +12V rails. If you don't want to use the switch, there is also a "overclocking key jumper" that simply plugs into the power supply, essentially "shutting off" the multiple +12V rail capability of the power supply.

Below, I've converted the information from the diagram on the back of the box to a standard table:

You'll see that I've counted two 4+4-pin CPU power connector cables, but it should be noted that one of those cables is an individual, 700mm long cable. The other connects to the power supply using the same connector as the 8-pin CPU power connector cable. This means you're covered whether you have a 4-pin CPU power connector on your motherboard, an 8-pin CPU power connector, an 8-pin and 4-pin or two 8-pin CPU power connectors without having an extra cable to hide away.