be quiet! chose to trust its own engineers with this new platform's design and FSP with its manufacture. The outcome is a fine PSU that easily stands out when compared to the competition, and not only because of its unique look, but its unique feature set, like its ability to control up to four external fans or an overclocking switch that combines all +12V rails into one. The Dark Power P11-1000 performed very well overall in nearly all the tests I conducted, which proves yet again that a cooperation between be quiet! and FSP can produce excellent results. This unit's only major downsides are its stiff price and that it won't be as quiet as promised once pushed. Describing a be quiet! product as not that quiet feels odd, but that is the case once you push the P11-1000 at high operating temperatures. With that said, you won't hear a thing from this PSU at normal ambient at typical loads, which I believe will leave most users very satisfied.

The fact that this unit's modular cables and its single native cable aren't all-black has been addressed in be quiet!'s new batches, since be quiet! informed us at CES 2016 that all newly manufactured Dark Power Pro models will ship with darkened cables. For some of you, such cables might not be a significant problem; however, I personally think be quiet! did well to proceed with the change since it will bring the PSU up to speed with competing offers. With a premium product like the Dark Power Pro, a product that is expensive, every detail should be perfect, and darkened gauges won't affect its price. I would have even preferred it had be quiet! gotten rid of their native cable by making the unit fully modular. Not only would dropping it increase usability, it could also lower the unit's production cost since a native ATX cable makes the manufacturing line a little more complex because of the unique grommet it uses and the extra parts it takes.

If you need something different from the common platforms competitors use nowadays (Seasonic, Super Flower, and CWT designs), the Dark Power Pro 11 models are the way to go. They use an in-house designed be quiet! platform FSP's facilities manufacture, since be quiet! doesn't have a manufacturing line. This unit's overall build quality is high since nothing but top-notch parts are used, including Japanese caps from such respectable manufacturers as Chemi-Con and Rubycon. The cooling fan also uses a Fluid Dynamic Bearing and belongs to be quiet!'s great SilentWings 3 line. I should remind you here that the filtering capacitors in the secondary side and the cooling fan are the two most important parts inside a PSU since they define its lifetime. A cap failure will break the PSU, and a fan failure will most likely lead to the PSU's destruction if it doesn't have Over Temperature Protection or because such highly sensitive components as its electorlytic caps are put under a lot of duress.